> In the past week alone, ICE boxed in a Woodbury real estate agent recording their movements from his car, slammed him to the ground and detained him at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling for 10 hours. A 51-year-old teacher patrolling the Nokomis East community told the Star Tribune she was run off the road into a snowbank by ICE for laying on her horn. Officers shattered the car window of a woman attempting to drive past a raid in south Minneapolis to get to a doctor’s appointment nearby, then carried her through the street. Feds pushed an unidentified motorist through a red light into a busy intersection, reportedly fired projectiles at a pedestrian walking “too slowly” in a crosswalk and shoved Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne while he was observing their actions from a public sidewalk.
You can read the full thing here: https://www.startribune.com/have-yall-not-learned-federal-ag...
Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots? How are you not fighting back with more than whistles and blocking them in cars? Is there more stuff actually happening on the ground, but there simply isn't any videos of it, or are people really this passive in the land of the free?
Are people inside the country not getting the same news we're getting on the outside? Are you not witnessing your government carrying out extra-judicial murders and then being protected by that same government? I'm really lost trying to understand how the average person (like you reading this) isn't out on the streets trying to defend what I thought your country was all about.
There is the imminent threat of mass death, and no one here is under any illusions about it.
Every ICE agent is armed, and most have ready access to automatic weapons. These are not well-trained members of an elite organization with a storied, patriotic culture. ICE is a personalist paramilitary organization, and the president has indicated that these ICE agents are immune from consequences, even if they kill people. These are people who volunteered knowing they were going to go into American cities and do violence to people they perceive as their political enemies.
Most of these agents are inexperienced, jittery, poorly trained new recruits away from home. They aren't locals. Their nexus of power and governance isn't local. These are not our community members, they aren't from here, they don't know us or care about us, so they do not empathize with us.
In addition to this, the American citizenry is shockingly well armed. Because everyone involved is so well armed, everybody is slightly touchy about this descending into rioting, because there is a very short path from light rioting to what would essentially amount to civil war. The costs of such any such violence will overwhelmingly be borne by the innocent people who live here, and we know it.
So, people are trying to strike a balance of making sure these people know they aren't welcome here while trying to prevent the situation from spiraling into one in which some terrified agent mag-dumps a crowd of protestors and causes a chain reaction that results in truly catastrophic mass death.
Wish us luck, we're trying.
Say all you want about how any protest, no matter how peaceful will be vilified (it will) or about how the entire foundation is built on lies (it is), but we still have some real elections coming up, and the imagery of ICE brutalizing someone who's clearly not an immigrant, not violent, not obstructing is much more rhetorically effective than that of armed clashes between government and non-governmental forces.
And as you said, many of us are still convinced that this can be solved at least partially rhetorically and electorally.
It's the social media evolution of non-violent confrontation, with the similar goal of making it impossible for any visual image or recording of a confrontation to seem anything other than ridiculous to the average viewer and laying bare the "violence inherent in the system" (as it were).
Unless the president declares a permanent temporary state of emergency for whatever reason that would prevent such elections.
BEFORE this began we had 7 million people protesting simultaneously nationwide—they are "out on the street". Minneapolis has organized hundreds into rapid response teams against ICE. The killings get more news than the protests, particularly as much of the media has been bought up by republican owners.
In Philadelphia, residents are being filmed patrolling with automatic weapons in advance of ICE supposedly heading there next. Read what @asa400, another local like myself, is saying in another comment to parent.
Many locals on social media are cheering on the shootings. America is incredibly polarized right now. It's not like all the public is against the government. Nearly half of those most likely to vote in past elections support this. “It wasn’t Hitler or Himmler who abducted me, beat me, and shot my family. It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor, who were given a uniform....” —Karl Stojka, Auschwitz survivor EDIT: added "(reportedly)" and rearranged sentence
We don't know if the shovel thing is true, video has emerged that doesn't show the shooting but does show the victim's family's 911 call in which they claim the agent shot through the door at the fleeing victim.
This is what terrified me: Not that the ICE officer shot the woman in the car. But what happened afterwards. That he muttered "fucking bitch" after shooting her, that he walked nonchalantly after shooting a person, and everybody was recording him. This person goes to his car and drives just like that ...
Good luck. Is there anything those that aren't living in ones of these towns can do to help in impactful ways?
I think it's important to realize how divided the U.S. is right now. Half the country is in favor of what ICE is doing in some form or another. Some people on the right are denouncing the _way_ ICE is accomplishing this. But they are far from outraged.
The other half of the country is as dumbfounded/shocked as the rest of the world.
This isn't like the French revolution where a majority of the country was suffering and rose up against the few.
This is very nearly 50% of the country wants to make the other 50% squirm.
It cannot be understated the role that Fox News has played to get us to this level of division.
The channel "The Necessary Conversation" has some good examples of just how radicalized some American's have gotten. It's 2 kids interviewing their MAGA parents. I think it's not uncommon for American's to know people like the parents in this video.
I get that we often assume that the non-voting population is as evenly split in their support as those who voted during the election. But I think that is going to be wildly off the mark as well. Why? current presidential approval ratings are net -15%, and 2025 elections showed avg 15% swing in district that he won in 2024. His biggest support %s are from old people, and lowest among young voters.
My prediction is that we will see political ads playing non-stop showing ICE brutalizing main street America, and showing how tariff driven inflation is destroying paychecks. The mid-terms will be a dramatic correction which is why you are seeing the ground work to call everything illegitimate or rigged, and attack our established means of voting.
I don't think that folks are braodly supportive of ICE here, though I think that a) the folks who do support it are loud and b) most of the folks who don't support it have fairly reformist politics and are opposed, for instance, to us protesting while open-carrying.
For the record, I am highly worried that open-carrying by the counter-ICE folks at these events will be the next escalation- I carry a stop-the-bleed kit (and did some formal training). We are more worried about getting shot by counter protestors at this point.
Yeah, it's been a sharp shift, as someone who've watched/read Fox News (and other news of course) for decades out of the US. Fox News always been a bit strange with it's vitriol, but at one point, I can't remember if it was around the middle of Obama's second term, or later, but it took a really sharp turn further into emotional reporting and partisanship. Again, Fox always been a bit special, and other news channels also did similar turns further into their sides, but I can remember seeing the change as it was happening.
