Letters from an American - We Deserve to Know What is Happening

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

June 6, 2026Senate Republicans passed a measure providing additional funding to ICE and CBP, without any of the reforms Democrats had demanded, ICE and CBP will be funded through the end of Trump’s term no matter the outcome of the midterm elections, There has been no public accounting of how the funds for ICE and CBP are being spent, Democratic amendments caused an 18 hour debate that forced Republicans to vote against measures that are popular, making their stands clear, A whistleblower says that DOGE planned to make immigrants self deport by declaring 2.7 million of them dead, The number of deaths of immigrants in detention is rising, Sen Andy Kim of New Jersey is keeping attention on what is happening at Delaney Hall detention center, but ICE is impeding oversight, Secretary of Defense Hegseth was in France for the anniversary of D-Day, where he perverted the commemoration in a speech which advanced the ideas on which fascism was based, We remember Winston Churchill, who promised that those who care about freedom and self determination would never stop fighting the Nazis.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

June 6th, 2026. In the wee hours of Friday morning, Senate Republicans passed a measure to provide about $70 billion in additional funding to immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, and Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, the parent agency for Border Patrol. They did so without meeting any of the demands Democrats had made to reform ICE and Border Patrol in the wake of the violent sweeps that led to the death. of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Preti. While Republicans tried to insist that Democrats who demanded reforms were starving immigration enforcement,

in fact, the budget reconciliation measure the Republicans passed in July of last year, the one they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or O B, B, B, B, A, provided an astonishing $191 billion to fund the Department of Homeland Security with about $75 billion for ICE and $65 billion for CBP. According to Dominic Lett of the Libertarian Cato Institute, those numbers were seven times ICE's previous annual budget and four times the typical annual budget of CBP, and were designed to last through September 30th, 2029. putting more billions behind ICE and CBP now will mean those agencies are funded through the rest of Trump's term. Even if Democrats take control of Congress after the midterms, the funding will be in place,

preventing Democrats from using funding to demand reforms. How those tax dollars are being spent is a question. In February, 21 Democratic senators wrote to the Congressional, Budget Office to note that there had been no public accounting of how that money was being spent. Adriel Orozco of the American Immigration Council reports that while the OBBBA gave ICE $45 billion for detention through September 29, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem decided to use $38 billion of it to buy warehouses and convert them to detention centers. On May 29th, Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler of NBC News reported that the new secretary of DHS, Mark Wayne Mullen, is considering selling a number of the warehouses.

If he does so, Ainsley and Strickler report, there may well be scrutiny of the initial purchases. An Atlanta suburb has filed a lawsuit alleging that ICE paid more than five times the assessed value of a warehouse there. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noted that the funding for ICE and CBP has historically been made under annual appropriations bills, and the Republican's new policy of giving them a huge pot of money for years makes it hard to estimate the pace of spending. Democrats had demanded reforms to ICE and Border Patrol actions, so to pass the measure, Senate Republicans used the budget reconciliation process. Not usually used for appropriations, budget reconciliation prevented a Democratic filibuster and enabled Republicans to pass the measure

with a simple majority. But anyone can amend a budget reconciliation measure, and Democrats used amendments to cause an 18-hour debate that forced Republicans to vote against a number of measures that are popular with the American people, showing how Republicans really stand. Republicans blocked Democratic proposals to stop Trump from establishing the $1.776 billion slush fund with the complicity of the men he is appointed to the Department of Justice, and to prevent any such fund from giving payouts to people convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers during the January 6, 2021 attack on the capital. capital. Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to bar the use of federal funds or private donations for Trump's ballroom, unless Congress explicitly approved. Republicans blocked a Democratic

proposal to bar William Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing and Finance Agency, from serving as the Director of National Intelligence by providing that no one could direct the Office of National Intelligence while heading a different agency. Trump has announced that Pulte will be the acting director of national intelligence, putting him in place through the midterm elections with the evident plan that he will weaponize intelligence against the president's political opponents. The Senate passage of ICE and CBP funding demonstrates a Republican worldview. In January 2024, then-Candidate Trump convinced Republicans to abandon a strong bipartisan border bill to fix immigration issues because he wanted to

keep the issue of immigration open as a way to win in 2024. Now it is clear that the assault on immigrants was a tool to enforce a right-wing vision of the country on the American people, much of which is happening under cover of darkness. Yesterday, Merrill Cornfield of the Washington Post noted a report from former senior executive at the Social Security Administration, Jeremiah Schofield, who is now a whistleblower. Schofield says that officials from the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, hatched a plan to make immigrants self-deport by declaring 2.7 million of them dead. Some of those people on the list were U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

Being listed on the death master file cuts off people's access to wages, banks, and other financial systems and other services. The idea appears to have been that such an erasure would force people either to leave the country or go to a Social Security office where they could be arrested. While they ultimately did not implement the larger plan, officials did move 6,100, mostly Latino immigrants, into that database. On Thursday, Douglas McMillan of the Washington Post reported that ICE is abandoning a policy begun under the Biden administration in 2021, that required ICE to report to Congress

and investigate the deaths of detainees who died within 30 days of their release. The policy was designed to make sure ICE could not pass off deaths caused by conditions in the detention centers, simply by releasing severely ill people. At least 18 people incarcerated in detainment facilities have died in the first five months of 2026.

At least 30 died last year, the highest number in 20 years. McMillan notes that a number of those deaths happened after detainees were taken to the hospital. Today, Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat of New Jersey, went back to Delaney Hall, the ICE Detention Center in Newark, New Jersey, to talk with detainees. Despite the established congressional duty of oversight, ICE refused to let me talk to any detainees, he said. They restricted my ability to do my job. Kim reported that as he went through the women's unit, the women were trying to get my attention

and flagging from me, waving their hands, and they were, were pointing into one of the beds, and I looked over, and I saw a woman curled up in a fetal position, clearly in some pain and agony. Ice and Geo Group, the private prison company that runs Delaney Hall on a federal contract, told me that they cannot share with me what is happening. I'm very concerned about that woman. They have only one full-time doctor in this facility that has hundreds and hundreds of detainees. The American people deserve to know what is happening, Kim said. We deserve to be able to hear directly from the detainees.

They are doing whatever they can to impede congressional oversight and oversight from the American people. Senator Rafael Warnock, a Democrat of Georgia, notes that the $70 billion in the United States, tax money, Republicans just gave to ICE and Border Patrol, could provide free child care for 1.3 million children through September 2028. Cover the annual cost of groceries for about 10.7 million U.S. households. Provide a year of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits to 31 million Americans. Expand the Affordable Care Act Premium Tax credits for at least a year.

about 31.5% of Americans' medical debt, and end homelessness for about eight years. But in France today, Secretary of Defense Pete Hagezeth rejected the belief on which the United States of America was founded, that the government should act to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Instead, he perverted a commemoration of D-Day when American soldiers fought with their allies to defend democracy against fascism into a call for the racial ideology on which fascism was based. Embracing the Great Replacement Theory that says the culture of white Europeans and Americans is being undermined by people of color from Africa and Asia. He flipped the Allied and Nazi positions. Sadly, today, he said, in reference to the beaches of Normandy, the Allies stormed in 1944,

different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something? about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not and I believe not. More to the point on the anniversary of D-Day 2026 is the speech by Prime Minister Winston Churchill

on June 4th, 1940, promising that those who cared about freedom and human self-determination would never stop fighting the Nazis. We shall fight the Nazis. We shall fight on the beaches, he said. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills.

We shall never surrender. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.