The Illusion Of Targeted Reform

Two parties, one playbook: expanding control under the cover of opposition.

Jul 02, 2025

Targeted Enforcement: The Most Efficient Lie in Modern Governance

In the modern policy playbook, few tactics are so well known or so deceptive as the promise of targeted enforcement. Whether enforcement against tax evaders or the border is secured against criminal invasion, the narratives are clothed in moral simplicity. Remove the jargon, and the picture is not so noble.

Perhaps the most striking recent example is the 2025 proposed bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill: a sweeping immigration bill focused on the hiring of 10,000 new ICE agents and the agency's overall mission in the interests of national security. This piece employs the expansion of ICE as its focal point, and there’s a direct comparison drawn between this and the 2022 funding increase for the IRS within the Inflation Reduction Act.

They are not isolated incidents, but related manifestations of a pervasive institutional trend: power grabs masquerading as moral necessity. They follow a script, promise specific precision, avoid constraints, and deploy blunt tools that disproportionately affect the vulnerable.

The result? Massive domination lightly wrapped in morals, safety and equity. Public protection guarantees are commitments the moment responsibility is implied. All that is left is a bureaucracy empowered, not curbed, and a public increasingly dependent on mechanisms designed for compliance rather than justice.

The Expansion of ICE and the Revival of Domestic Militarization

Republicans in the House and President Trump introduced in 2025 what they referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill, a massive legislative bill to change immigration enforcement. The bill has passed the House and then the Senate, where it just cleared the procedural Vote-a-rama phase. It is now back in the House for review of the amendments added during that process.

Its crowning achievement? Funding 10,000 additional ICE agents, combined with huge boosts in detention spending, deportation quotas, and enforcement powers.

As always, the scheme is not offered as a power grab, but as an ethical imperative.

Supporters of the ICE expansion argue that

The frontier was in chaos and required attention at once.
Cartels and traffickers were taking advantage of weak enforcement.
New agents would be directed towards violent threats, not non-criminals or families.

This part of the bill was framed as restoring law and order, not fear. ICE needed resources to safeguard America from external threats. Opponents of the expansion of ICE argue:

The legislation provided no safeguards and left the door open for large-scale deportations.
ICE would target low-risk illegal aliens in sanctuary cities.
No oversight mechanisms were incorporated into the agent's growth.
Political rhetoric masked racialized policing and violations of due process.

The same individuals who had insisted on IRS caps remained quiet. Even the bill's supporters admit that it contains no enforceable limits. No requirements for prioritization, no review criteria, no judicial review, and no civil liberties safeguards. Appropriations are for expansion, not restraint.

A number of the bill's versions include no explicit oversight safeguards. Without a post Senate vote addition, it will have to be assumed the bill will pass with no internal responsibility.

If passed into law as drafted, ICE activities against non-violent offenders will escalate exponentially in sanctuary cities, budgets will swell, and the legal cap on immigration enforcement will be further compromised.

And then, hypocrisy is too obvious to ignore.

The IRS Expansion and the Promise of Fairness

In 2022, the Biden government introduced the Inflation Reduction Act, which included an $80 billion investment in the IRS. The purported goal? Close the “tax gap” by modernizing the agency and pursuing rich tax evaders.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Congress, and the media all vowed that the new money would not be used to audit families making less than $400,000. The political message was unmistakable: this was a scalpel, not a hammer.

Supporters of the IRS hike argued:

The corporations and wealthy were evading taxes on a large scale.
Modernization would enable the IRS to keep pace with sophisticated tax fraud.
Typical Americans would not experience additional audits.
The expansion would increase revenues without raising taxes.
This was an issue of equity and restoring trust in the tax process.

Opponents of the IRS expansion said:

The agency would resort to auditing the poor and middle class who had no recourse under the law.
Audit threshold commitments were not enforceable prior to legislative codification.
Correspondence audits would be scaled up, not high-level forensic audits.
The IRS has a history of politicized enforcement and abuse of power.
The real goal was the extension of federal power over the average citizen.

The supporters centered on the ethical argument of what the taxes could potentially fund. Democrats and liberal interest groups claimed this would finally get billionaires to pay their share. The CBO considered over $200 billion in additional revenue. The press echoed a reassuring message: the typical American had nothing to fear.

But when Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) submitted an amendment making the audit threshold of $400,000 mandatory, all Democrats and most Republicans in the Senate opposed it. The amendment failed 50-50.

That was when the mask slipped.

The protections weren’t neglected.

They were deliberately withheld.

And the following years vindicated critics:

By 2023, 63% of new audits were of taxpayers earning less than $200,000, and most were Earned Income Tax Credit recipients. They were working families, not billionaires.

The IRS did not use its new arsenal to target the powerful. It took the path of least resistance to continue auditing the vulnerable. No limit in the law meant no restraint in operation.

Power Increases Where Rules Are Indeterminate

In both the IRS and ICE expansions, lawmakers were provided with clear avenues of accountability. And in both instances, they opted out. The IRS expansion could have included audit safeguards. Due process safeguards could have been included in the ICE bill. Discretion was maintained instead. This is not failure. It is design.

The IRS will ramp up correspondence audits, low-resistance, high-return, low-cost enforcement. ICE will amp up visible sanctuary city sweeps—things that get headlines but do nothing to upset organized crime. The system always goes back to what is convenient and never what is right.

We've seen it before:

During the 1990s, the IRS was found to be auditing political enemies.
ICE's antecedent agency, INS, was accused of racial profiling.
Discretion not legally defined guarantees mission drift.

And we're supposed to believe that "this time will be different." It won't be. Not until the law mandates it in a meaningful way.

Weaponized Rhetoric, Selective Accountability

The rhetorical playbooks for the two expansions were almost identical:

Create a bad guy (illegal immigrant, tax evader)
Promise accuracy
Remove encoded protections
Increase unchecked power

The IRS critics were branded as pro-rich. The critics of ICE were branded as anti-security.

And that’s the catch:
The loudest champions of the IRS expansion now denounce the ICE expansion. The fiercest defenders of ICE are the same voices who once decried IRS overreach. It was never about principle, it was about preserving power when it suits their side. This isn’t mere hypocrisy; it’s the operating logic of bipartisan authoritarianism: maximize institutional flexibility, minimize public accountability.

Bureaucracy as a Self-Reinforcing Machine

Agencies such as the IRS and ICE do not have to break the law to cause harm. They operate in gray zones that lack accountability. IRS agents follow performance incentives while ICE agents follow quota systems.

The issue isn't simply malicious actors, it's system alignment. After expansion, bureaucracies:

Justify their own development
Call for increased investment
Frame restraint as risk

This is pursued by both sides. Both sides rely on the machine even as they posture against it.

The Real Target Is Consent

As power increases stealthily, under the guise of virtue, human beings are themselves party to their own oppression.

The One Big Beautiful bill is pending. The IRS expansion is already on the books, but the pattern is the same:

Promise accountability. Deny accountability. Harvest obedience.
We are told these reforms are targeted.
We are shown villains. We are offered rhetoric. But without those laws, we're no longer citizens under the law, we're data points on an enforcement matrix.

Bureaucratic issues are not systemic bugs. They are the system. Until the public insists on setting real limits, the weight will continue to fall not on the powerful, but on the least able to resist.