There is another documentary I quite liked in similar vein but on an individual level, called "Dear Kelly", that follows a far-right conspiracy theorist and tries to give some understanding into Kelly's struggles and radicalization. Released independently and can be found here: https://www.dearkellyfilm.com/
The crime by Fox News is not that they presented a viewpoint, but that they did so at scale, in a knowingly disingenuous manner, to derive financial benefit, for decades.
The other children are also cowards for not taking the legal fight over the inheritance of Fox equity to the limit.
A lot of people here _enjoy_ the authoritarianism, judging by the votes, the voter turnout, and the private discussions I've had with my neighbors. They believe this is good for the country and that there'll be more opportunities for their kids.
A lot of other people are holding out for the midterm elections, to see if the will of the majority shifts, because otherwise its risks open civil war. And maybe just a touch of American exceptionalism—this can't actually be happening here, it'll all blow over—and distrust in the story that the media is feeding them is accurate.
And some are just fatalistic, this isn't really a surprising turn of events. America has been creeping toward this for more than a few decades, since Regan at the very least.
That's the thing, they do, and have in the past too. Some might even recall riots ~70 years ago that kind of spiraled out of control and led to a civil war.
Looking at what's happening in Iran as we speak might be a good idea as well, where they've had enough, know that there is a good chance of their regime literally executing them on the spot, yet they're brave enough to continue fighting, because they realize what's at stake, and have run out of other options.
> The ICE officers are armed and absolutely will use their weapons if given half a chance to
So this was the whole point with the 2nd amendment right, that when/if the government repress you in that way, you have weapons to fight back? Or am I misunderstanding what that part is/was about?
I'd take issue with that, because once it becomes an armed conflict then the full power of the state military will be deployed.
And modern nation-states of mid-size or above all have militaries than can crush any civilian armed resistance, simply because of the lethality and capability gap between civilian and military weapons.
The only winning move for a populace, then, is to try and keep resistance sub-armed conflict (and avoid being bated into armed resistance).
Democracy, authoritarianism are all abstract and vague concepts
And unfortunately that probably won't change until ICE kills more of them and makes it their problem.
It absolutely is at stake, they just haven’t realized it yet. (Insert obligatory “first they came for” quote.)
The point of the second amendment was, in no small part, so that the central government wouldn't deny the states the means to commit genocide against the indigenous population on their own, because the states didn't trust he central government to be sufficiently enthusiastic about it. That was the major security concern alluded to by the “necessary to the security of a free state” bit.
They are neither a reliable summary of the motivations for the provisions they support nor any kind of argument for the provisions in the Bill of Rights.
What kind of revisionist history is this?
The feds were telling the states "screw off, we do the negotiating" before the ink was even dry on that. Steamrolling the natives was never really a seriously contested job or a point of political contention, the feds were always gonna be the ones to do it.
Mass resistance movements tend to come at unpredictable moments. The killing or particularly well documented crime of a government, for example. Something acute will trigger it, like George Floyd or Renee Good (whose murder triggered widespread outrage, protests, and despite the bots on Twitter, some shift in the view on ICE from the middle and right).
If, for example, a brigade of soldiers or officers opened live fire on protesters, I think the country would shut down.
Another point, as others have mentioned: It's actually the massive amount of armament on both side of the equation that keeps people from taking the next step. The citizens of Minneapolis could probably take out a hundred ICE agents a day, but now we're in a civil war because the next steps are insurrection act, hundreds of people dead in days, potential of the MN state guard being activated to fight against national forces, and it's already three steps ahead of whatever would happen in Spain.
edit: There are some people already exercising their rights loudly. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1qdnmh...
ICE goons can shoot people because in America, law enforcement officers shooting citizens is thoroughly normalized. It's normalized because law enforcement officers getting shot is thoroughly normalized. It's normalized because the nation decided every village idiot can have a gun and the government can do nothing about it.
But then I still hear people say that this is what the 2nd amendment is for... Meanwhile, to make sure they have the heavier weapons, law enforcement goes absolutely bananas on what they carry.
The second amendment was written in a time when a firearm was a musket.
If it's a hand-carried firearm of any kind (including crew-served weapons like the M249, M240B, M60), it's not a "heavy weapon."
> The second amendment was written in a time when a firearm was a musket.
At the time the Second Amendment was written, there were entire private navies with actual cannons far more destructive than any man-portable firearm available today. No background checks on those ships or cannons, either, btw.
There is also the Cookson repeater available in the late 1600s. And in 1756 was advertised for sale in the Boston Gazette.
Multiple founding fathers, including George Washington, were also offered purchase of repeating firearms, some for use in the military, some for personal usage. But of course this is still before interchangeable parts so production is of course still expensive and repairs must be done be a highly skilled gunsmith and not just some apprentice blacksmith.
Second amendment was written for children in schools.
My counter-hypothesis is that America has never really known authoritarianism, religious wars, etc., so Americans are, on average, more supportive of Authority.
As a person who has been involved with an riot in a small town, I think that, in the deep unconscious of most folks in the US, is something structure:
"well, there wasn't violence in the 19th and early 20th and mid 20th and late 20thC century... well okay, there was violence but they put folks who were resisting into mass graves or incarceration and everyone was better off for it".
That is, consider that the obverse of your claim might be true:
the violence committed by the US has been so totalizing that it's victims have never even counted as victims and that holocaust so complete that it only exists in the subconscious of white US citizens.
I find that idea to be a very easy way to understand why white folks are so passive and pro-authority.
Funny, because the racist authoritarians most people point to as the canonical example were themselves directly inspired by the US example. I think a more realistic reason is that this particular brand of race-heirarchy-based authoritarianism that mostly only affects white folks if they are seen as challenging what it does to everyone else has been normalized in the US since before the founding, varying only in intensity and the degree to which its intent is overly stated.
TL;DR: https://x.com/i/status/1131996074011451392
This is NOT what America is about. America is about opens history book
uh oh
Frantically starts flipping though pages
uh oh. oh no. no no no. uh oh
Have a good day!
