WE WERE PROMISED FLYING CARS!

We will not live like this anymore. pic.twitter.com/A7vwF4bXYh

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) December 31, 2025

ICE has a $170 billion budget, and this is how they spend it.

Don’t sleep on the fact that promised future (from the ‘50’’s, but it carried over into the ‘60’s) was exclusively white in all the pictures. Pretty much in the sci-fi of the day, too. In fact, I can still only think of two Bradbury stories, ostensibly sci-fi because they include space travel or nuclear holocaust, that explicitly included (in fact, centered on), non-white people. Otherwise, default white was never not the way to default. But to rely on that, now?

The irony is, not the resurgent racism (this is still America), but this:

Reichlin-Melnick, a frequent critic of Trump's immigration policy, made the observation in response to a new report in The Washington Post that ICE plans "to spend $100 million to recruit gun-rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted ad campaign, part of what the agency called a 'wartime recruitment' strategy to hire thousands of officers" — featuring ads with taglines like "Destroy The Flood" and "The Enemies Are At The Gates." [Or "We will not live like this anymore," because we were promised a clean WHITE!, and peaceful, prosperous future.” See how this works?]

"Virtually all the money for this explosion in staff evaporates on October 1, 2029, meaning the agency will likely have to fire thousands of people unless Congress steps in and gives them billions and billions of dollars more for their annual budget," wrote Reichlin-Melnick on X.

This comes amid other reports that reveal ICE is facing a number of obstacles in the recruiting process.

In particular, more than a third of prospective recruits this year failed the basic fitness test after they lied on their applications and Homeland Security officials loosened the screening process to try to increase the rate of hiring, creating an awkward situation as many of them had already been given job offers and needed to be reassigned.

If the new Congress doesn’t revisit the ICE budget before ‘29, things eventually get interesting. 

One more reason to go on living, I guess. Especially since that all-white future is no closer than it was 60 years ago. And our government is not as close to producing it as it was 60 years ago.

In the meantime, they’re gonna burn a lot of money. That’s not going to endear them to very many people.

It’s the little things that end up meaning the most.