Clean Energy Cuts Are Funding ICE Operations

Candidates Should Connect the Dots Between ICE and Energy Affordability

By Chris Moyer

As the clean energy community fought last summer to salvage tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, some may have missed a massive line item that is more relevant today than ever: $170 billion in new spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).

Those dollars are now being used for “anti-immigrant enforcement, detention, and deportation,” according to the National Immigration Law Center. These funds are fueling the operations making headlines this week, most tragically in Minneapolis following the killing of two U.S. citizens.

The availability of this massive pot of money means that even if Democrats block the latest bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security—which is the talk of the town in Washington this week—the Trump administration’s immigration actions won’t skip a beat. They have plenty of funds available to them to keep their paramilitary force going.

$173 Billion in Clean Energy Funding Now Fuel ICE

So where in the federal budget did that $170 billion come from? Look no further than the IRA’s clean energy tax credits. We thought it was bad enough that the Trump administration and nearly every Republican in Congress was undercutting the clean energy industry, but it’s even worse when you consider how the funds are being allocated instead. If you add up the tax credit terminations and phase outs included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that decimated federal clean energy policy, you can find almost dollar-for-dollar the funds that are powering ICE and CBP today:

That’s a combined $173 billion, from programs that directly incentivize more energy supply—and thus lower voters’ energy costs—and provide direct energy savings for households. It’s just more than the $170 billion for the Trump deportation machine. This is the biggest, most immediate impact of the OBBBA, coming just six months after being signed into law.

Candidates Should Connect the Dots Between ICE and Energy Affordability

Of course, budget dollars are fungible and the money for ICE and CPB didn’t technically come from any one source. However, that shouldn’t get in the way of an effective message. Some members of Congress have made the connection between ICE funding and the recent expiration of health insurance subsidies. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez savvily framed the issue this way: “The cuts to your health care are what’s paying for ICE to be doing this. Understand how these dots connect. You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.”

The same argument is available to candidates when it comes to energy affordability. Indeed, energy affordability affects even more voters than health care. Not everyone relies on Obamacare subsidies to afford health insurance, but nearly everyone—homeowners and renters alike—pay an electric bill each month.

Candidates should start making the connection between ICE funding and rising utility bills. They should say something like this: “The Trump administration cut funding for clean, affordable energy that could have brought down your electric bills so they instead could fund ICE’s terrorization of American cities and killing of US citizens.”

Republicans facing voters this year were already on their heels in large part due to voters’ energy affordability concerns. Cost-of-living remains their top concern, and the party in power today is viewed as insufficiently addressing high prices. Rising utility bills fall squarely into this bucket.

Now, anyone running for office against the party controlling Washington today has another powerful message at their disposal. They should use it.

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