I didn't say the American and European experiences with authoritarianism were the same, or even similar, I said the American experience with a very specific orientation of authoritarianism, with a specific focus, is extremely deep and pervasive, and that that has explanatory power on the relatively mild reaction of the American public to a change in the intensity and overtness of that particular flavor of authoritarianism.
This is, in fact, very different from the European experience.
Population density and the gigantic geographic distance make these kinds of events feel "remote" even if they are happening in our same state.
It's a 17 hour drive from Atlanta, Georgia to Minneapolis for example.
On top of that, a lot of Americans are just barely surviving financially, so they are in full bunker mode just making rent.
It's a scary time to rebel.
It isn't though, Google Maps estimate going West>East coast in the US to take 44 hours (pure driving without stops), and puts going from the South of Spain to the North of Sweden to take 50 hours, more or less the same.
Then Europe is a bunch of countries, most of them speaking different languages, with way more difference in culture than the states of the US. I'm not sure it matters though, it really isn't relevant, but probably the wrong thing to bring up regardless, when the reality looks the opposite than you seem to think.
FWIW, when the (last) civil war in Spain happened, you had volunteer civilians coming from Sweden (among other countries) to defend their ideals, even if it wasn't their fight, completely different culture and language. But if you care about something bigger than yourself, then you act.
"My country is large" isn't an excuse to not stand up against tyranny, not sure in what world it would be.
The whole "just barely surviving financially" sucks though, especially considering the poor labor movements and almost non-existing union support, and poor grassroot organization. It always felt weird and artificially suppressed, but without those thing, it certainly seems easier to take over an entire country. Hope others learned their lessons with this.
There's certainly more cultural similarity across the US, but that doesn't mean there isn't a sense of emotional and geographic distance. Remember that the typical riot participant is not a political theorist who has some deep theory of how discharging their duty will enact change, just an average guy who's mad as hell about what's happening and not going to take it anymore.
That would be like driving from Key West to Prudhoe Bay which looks to be 91 hours.
Sorry the US is big spread out place, but I also agree it's not really an excuse for what's happening.
Haha, yeah, at least I got a laugh from it, thank you :) A fair comparison then I guess would be from Canary Islands to Svalbard, if we're aiming to make it as far as possible to make some imaginary point no one cares about :)
- The American political system has been very successful in telling its people that the only acceptable way to show discontent and enact change is by voting on elections.
- Lots of people are okay with it because it can only happen to the "bad guys", and why would it ever happen to them since they're the "good guys"... right?
Has it? Because I recall a bunch of people gathering in the wrong building on Jan 6
the country is very low-density, there's no one obvious point to protest (there was Occupy Wall Street... and then the Seattle TAZ and .... that's it, oh and the Capitol January 6th), strikes and unions are legally neutered, it's just not the American way anymore
the country has a lot of experience "managing" internal unpleasantry, see the time leading up to the civil war, and then the reconstruction, and then there was a lull as the innovation in racism led to legalized economic racism (the usual walking while black "crimes", vagrancy laws, etc), and then the civil rights era, with the riots, and since then (and as always) police brutality is used as a substitute to training and funding
The political class is very well insulated from the popular will in this country, and I fear we may be nearing the boiling point.
The truth is the land of the free has always been quite conservative. Which frankly, is true of most societies. In many ways that's what a society is.
Worse still, ICE stomping people out in the street is what freedom means to a vast swath of Americans. The rest are scared and leaderless and let down by an opposition that betrays their trust at every turn.
And yes Europeans keep telling Americans how to protest, but really they are little better. "Far right" candidates are already projecting big wins in the UK today. To say nothing of the victories far right parties have already secured in Europe. Spain is more familiar with blatant facisim and totalitarianism than Americans are. So idk... imo Europeans really pat themselves on the back too much... what would you do?
Provoking a riot is of questionable value anyway when he won a pretty convincing national victory at the polls just a year ago... no one has any answers as far as I can see, only empty expressions of anger... protest harder means what? I think a better start would be a coherent, defensible list of demands than anyone from a governor to a street activist can convey intelligently. Then you can try to enforce it.
But ultimately you can't muster more force than the state. If that is your only suggestion then it's a fruitless one.
Because it’s cold? Here in Minnesota it’s 17F / -7C. Factoring in the wind chill it feels like 7F / -14C.
There are other reasons too of course (geography, lack of urban density, distrust of news, apathy, etc etc) but I think the weather is a definite factor right now.
A political solution will likely come of this, as everyone with a brain knows that the preconditions for all this shit are something that need to be prevented in the future.
Edit. To be clear, I'm talking about the people who are actually physically involved here.
As well as going door-to-door and forcing entry without a warrant, besieging Spanish language immersion schools, and other dragnet horrors. Meanwhile, official DHS social media accounts are posting literal Stormfront ethnic cleansing memes. I’m not sure how anyone but the most ardent ethnonationalists can be OK with this. Even if you think all undocumented immigrants should be deported, "hunt them down like dogs and to hell with everyone else" is beastial.
BEFORE this began we had 7 million people protesting simultaneously nationwide—they are "out on the street" as you put it. With protests around the country every day. Minneapolis has organized hundreds into rapid response teams against ICE. The killings get more news than the protests, particularly as much of the media has been bought up by republican owners. You seem to be missing the news, and saying it does not exist.
In Philadelphia, residents are being filmed patrolling with automatic weapons in advance of ICE supposedly heading there next. Read what @asa400, another local like myself, is saying in another comment to parent.
Many locals on social media are cheering on the shootings. America is incredibly polarized right now. It's not like all the public is against the government. Nearly half of those most likely to vote in past elections support this.
Peaceful protest is the key. Riots, violence, and fighting are not peaceful and only play into the administration's aims.
When Americans resist and protest peacefully, as they have been in the largest numbers ever in the country's history, it exposes the brutality and baseness of those commiting the heinous acts.
Through such peaceful protest as we see, America will overcome this.
The big question is, what next? How to hold people accountable, fairly, while rebuilding the system and rebuilding trust?
Who are you gonna report this brutality to, when the judicial arm of the government is just following the directions of the administration? How do you hold people accountable, when the system to hold anyone accountable is being undermined?
A riot is exactly what they want.
This is all about getting locals upset enough to break things, so the administration can justify sending in the military.
Rioting just gives them what they want.
