Mass Deportations or Mass Detentions?

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

The GOP spent the entire 2024 campaign promising “mass deportations.” Now in office, the Trump administration has directed its largest demonstrations of abuse towards that slogan. The Alien Enemies Act removals to CECOT? Look how far they’ll go to get people out of the country as quickly as possible. Defying the courts to send people to South Sudan? Wow, they must really want to deport people.

But a look at what is required to remove people en masse — and where the money for that effort is really going — suggests that we’re wrong to call this “mass deportations.”

Removing someone from the country requires various levels of process. Even under expedited removal, during which immigration officials can deport someone without a full hearing before an immigration judge, people are still being sent to another country — either the state that issued their passport or a third country willing to accept them — which, in turn, creates additional problems that aren’t necessarily under the Trump administration’s control. The receiving country needs to issue travel documents allowing the person to go there, and the U.S. government needs permission from foreign governments before sending a deportation flight. The Trump administration has been speaking loudly and carrying a big stick, but that’ll only get you so far. For those not subject to expedited removal, hearings in immigration court could set deportations back by years.

What the government can do, however, is detain people en masse as they await removal. The budget bill that Congress passed this week gives the White House what it needs for that program: it includes a whopping $45 billion for immigration detention. A Senate source tells me that a separate $46.5 billion, dedicated to Trump’s wall, was written in a way to allow the money to be fungible for further detention operations.

The money will be available until September 2029, per the bill. The bill also contains increases in ICE’s budget — up to $29.85 billion — for hiring staff to detain people and to conduct removals. It’s almost too big an increase to conceptualize, with all the questions that you can expect us to pursue: Who will get the contracts to detain? What will these facilities look like? How many people will be detained?

But the allocations are enough of a tell to know that what we’re looking at here isn’t quite mass deportations. It’s mass detention.

— Josh Kovensky

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:

• A look at two Miami socialites who run a construction company and health programs, including a “med spa,” in the city, and who also happen to have played a part in helping Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis build his dehumanizing “Alligator Alcatraz” to detain immigrants.
• At least one rural hospital in Nebraska has already shut down in anticipation of Trump’s big, beautiful Medicaid cuts. We take a closer look at the on-the-ground impacts of the bill.

Meet The Miami Socialites Who Helped Build ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

On Tuesday, President Trump visited Florida where he toured a swampland detention center for immigrants that he and other officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” due to the harsh conditions in the surrounding area. The facility, which will hold immigrants in tents filled with fenced-in bunk beds, is the brainchild of the Trump administration and the President’s former campaign rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). It’s also been built with the help of contractors, including a pair of married Miami socialites, Carlos Duart and Tina Vidal-Duart. 

The detention facility is part of DeSantis’ efforts to support Trump’s mass deportation agenda in his state. It has helped the pair smooth over their rivalry that emerged during last year’s Republican presidential primary. Trump and his aides have gleefully cheered the idea of surrounding migrants with alligators and have reveled in their trolling of those protesting  the brutal conditions at the facility. Environmental and tribal groups have also raised concerns about the construction in the Everglades. 

Amid the uproar, DeSantis managed to move construction along quickly by invoking his emergency powers and issuing no-bid contracts to build and manage the facility. And on that list of contractors, the Miami Herald noted the Duarts’ firm “stands out” because of the couples’ close association with the governor. 

The couple are the chief executives of CDR Maguire and its affiliate CDR Health, which have a variety of services, including construction and health programs for refugees. According to the Herald, the Duarts’ have “given a total of $1.9 million to the two state political action committees supporting DeSantis’ bids for governor and to the Republican Party of Florida.” 

In 2021, Carlos Duart was appointed by DeSantis to be a trustee of Florida International University. Carlos’ wife, Tina Vidal-Duart, is on the board of a charity headed up by DeSantis’ wife, Casey, which, according to the Herald, “is central to a criminal investigation by the State Attorney’s Office in Leon County over a $10 million transfer that came from a Medicaid settlement.”

But politics is only one part of the Duarts’ high profile. The couple are regulars on red carpets in Miami and, in 2023, participated in a photoshoot and profile for a magazine chronicling the area’s social scene. That piece dubbed them a “dynamic duo” for their shared business success and “philanthropy.” It also revealed that the Ferrari-driving Carlos “can do math in his head very quickly” and that Tina’s life was “changed” by the bestselling self-help book “The Secret.”

On social media, Tina appears to maintain multiple Instagram accounts. One, which boasts of her role as a “#wife,” “#mom,” and “#doglove” is locked. Her “public” page, which identifies her with a regal title, “Lady Tina Vidal-Duart,” heavily advertises a “med spa” she owns in Tallahassee that offers products and treatments including botox and fillers. 

While the Duarts’ are no stranger to headlines and hashtags, they seem to be taking a more discreet approach to their work on “Alligator Alcatraz.” TPM reached out to both Carlos and Tina to ask about their role in the project. Tina did not respond and Carlos sent a terse text.

“Don’t have a comment. We are also under NDAs,” he wrote. 

We followed up to ask if he was confident the conditions at the detention camp were “humane.” Duart did not respond.

— Hunter Walker

Trump’s Medicaid Slashing Megabill Has Passed. States Brace for the Devastating Impacts

The ink had barely dried on Republican’s unpopular reconciliation package passed by a one-vote margin in the Senate before its real-world implications hit. 

A Nebraska health system called Community Hospital announced the closure of a local medical center in Curtis, Nebraska, Nebraska Now, the local ABC affiliate, reported early Thursday morning, just hours before House Republicans passed the Senate bill. Hospital CEO Troy Bruntz told the publication the “anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid” made it “impossible” for the facility to stay open.

This is just what medical experts and advocates have been warning elected officials about. 

Curtis is a small town with a population of about 800, according to the most recent Census. More than 23% of its population live below the poverty line, compared with 10.5% of Nebraskans in general, Census numbers say. Roughly 39,000 people in Nebraska are expected to lose healthcare coverage under the “big, beautiful bill,” according to data from the health policy organization KFF.

Voters in Curtis, located in Frontier County, overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, according to official election results. And the state’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, praised the passage of the bill, despite its anticipated and now unfolding negative impacts on his state.  

Meanwhile, state legislatures are already taking steps to mitigate federal spending cuts and clawbacks including stockpiling cash, freezing funds and cutting spending in their own budgets. I explain how some states are bracing for the impact more here. 

— Layla A. Jones