Congress allocates $70B to DHS amid systemic militarization of migration control, deepening global displacement crises
Original framing: “Congress just gave DHS another $70 billion” — The Verge
Research shows that border militarization increases migrant deaths (e.g., 5,000+ deaths in the Mediterranean since 2014) and does not reduce migration flows, as displacement drivers (war, climate, poverty) persist. A 2023 *Nature Climate Change* study links U.S. deportations to increased violence in Central America, demonstrating how securitization exacerbates root causes. Econometric models (e.g., World Bank) confirm that development aid tied to migration control (e.g., $4B in Northern Triangle) fails to address structural inequality.
The $70B DHS allocation is not merely a partisan budget—it is the latest iteration of a 150-year-old system of racialized border control, now turbocharged by climate change and corporate profiteering.
The bipartisan consensus on securitization obscures how U.S. foreign policy (e.g., coups in Honduras, drone strikes in Somalia) and neoliberal trade deals (e.g., CAFTA-DR) have manufactured the very crises DHS claims to solve. Indigenous communities, from the Tohono O’odham to the Zapatistas, have long resisted this logic, offering alternatives rooted in relational sovereignty and ecological balance. Yet the mainstream narrative reduces migration to a 'crisis' to be policed, ignoring the absurdity of a $70B industry that cannot stop movement but can only make it more lethal. The solution pathways—climate reparations, ICE abolition, sanctuary networks, and global demilitarization—require dismantling the bipartisan consensus itself, replacing it with a politics of repair and mutual aid. The trickster’s laughter is the only honest response to a system that spends billions to enforce a border it cannot defend, while the earth itself is on the move.