This is a tried-and-true tactic employed by thugs throughout history.
I would also say that Trump and his cronies would absolutely love if this boils over into a violent riot. That would give them permission to double down.
But that pushback can look different. Personally, I think that needs to be a massive general strike across every major city.
Yes, this tends to be really effective, especially when you're fighting the upper-class, which is more or less what's happening here as far as I can tell.
Get all the cleaners, cooks, hotel workers and other "servants" to strike, pool up to fund a salary-light for them while they strike, and you'll see changes quickly as the upper-class can no longer enjoy their status.
You're not fighting the upper class. It's the blue collar workers and the people who hire them who support ICE and strict immigration.
You are fighting the upper-class, while some of the working-class people are mislead to fight on the other side. Slowly but surely they'll realize where to go, but often the promises of wealth and what not gets to strong for the individuals to at least try to move up.
Claiming that government using violence to enforce the law and function of the government is some redline seems a bit silly and incompatible with any approach to government outside anarchism.
If the government repeatedly uses violence outside of the bounds of the Constitution and checks and balances have failed to correct that behavior then that is a real crossing of a redline based on the principles outlined in our founding documents.
2) Even setting that aside, what current actions violate the Constitution?
The First Amendment has seen time, place, and manner restrictions, particularly when it crosses the line into rioting or obstructing government operations.
The Fourth has allowed for brief questioning, reasonable suspicion, and the recent Vasquez Perdomo emergency order held that these recent stops are constitutional - so even your “checks and balances” idea is working against you, as multiple branches of government are in concurrence here.
On “what actions violate the Constitution”: you’re also overstating what’s been “held.” An emergency order/stay is not a merits ruling that a policy is constitutional; it’s often just “this can proceed for now while litigation continues.” And the fact that multiple branches haven’t stopped something yet doesn’t mean checks and balances are “working”, it can just mean they’re failing in slow motion, which is exactly the scenario the founders warned about.
As for the specific amendments: time/place/manner doesn’t cover suppressing disfavored speech under pretext, and reasonable suspicion can’t be race/ethnicity-by-proxy or broad dragnet logic. If you want to argue the recent ICE-related tactics are clearly constitutional, cite the exact language you’re relying on and I’ll read it. But “emergency order exists” does not equal “constitutional on the merits.”
Sure, it does now, but your original statement was “You should read more of the thoughts of America’s founding fathers”. But, do remember the founding fathers didn’t seem very concerned about the early government’s treatment or protections of many groups of people. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have needed: The Bill of Rights Amendments 13,14,15, and 19 The civil rights act Title 9, etc
>Non-citizens (documented or not) still have due process protections, and law enforcement still has to stay inside Fourth Amendment limits.
Sure, and those protections aren’t being violated, as evidenced by the Supreme Court holding that doesn’t even find enough risk to the plaintiffs to temporarily pause these enforcement actions. Just like they also agreed that TPS could be ended, parole could be ended, 3rd country deportations were allowed, etc.
At a certain point, when Congress doesn’t care to legislate against it, the Supreme Court via rulings/shadow docket allows it to continue, and the President authorizes it, the action is legitimate.
You can not like it, and you’re welcome to vote against it in the midterms and in 2028, but that doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
Just as emergency order doesn’t equal constitutional, complaints about enforcement of existing laws does not equal unconstitutional.
On (1) vs (2): yes, the founding generation tolerated massive injustice. That doesn’t refute the point I was making. The Enlightenment idea they leaned on is that rights pre-exist government and government power is delegated and limited. The later amendments you list aren’t a rebuttal to that framework, they’re the country painfully applying it more consistently over time via the mechanisms the Constitution itself provides.
On the Court point: “SCOTUS didn’t temporarily pause X” does not equal “no constitutional violation.” Emergency stays/injunctions turn on things like posture, standing, likelihood of success, irreparable harm, balance of equities, and deference; not a full merits finding that the challenged conduct is constitutional. “Shadow docket lets it continue” is not the same as “the Court blessed it.”
And the biggest issue is your last paragraph: legitimate does not equal constitutional.
Congress failing to act, the President authorizing something, and courts not immediately stopping it may show the government has the power to do it right now; it does not show the action is within constitutional limits. If that were the test, then any coordinated abuse across branches would become “legitimate by definition,” which is exactly what checks and balances are meant to prevent.
If you want to argue “these protections aren’t being violated,” then argue the specifics: what’s the standard being used for stops, entries, detentions, and removals, and how is it being applied? “It’s enforcement” is not a constitutional analysis.
I care about people but I don't give a fuck about my country. It's just a place to live. If it gets too bad I'll move my family elsewhere.
Also, this whole checks and balances thing we learned about in school will surely kick in sometime soon...
Exactly, so why not go out on the streets and actually defend those things then? Currently your (presumed) inaction will cause those to be harmed, you're not "saving those" by saying and doing nothing, you're effectively giving them away if you don't actively protect them.
Assuming OP isn’t an illegal alien or attempting to impede federal law enforcement, they’re fine.
Assuming his job isn’t reliant on employing or generating revenue from illegal aliens, also fine.
Way of life: America had immigration laws since 1875 - his great great grandparents probably lived under more onerous immigration regulation (Chinese Exclusion Act, etc) than modern Americans and immigrants live with. Also fine.
As for citizens being detained, interfering with and obstructing a law enforcement operation will get you detained, whether it’s ICE, FBI, or your local cop on a traffic stop.
Your list of crimes is just as prevalent in white people. Statistically immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born citizens. Undocumented immigrants commit even fewer violent crimes [1]. So if we're doing house to house searches for criminals we should start with citizens.
0 - https://www.fox9.com/news/minneapolis-family-demands-judicia...
1 - https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...
> Gibson is a 38-year-old Liberian citizen, who has a final immigration removal order dating back to 2009.
> Statistically immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born citizens
Legal ones, yes - they have a lot to lose. Can you please cite any study positing the same for illegal immigrants?
Does not matter one bit. Law enforcement may not break down doors without a warrant except in limited cases. This was not one of them. They violated the constitution and our way of life.
> Legal ones...
I'm guessing you didn't read the cite. It clearly shows that undocumented immigrants commit significantly less crime. Once you read it I'd be interested to know if it changes your opinion at all.
