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Since it takes time to screw over the poor in a way that makes it less apparent to them that they are being screwed over, many of the provisions of the GOP’s big, beautiful giveaway to the rich will not go into effect right away.

For example, the millions of Americans who will ultimately lose their health insurance because of the new law won’t get kicked off Medicaid first thing on Monday morning. And families who received food assistance last week will also receive it next week, even though, in the end, millions of them will no longer be eligible for it.

Politically, this suits Republicans just fine. For some time, they will still be able to maintain the fiction that nobody who deserves to receive this type of federal aid will lose it. And, when it becomes apparent that this is a lie, the main victims of the bill, many of whom voted for Donald Trump, may have already forgotten who is to blame for their upcoming predicament.

However, there is one part of the bill that is too big to hide… and it could make all the difference in terms of how Americans perceive the legislation that Republicans pushed through Congress and that is going to greatly impact their lives whether they realize it or not: The transformation of ICE from a bunch of goons into the largest “law enforcement” agency in the United States.

We use the term “law enforcement” loosely because it is not clear which laws these unaccountable thugs are enforcing and/or following. In fact, most often, it looks as though they are just doing Trump’s bidding, which is to provide the muscle for a deportation program that is designed to intimidate, to inflict pain, and to be cruel.

Not a day goes by without a new video surfacing that shows masked and heavily armed agents dragging unarmed brown people into unmarked vehicles before taking off to who knows where.

Some of them end up being shuttled from one detention facility to another to keep them out of reach of loved ones and lawyers, others might be sent to one of the new concentration camps that GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is building in Florida, and yet others might find themselves in South Sudan or El Salvador — or any other developing country willing to take them in return for payment.

Related Story: An Open Letter to ICE Agents: You Don’t Have to Do This

Some of the people being abducted are undocumented immigrants, others are legal residents, and yet others are American citizens. Some of them end up being found, others just disappear.

And this is what’s been happening before Republicans voted to super-size ICE.

Now, after Trump signed the bill on Friday, the agency’s budget is going to balloon. Over the next four years, ICE will have at least three times as much money available as it would have otherwise. Some of these funds are earmarked for building new detention facilities, while billions more will go toward hiring new goon-squad members.

Also, let’s not forget that Trump wants the military to play a much greater role in assisting ICE and quelling any form of resistance.

If you have ever opened a history book, then you’ll know that this is how fascists cement their power.

So, the game plan seems obvious: Put more ICE agents on the streets. Have them stalk Hispanic communities, workplaces, baseball games, and any other place where brown people may congregate. And then detain and deport as many of them as possible while quelling any form of resistance.

After all, Trump has set a target of 3,000 deportations per day. That might sound like a high number, but he better hope his supporters don’t do the math, because, at that rate, his administration would “only” deport 1 million people annually.

That should seem like a paltry total to hard-core MAGA supporters, who have been told that 20 million illegals “invaded” the country under Joe Biden, and that all of them are vicious killers or insane.

They want every last “illegal” out of the country… or eaten by alligators.

But we’ll get to the expectations of the faithful in just a moment.

First, let’s look at what will come next.

Both Trump and ICE agents are clearly feeling emboldened because they are not facing any kind of accountability. The Supreme Court keeps writing the president blank checks and congressional Republicans have absolutely no interest in conducting any kind of oversight of the administration.

As for the ICE agents themselves, in spite of ample video evidence of gross misconduct, none of them seems to ever be disciplined for roughing up anybody from immigrants to members of Congress. And what do bullies do when they don’t experience any kind of pushback? They ramp up their bullying.

It’s not difficult to see where this ends.

At some point, something really bad is going to happen — because you can’t expect people who live in the country with the most guns to just stand by and watch their loved ones get snatched off the streets by a bunch of masked men who can’t produce warrants.

Somebody is going to die.

But violence is what Trump wants, because an escalation of the situation would provide a justification to call up more troops and to put down dissent more brutally.

We are already seeing the administration laying the groundwork for this, with ICE conjuring up scary-sounding figures that are meant to show that “assaults” on its agents have skyrocketed. However, a closer look shows that we are talking about a tiny number of incidents, and that the increase is hardly surprising seeing how the agency is much more aggressive these days.

In addition, if the ICE statistics include incidents involving Democrats, like those in New Jersey, California, and New York, then these “assaults” consist of elected officials being manhandled.

What we are trying to say is that things are about to get a whole lot worse.

How much worse (and what happens next) depends on how long the American people will look the other way while Gestapo-like “law enforcement” officers commit acts of cruelty in plain sight, and how much economic damage ICE will cause with its deportations.

As for the first, we are not talking about physically confronting government agents who are outfitted for war. But there are many things that people can do. We have already seen that documenting ICE’s brutality and getting the word out about it is highly effective.

So are protests and, even though it may not seem that way, messages to lawmakers.

There are plenty of Republicans who are uncomfortable with what is going on and who might feel buyer’s remorse about their votes. Putting pressure on them can at least lead to some oversight.

Finally, people should look out for their immigrant neighbors. 

This is a scary time for them. Many of them live in households in which some residents are American citizens, others are in the country legally, and others are undocumented. They must feel that, at any time, ICE could blow their door off its hinges and terrorize everybody inside.

Knowing that they are not alone could make a huge difference in their lives.

Ultimately, though, ICE could become a victim of its own “success.”’ In other words, the more immigrants it detains and deports, the more the economy will suffer.

For now, Trump seems to realize that, which is why he wants ICE to lay off farms, hotels, and restaurants. However, his base will not be content with selectively deporting brown people. 

Hard-core MAGA supporters want all immigrants out of the country, which would devastate entire industries, such as the agricultural, construction, and hospitality sectors, and lead to higher prices and food shortages.

For the country to come to its senses, a certain amount of pain may be necessary. It is just too bad that so many innocent people will have to suffer in the meantime.