Immigration Policy, or Geopolitical Transaction? ICE and the Cost of Securitising Migration

The Trump administration and their mass deportation of immigration enforcement has turned the campaign to a diplomatic instrument — one which redefined the U.S. standing in the world and its relationship with the allies.

Atha Abhynaja Guritno | Student, Universitas Diponegoro

The United States’ sovereignty is under attack. A statement shared by Trump through the declaration of national emergency at the southern border of the US, stating this ‘invasion’ has led to the US’ suffering over the last 4 years. Yet, this is not merely a statement, on January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed Proclamation 10886, officially declaring a national emergency of the US. Within weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was operating at a scale precedent to its history — raiding worksites, houses to houses, and schools. The deployment of military aircraft in assisting deportation flights was a sight for everyone to see, serving as a headline world-wide. The impact of this deportation does not stop on a national level, with governments across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia signing coercive agreements to receive deportees, this issue now stands in the wider stage — especially with how said governments must accept deportees including ones whose nationals are not their own. By January 2026, ICE had deported roughly 540,000 people, a historical record. This issue reveals the transformation of U.S. immigration policy into a foreign policy instrument, and the consequences which exit the American borders — because ask yourself, where do Trump’s deportations are sending these immigrants?

To understand what is happening, we need to borrow the concepts within securitisation theory, which argues that political actors can transform ordinary issues into ‘existential threats’ through what is known as a ‘speech act’. This process doesn’t require any democratic deliberation, instead just a simple securitization move, where the political actor may present the situation as a dire and an immediate threat. Buzan and Wæver developed what we know as the Copenhagen School of security studies, which describes this as moving an issue from ‘normal politics’ to the security domain, where exceptional action is expected. Trump’s framing of immigration as an ‘invasion’ now looks like a textbook securitising move. He labeled undocumented migrants as existential threats, which the administration needs to follow with a mass detention, militarised deportations, and due-process violations — all appears justifiable and necessary under this framing, all to protect the American people and American sovereignty.

On July 4, 2025, Trump signed into law H.R. 1 — known as ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’, allocates $170.7 billion to immigration enforcement over four years, this is more than the combined annual budgets for all state local police forces in the US. Uncomparable to its precedent years, in 2025 ICE received $75 billion supplemental funding, meaning nearly $29 billion annually, and if you wonder, this number tripled ICE’s total budget from recent years.

Foreign-policy remained relevant in these moments as ICE’s mandate no longer ended at the American borders. President Trump’s administration has leveraged diplomatic pressure, through tariff threats, and financial incentives, all done so other governments may accept deportees — this includes nationals of third countries with no ties to the receiving states. But how did these deportees end up in third world countries? Simply, their home country does not accept them, with several issues of how Trump’s administration did not contact the home government to arrange sufficient documental process. Rather, Trump’s administration flies these migrants on costly US-funded flights to third world countries. An empirical example during the shipment of Jamaicans to Eswatini, it was estimated to cost more than $181,000 per person. We also can see Panama accepted 300 foreign deportees after the US threatened to ‘retake’ the Panama Canal. El Salvador received $6 million in housing over 200 Venezuelan deportees. These however, are not immigration decisions, they are geopolitical transactions.

The foreign policy implications are observable and measurable. Latin America and the Caribbean account for over half of the US foreign-born population. Frankly, according to World Bank data, the money migrants send home represent a critical share of GDP. 25.7% for Honduras, 24% for El Salvador, and Guatemala with 19.1%. And the mass deportation disturbs these flows, adding economic stress to an already near poverty and high violence country, the very situation that drives migration in the first place.

These impacts exit economic scope, with a very concrete diplomatic fallout. Columbia’s President Gustavo Petro publicly rejected US deportation flights in early 2025, which triggered a tariff standoff before eventually — backing down under pressure. Brazil, as one of the most affected countries along with Mexico, both restricted US aircraft from their airspace, forcing a more expensive deportation route, where military flights reportedly cost over $850,000 each, compared to the $17,000 for civilian charters. This reflects a structural tension between an enforced and cooperative diplomacy. Latin American governments, sensing the shift and have begun diversifying their economic relationship to other state actors — China, India, and the EU, results in hedging against US transactionalism.

There’s this temptation to treat ICE purely as a domestic story, one about borders, state politics, nationalism, and American culture wars. It can, but it requires you to ignore all the evidence above. The US builds its post-1945 influence partly on normative foundations — the idea that American power was aligned with human rights, rule of law, and international cooperation. Then in late 2025 we have the US embassies in Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil promoting anti-immigrant messages on social media, targeting populations those same embassies are meant to engage diplomatically, the damage is once again concrete. Still, for the first time in over 50 years, the US experienced a negative net migration, thanks to Trump’s administration — allowing apprehensions at the border dropping to 87% between fall of 2024 and 2025, a highlight for success. But enforcement metrics are not strategy. They do not address the root causes of migration, it strained diplomatic relations, disturbed established communities, and a question on human rights the US once very much upheld. These enforcement are often without due process, legal counsel, or basic dignity.

From an International Relations perspective, the transformation of ICE into a foreign policy instrument shows how enforcement may be prioritized over diplomacy, and the performance of security over its actual production. It also produced a region moving away from Washington, a region in search of alternative cooperation, and human rights records that are increasingly difficult to defend on the world stage. A complex and deeply human problem cannot simply be treated as an existential threat, if the US is serious about migration, they need to treat it like with long-term policy.

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