For the less-than-half who have “only” committed civil immigration violations, the point still remains that they are here illegally and are subject to civil immigration proceedings.
The issue is that you can’t randomly break down citizen’s doors without a warrant. Minnesota is only targeted because some rightwing TikTok asshole decided to """investigate""" daycare fraud and they wouldn’t let a creepy rando into their facilities for some reason.
"As for citizens being detained, interfering with and obstructing a law enforcement operation will get you detained, whether it’s ICE, FBI, or your local cop on a traffic stop."
Who were these guys obstructing? Why were they treated like criminals? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/ice-immigrat...
What crime did these tear-gassed children commit? https://news.sky.com/video/fathers-six-children-in-hospital-...
If you don't think authoritarianism or fascism actually has a way of harming those things, then no, I guess not.
I think for most people who had to learn about these things in school growing up, for like 7 years or something, together with grandparents who experienced these things for themselves, it's pretty clear what's happening, but without actually having that perspective, I could understand it feels like "What is everyone so upset about? Doesn't seem so bad".
The US has had and enforced immigration laws for decades, with Obama alone deporting 3 million people.
What aspect of Trump doing it is uniquely fascist/authoritarian?
Short non-extensive list:
Has enforcement been explicitly prioritized based on political control of areas? Yes, senior directives and public statements emphasized prioritizing deportations in Democratic-led cities.
Suppression of lawful civic activity? Yes, crowd-control force was repeatedly used against protesters, media, and observers near ICE facilities.
Have officials labeled resistance or disputed encounters as "terrorism"? Yes, senior DHS leadership publicly used "domestic terrorism" language in contested use-of-force cases.
Are there credible reports of physical or sexual abuse? Yes, civil-rights groups report detailed allegations at detention facilities
Are raids conducted with armored vehicles, masks, and heavily armed teams as standard practice? Yes, reporting documents armored vehicles, masked agents, and surge-style operations.
Have internal watchdogs or ombuds offices been dismantled or defanged? Yes, DHS eliminated or reduced multiple civil-rights and detention-oversight offices.
Has ICE expanded use of spyware, location tracking, or similar tools? Yes, contracts for advanced spyware and surveillance capabilities were activated and expanded.
Is enforcement content coordinated to generate viral political narratives? Yes, internal messages show coordination to amplify arrests and raids for public impact.
Is ICE currently exhibiting multiple indicators of a political-police / coercive-repression trajectory? Yes, politicized targeting, coercive force, anonymity, weakened oversight, surveillance expansion, political messaging.
Would you like me to go on? I have a couple of more, but I don't want to spam.
Do Americans not learn about fascism and authoritarianism in school when you grow up? Together with what to watch out for and more? Because it seems really obvious for us who did have that upbringing.
Like, in historical names and dates, sure.
In terms of process, signs, and systemic issues? Not really, even before the recent push in many parts of the country to make the curriculum even more friendly to, particularly, white nationalist authoritarianism, historical and more current.
Florida, Texas, and others use local law enforcement to enforce immigration detainers and cooperate with federal enforcement. Makes sense to go where the problems are.
>Suppression of lawful civic activity? Yes, crowd-control force was repeatedly used against protesters, media, and observers near ICE facilities.
Crowd control is used against riots and unlawful assemblies frequently: see G8 summits, Seattle May Day, Ferguson, and any time a sports ball team loses a contentious game in LA.
>Have officials labeled resistance or disputed encounters as "terrorism"? Yes, senior DHS leadership publicly used "domestic terrorism" language in contested use-of-force cases.
And? Homeland calling an assault on an officer terrorism is hardly surprising, and is still less weird than the idea that using the wrong pronouns is a hate crime.
> Are raids conducted with armored vehicles, masks, and heavily armed teams as standard practice? Yes, reporting documents armored vehicles, masked agents, and surge-style operations.
So when Clinton’s BP raided Elian Gonzalez, it was fine because it wasn’t Trump? Remember, the question was “what is Trump doing that is unique”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jim_Goldman_and_Elian_Gon...
> Has ICE expanded use of spyware, location tracking, or similar tools? Yes, contracts for advanced spyware and surveillance capabilities were activated and expanded.
Domestic spying by the federal government has been a thing for 100 years. Again, we’re talking unique.
> Is enforcement content coordinated to generate viral political narratives? Yes, internal messages show coordination to amplify arrests and raids for public impact.
Every task force, raid, and “crackdown” by law enforcement, even down to an organized enforcement against DUI, is intended to create that perception.
Do non-Americans not learn that the federal government has engaged in this conduct for 100 years?
We’ve enforce immigration laws, policed our populace, and had to balance 1st/4th amendment rights against the interest of a functioning state for a long time.
>We’ve enforce immigration laws, policed our populace, and had to balance 1st/4th amendment rights against the interest of a functioning state for a long time. Nothing on this scale since the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII. And even that did not involve (AFAIK) the mass disappearances and torture of thousands of people.
Obama removed more people than Trump. Clinton removed and returned more people than any president. Crazy the world didn’t end in the 90s or 2010s, huh?
There was a recent story that described cramped jail cells full of dozens of wailing and weeping detainees while ICE agents nearby were laughing. We’re seeing dehumanization happen here at an alarming pace. And already, the administration seemed to relish sending noncriminal migrants to foreign torture/rape camps for essentially a life sentence. The components are all there for a repeat of the recent past. Will they coalesce? What’s going to stop them?
Remember: most Nazis were not gleeful, cackling sadists. They were normal-ass bureaucrats who'd been conditioned to see their victims as non-human.
Protesting does do something though, the very least showing other people a direction to go in, to at least show something. It's hard to argue it does nothing, because images and videos do end up on social media and the news, and you really need the rest of the population on your side, if you actually want to change stuff.
You know what actually doesn't do a damn thing? Not doing a damn thing. Literally anything is better than nothing, just showing support is better than nothing. Talking about it is better than nothing.
That's fair. And I'm talking about it right now and everywhere else I can in safe ways.
