Credit: Getty Images.

A small animal steps onto the ice and vanishes. That image, from Sophie Cabot Black’s haunting poem “Ice,” has stayed with me for weeks. It captures the quiet terror of sudden disappearance — the sense that something (or someone) is there, and then simply gone.

In the United States today, that terror is no longer metaphor. People are vanishing from our communities — students, neighbors, friends — taken not by nature but by force, by ICE: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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Under the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” Republicans intend to spend $75 billion in new funding for ICE over the next four years. The plan includes $45 billion to expand detention centers, raising capacity from 30,000 to over 100,000 beds, and $30 billion to hire 10,000 new agents. ICE would become the largest arresting force in the federal system, with more operational power and fewer constraints than even the........

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