A citizen proposal, not a government program. ISAE does not exist yet and nobody can enroll today. Anyone offering “ISAE enrollment” or asking for money or personal information is running a scam. Aviso en español
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A citizen policy proposal · October 2026

From Enforcement to Investment

“You are not under arrest; you are under enrollment.”

ISAE (Immigration Support and Enforcement) is a proposal for people who are already here, pose no public-safety threat, and could be supervised in the community. It does not abolish enforcement. It re-sequences it: verified identity, regular reporting, court tracking and clear obligations for most people, and detention and removal for those who are dangerous, a flight risk, or under an executable final order.

See how it works Take action

Try the app

The clickable ISAE prototype (made-up sample data) is available on this site. Access is by invitation and requires a password.

Try the app (password required)

The numbers behind the proposal

$74.85Bmulti-year ICE funding appropriated by Congress in July 2025, including $45B for detention capacity[1]
70.6%of people in ICE detention on July 11, 2026 had no criminal conviction[2]
$187.48per day for an adult detention bed (FY2023 actual)[3]
$4.11per participant per day for technology-assisted supervision, ISAP IV (FY2023)[3]
$17,121DHS-stated average cost to arrest, detain and remove one person (2025)[4]
$96.7Bin taxes paid by undocumented immigrants in 2022; work authorization would add about $40.2B a year[5]

Why now

The United States is operating the largest interior immigration enforcement apparatus in its history. The question is no longer whether the government can spend more on removal. It is whether removal-first spending is the best use of each enforcement dollar and each officer hour.

The costs are not only fiscal. In one week of October 2026 (Oct. 5–11), a local nonprofit counted 75 people taken into custody in Santa Barbara County, 55 of them in Santa Maria. These are unofficial counts reported by the press; no official figures were available.[6] A Westside bakery closed for two mornings.[7] A 65-year-old U.S. citizen in Guadalupe told a reporter, “That was the last day I went to church.”[6]

Families now avoid schools, festivals, businesses, churches and food programs. That trust deficit is a public-safety problem, an economic problem and a moral one, and it is the strongest practical argument for a different model.

This is not happy talk. ISAE would be difficult and controversial. It would need a rigorous pilot, and in the end an act of Congress. But the relevant comparison is not ISAE versus a costless status quo. It is ISAE’s risks, which can be managed and measured, versus the certain costs of continuing on the current course.

Read the full problem statement →

Four pillars

1. Economic pivot

Stop paying $187 a day to detain people who are not a threat. Keep and grow the tax base removal destroys.

2. Compliance through incentive

The five-year Green Path rewards hearings attended, a clean record, English, civics and taxes filed.

3. De-escalation triage

Green, yellow, red: a published decision aid. An officer, not an algorithm, makes every decision.

4. Force multiplier

Reminders, check-ins and lessons are automated, so officer time goes to the highest-risk cases.

What ISAE asks for

  1. A pilot now, inside current law: three to five field offices, independent evaluation and pre-registered public metrics.
  2. Legislation if the evidence holds: Congress creates ISAE as a successor agency to ICE, with serious-crime enforcement as a smaller, separately accountable unit.
  3. An earned, conditional path to legal status, decided by Congress, never by executive fiat.

The path from pilot to successor agency Read the hard questions