As far as protesting goes, I agree with you. It is better than nothing. It does help show people they're not alone. But as I said mentioned, this isn't happening where I live. It would literally take me days to travel to Milwaukee or another hotbed. Some people are stronger than me and take time off and make other sacrifices to attend rallies, and I admire those people, but it's not feasible for me. Or I suppose a more truthful way of saying it is it's not worth it for me because of the sacrifices I'd have to make just for the chance of getting hurt or being added to a list.
> Or I suppose a more truthful way of saying it is it's not worth it for me because of the sacrifices I'd have to make just for the chance of getting hurt or being added to a list.
It's really sad to hear that the chilling effect is working so effectively. I of course understand why you make the choice you make, that's not strange, but that they managed to turn your society into this is nothing but sad to hear.
going to small protests has done a lot of good for my ability to regulate. Being involved with a cadre of street medics has made me feel a little less crazy.
It's nice to get off line and into the streets- the reasons are terrifying but it feels better to be with my friends in the road than to be at home fretting about stuff and writing dumb HN responses :D
But I'd say that usually when there are large issues impacting large parts of the population, then you can be pretty sure that there will be country-wide protests against it, many times with smaller violent elements, because people here make their opinions and feelings known.
They're talking about starting wars with the rest of the occidental world. There won't be a elsewhere where you'll be welcome.
Whether you believe the economic human factory farm that is the US is worth saving or preserving will be a function of your lived experience and mental model. "What are you optimizing for?"
Yeah we have some perks here. But they're not as rare as our propaganda would have us believe and we sure do pay for them in various ways.
Call it selfish if you want (hell, I'd even agree with you) but my priority is my family and my life. This idea that I have to care about "my country" is patriotic BS pounded into us to make it more likely to join the army.
1. Americans on the ground are clearly feeling the effects of illegal immigration. As an example: a an African American janitor in our kids' school voted republican in 2024 for the first time in his life, because the park in his Brooklyn neighborhood has become a shanty town and he can't work out there. In that election we've seen nearly every demographic move more republican than before, and I think this is the key issue for them.
2. In that context, when ICE does something, even when we don't like it, people can understand it in the context of a larger problem they/we want solved. When you perceive "passivity" - it's because you come in from a perspective of not wanting the underlying problem solved which is fine, but it's different for people who like "what" is happening even if not "how" it's happening.
3. There are plenty of people protesting and violently rioting if that's what they feel like.
ICE are terrorizing a city and its residents no matter what their immigration status is. Even someone who strongly wishes to curb illegal immigration should have a problem with that.
There's an interesting other angle that I heard about "terrorizing a city" type thing -- there are many million illegal immigrants in the US who entered in just the last few years, when the prior admin did not attempt to limit. The size of the problem basically leaves no "nice" solutions that are perfectly palatable to everyone. Maybe like "nobody wants to hear about an amputation" but unfortunately some situations are bad enough that you have to.
Why not? What is it about the presence of illegal immigrants in a place that makes terrorizing the entire population a good tradeoff? The people who live alongside these immigrants are the ones out on the street protesting so it seems to me they don't consider it a price worth paying.
Exactly. If people you hate are getting in a fight you're staying right there on the porch and that's how a lot of the country feels right now.
Okay, first off, I am just very confused by this sentence. How is the "shanty town" preventing him from working? Does he work from his home in Brooklyn? Is the school located in the park? Does he want to work in the park but is force to work at the school? I know this isn't the most important part, but I haven't been able to parse the story. Edit: others explained that this is "work out" there, and not related to being a janitor. Thanks. I feel the rest still stands.
Further, I don't understand how what is happening is supposed to solve the "underlying issue". How does 3000 federal agents breaking windows and shoving people in Minneapolis help a Brooklyn community poor enough to become a shanty town? It would be like if I, in my job, had an backend outage on our website, and I went to the design team and began berating them while I fixed a couple UI issues. Sure, I might solve some real problems, and it could feel good in some cathartic way (especially if I've had unanswered complaints for years). But I wouldn't call it "fixing the underlying issues".
I believe it is most likely that the people who still support this style of enforcement have been hurt much like you, some acutely but many just slowly over time, and have bought into the idea that some "other" is at fault. And they want to see that "other" dealt with in some way, any way. Even if it means people get hurt, because they themselves have been hurt. So why not the "other"?
But I don't believe a shanty town in the most populous city what is supposed to be the richest and most prosperous country on Earth is caused by the poorest few percent of people living here. I don't think an illegal immigrant in Minneapolis is at fault, even if they have a "criminal background" (insidious phrasing that inflates numbers by lumping in people who may have paid their debt to society). I don't want to see people hurt.
> Okay, first off, I am just very confused by this sentence. How is the "shanty town" preventing him from working? Does he work from his home in Brooklyn? Is the school located in the park? Does he want to work in the park but is force to work at the school? I know this isn't the most important part, but I haven't been able to parse the story.
So just to clarify, GP said he was being prevented from _working out_, i.e. exercising.
You ever visited Brooklyn back when it was actually a tough place?
The black dude I am referring to was complaining about illegals permanently camping out in his neighborhood park.
Where is this assumption coming from? Of course I don't want people to break the laws of the country or immigrate illegally, I never argued for that either.
What I don't understand, if Obama managed to throw out more illegals than Trump did for the same duration of time, yet with a lot less chaos and bloodshed, and you truly want less illegal immigrants, should you favor a more peaceful and efficient process? Instead of a more violent and less efficient process?
The flow of illegal aliens crossing the border has largely been eliminated. [1]
> should you favor a more peaceful and efficient process? Instead of a more violent and less efficient process?
I want a process that actually works. There has been no serious headway made in the number of illegal aliens for decades until now. [2]
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8wd8938e8o
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-1st-time-50-years-experienced-n...
I wonder why.
On the first part, I hope the last few elections made it clear that polling is... unreliable at best. For example, asking the question like "in light of the recent shooting of Renee Good, do you feel ICE is making your city safer" vs asking "Do you feel like having removed X,XXX illegal immigrants with prior convictions has made your city safer" would yield a very different result.
For what it's worth, as an immigrant myself and a typical over-educated NY liberal (at least, formerly) I don't like the details of what's going on but I understand why it is.
The cultural gap is just too much. There are explosions 24/7 and the amount of trash on the street hurts my eyes. A party by my window at 2AM - check. It happens that you have a group of six guys walking down the middle of the road and the fuck are you going to do. There's only so much you can explain by poverty and lack of privilege - especially when they were born in one of the world's richest countries while the country I am from started poor but developed immensely.
When voting, immigration policies are for me #1 issue. I just don't want the entire Europe to look like this.
Decades of copaganda paired with police brutality. A fairly large portion of americans view anyone with a badge as "the good guy" by default.
But, I think people are also fearful about what happens after the riots start. Nobody is excited about Trump using a riot as an excuse to declare martial law and deploy the military everywhere. There's still some hope that cities and states will step up and do their job. These ICE agents can and should be prosecuted.
> Are people inside the country not getting the same news we're getting on the outside?
They aren't. And unfortunately a LOT of US media is sanewashing. We have dedicated channels like fox news which are basically framing everything as "violent protesters attacking the police for trying to arrest bad guys". But even centrist and slightly left mainstream media is bending over backwards to give excuses and "both sides" this. Doing things like using a lot of passive language or just not reporting on the raids all together. You basically need to be online or tuned in to alternative media to learn about this stuff.
There's also the very simple and real fact that fascists already have the power. People are scared. There's about 30% of the citizenship who could literally drive a car through a protest or open up fire who'd be completely protected by the state for those actions. Most of the people that'd do that are already employed by ICE.
Our "leftist" or "centrist" news sources are owned by right wing billionaires. There is no real actual leftist or even centrist news source that has any sort of clout here in the US.
Obstructing feds in those operations, rioting outside government buildings, and driving cars at uniformed officers aren’t going to net you a ton of sympathy with people supporting law enforcement actions.
So you’ve got a swath of people who are fine with what ICE is doing, or don’t care to even make their dissatisfaction known via a survey, much less the ballot box or via a riot.
That's not true. Barely a third of Americans believe that. Nearly half of Americans want ICE outright abolished.
The OP question was why aren’t Americans rising up and resisting ICE, and the answer I gave was because about half the population doesn’t even dislike them enough to answer a survey negatively.
point being, given that ice is going after non-whites and is getting by, a spanish ice will get by too, with probably more ease.
Hah, funny you bring up the name of a neighbor :)
I'm not sure that's even in the same class of issues as what's happening in the US and frankly, a bit surprising to hear. Have you seen/been with ultras in the Nordics? Even been to derbies played in Copa Libertadores? Both of those I'd immediately rank as way more violent than what we see here in Spain.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Truth is, lots of Americans are really divorced from the reality undocumented immigrants are facing right now. Lots of immigrants from 10-15+ years ago aren't worried if they are law abiding (anecdotal). The online rhetoric rly doesn't match daily life in my most places aside from the active hotbeds.
It's almost flipped how the US and Europe have dealt with threats. The US has a long history of organized hate groups having the run of things. I don't Europe has experienced anything like the KKK for as long. However Europe is not far removed from fascist and authoritarian regimes. So things are more fresh in the minds of citizens and they are more likely to fight them. However when attacked through another method it subverts that and allows tacit approval from the public while their neighborhoods are transformed for the worse.
It is true, we have vigilante groups going around sometimes acting violent against people they think are immigrants, it is a real problem. It isn't all across Europe, and it isn't super common, but it happens, and that's enough.
I think the difference is in who is coordinating these efforts, because none of those vigilante groups are the country's own border patrol doing that in "official business" capacity, they're small groups of individuals usually associated with some far-right political groups, rather than tax funded government groups.
If the latter were to happen, you can be pretty sure people wouldn't put up with it, because most of us realize what's coming after that, because we were all forced to study history growing up.
> So things are more fresh in the minds of citizens and they are more likely to fight them
Yeah, this seems to be a big factor, most of us here (Europe) still have parents (and grand-parents) who remember and witnessed a lot of awful shit, and growing up would immediately reprimand you if you just pretended to like that, or carry thoughts in those veins.
Basically we Americans have given up on our system. Both on the left and the right. It's why the right elected Trump, and it's why the left silently elected Trump by not voting.
Just look at this site as a sample set.
Worth mentioning that America does not have a protest culture like Europe. Being largely rural makes gathering for political expression impractical, and in this particular case Trump and his militias are deliberately trying to stir up chaos in order to rationalize cranking up the pressure. Protests make noise and get you targeted but what is needed now is real change.
Peaceful protester/protest crowd attacked:
(video) https://www.reddit.com/r/ICE_Raids/comments/1qcyvqt/ice_shoo...
(video) https://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration/comments/1qcbpac/hug...
(video) https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/1qceoy4/shards_o...
U.S. Citizen arrested/detained for having an accent:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1qdol2a/having_an_...
In a Richfield Target, video shows federal agents detaining Target employees, including one being tackled/handcuffed while saying “I’m literally a U.S. citizen,” and they were later released:
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/richfield-target-ice-...
(video) https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1qauntn/ice_kidn...
Which would you say is the one that best makes your case?
It’s interesting that that’s your perception. In a lot to countries it’s very rare for the police to kill anyone in the sorts of circumstances you’re describing.
That’s the only fatality situation in the current unrest.
Another protester was shot yesterday, the agent was being attacked with a snow shovel and a large stick. The protester was shot in the leg ( not fatal ), which is sometimes suggested as a less permanent way of stopping such an attack.
Renee Nicole wasn’t driving a car at anyone, but regardless, it is stupid to shoot someone who’s driving a car at you as it won’t stop the car. What you need to do in that situation is get out of the way.
Good day.
But the question we were discussing was whether or not it was normal in other countries for police to shoot the drivers of cars as a means of stopping them. So no agreement on the facts of the Renee Nicole case is required.
So you are not seeing the same news the outside world are seeing? Is there censorship happening? Because what we're seeing, isn't "enforcing immigration laws", it's brutal murder of civilians, together with actually being worse at getting people out of the country. Obama did a better job at kicking out illegals, yet without these public broad-daylight murders. How does that compute to be "enforcing immigration laws"?
Yes. Me personally, at least, in that I don't watch broadcast television at all. Hell, quite alot of it from the same links and tweets you click on. No Fox News or anything like that, but I suspect that if I gave you my personal opinions you'd swear that I was parroting those outlets. (Something I've noticed all my life... most people can't accept that I might independently arrive at the same conclusions.)
>it's brutal murder of civilians,
I watched it from 5 angles. It wasn't murder, it was self-defense. Open and shut. Cars are deadly weapons, she pointed the car at him as if she was bullet-proof. Found out otherwise. Everything to the contrary is sophistry. "Sure, she waved a gun around, but she didn't point it at his face!" and so forth. He had milliseconds to react, but he's supposed to see the wheels that he's not looking at turned away and he's supposed to care when on a Minnesota road with a bad driver and slush the direction the wheels point might not even matter.
>Obama did a better job at kicking out illegals,
Perhaps. So? If Trump appoints him deportation czar, I won't object.
>yet without these public broad-daylight murders. How does that compute to be "enforcing immigration laws"?
Plainly false. Did you bother to look this up? Not only were federal agents accused of this during his tenure, several of them were ICE and CBP in manners similar to what we're seeing now. Maybe the news outlets you favor didn't bother to report those, selectively.
But no amount of sympathy can excuse the general behavior of ICE and the stain it leaves on the idea of the USA. In this case - I have watched all the same videos, and there is simply no way to view that murder as clearly self-defense without leaning on a pre-decided hatred of the victim as an "enemy".
Just as the left's ideas on immigration are clouded by idealism in the name of anti-racism, the right's ideas on immigration are clouded by racism. What's best for a society lies somewhere in between, and at this point may require some tough enforcement, yes, but ICE is not enacting that - they are just enacting the right's hatred, terrorizing America in an un-focused, illegal, immoral, violent, unprofessional manner. As Americans understandably push back against that (as Americans are famous for), you will get escalating messes like this.
ICE are detaining American citizens. It’s been documented countless, countless times. The killings they have committed are clearly debatable in their justification. Staying they are justified does not make it so.
Of course, I realize that all news I read, from CNN, Guardian to Reuters, Fox and White House press release all have biases. Reading both sides gives you the in-the-middle perspective you need, and I recommend everyone to do the same, even if some sources like Fox are kind of hard to get through sometimes, but it's important to read both sides of every story.
> "Extra judicial murders" are federal ICE officers justifiably defending themselves. ICE is in Minneapolis and many other cities to deal with a huge population of illegals that need to be deported as expressed by the popular will of our recent democratic election.
ICE agents defending themselves isn't exclusive with "extra judicial murders", you can defend yourself but do so in the wrong way. You don't have permission to execute anyone you think might harm you, then the situation would be much worse.
Instead you have "proportional force" or similar, and I guess that's up to each observer to decide what they think that is, because it seems like the courts aren't even gonna have their input considered about it. Hence the "Extra judicial" part.
Are you saying USA, in the majority, is still imperialist? Is still racist? Is still white supremacist?
- ICE boxed in a Woodbury real estate agent recording their movements
- She was run off the road into a snowbank by ICE for laying on her horn
- A woman attempting to drive past a raid
- Feds pushed an unidentified motorist through a red light
- Fired projectiles at a pedestrian walking “too slowly”
> “How many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists have been hired by your respective departments?” Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the two officials [Bondi and Noem].
[1] - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-proud-boys-leader-e...
If legality is where one draws the line, faith in the united states would be considered long dead.
Like can I just get a plane ticket and stay indefinitely in Peru, Russia, UK, Cuba, Mexico, Ukraine, Uganda, Abu Dhabi, Costa Rica, India, etc?
You can rage against the question, but the question remains.
Just because a bunch of people jumped off a bridge means you’re gonna do the same thing?
I would literally never look to Russia as an example of anything to emulate so why would I give a shit what they do?
What happened to the SA when they became to powerful. And also when the people of Nazi Germany (so Nazis) became fed up with the thugs. Out of interest: is there something like a person considered to be a leader (like Röhm) amongst ICE?
This kind of "I'm a sovereign citizen, you can't touch me" behavior used to be rightfully belittled by the same crowd only a few years ago.
Look. We have so much evidence of misconduct by ICE that the only reasonable thing to do is just assume there is misconduct. There's no Le Enlightened Centrist take here - these people act like gangs, and have zero respect for Americans citizens or their property.
edit: even if they referred to the ICE agent as "fatty fat fat fat" meanly
There’s really no other way law enforcement could work, I don’t know what people are imagining. You don’t get to surround or block LEO from conducting business and just say “neener neener” and there’s nothing they can do. If you escalate to physical violence then you’re simply gambling with your life and there’s no other way it could be in the world we life in, except in maybe a very low crime society.
It’s one thing if you accept all this and do it anyway, but people keep acting shocked by what happens. “why did you have real bullets?”.
If you think revolution is the answer I don’t agree, but surely you see that risking your life is table stakes.
This would be more accurately framed as "parking illegally", which is the sort of thing for which you occasionally get a ticket placed under your windshield wiper, not the sort of thing for which armed, masked agents violently arrest you.
- Legal protest. Standing out of the way, yelling, singing, signs, etc. 100% protected, only subject to reasonable crowd control (by the local LEA), eg to move people off the roadway.
- Civil disobedience. Intentional non-violent violations of the law. Intended to slow/disrupt government activity. You are breaking the law to make a point, and should be willing to accept the consequences. The violations are almost always minor, with at most a week or two in jail and a fine. Law enforcement has a legal obligation to apply proportionally in the enforcement, if they are non-violent then little or no force is acceptable in detaining or citing the protestors.
Translation: you'll be summarily executed if the officer vaguely feels "threatened"
Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q9tg16/updated_111_mi...
So I'm struggling to understand why you seem to be okay with shooting someone for being in the way. So please explain to me why you think "obstruction" was worth shooting her.
They also intentionally bump into people and then claim they are being assaulted. Their superiors have made it clear that will face no consequences for this, and they have aggressive quotas to meet.
My mom's dad was shot and killed by police. Absolutely nobody in my family knows anything about it, but the default is "he was a bad person and deserved it" or, "he probably did something wrong." The coroner's report shows his death as a suicide, despite police shooting and killing him. This was a time before cameraphones and before I was even born, so it's impossible for me, let alone anyone else to know what happened.
A lot of how you approach this discussion reminds me of the side of my family that defaults to thinking that the police did nothing wrong, or that their actions were justified or within policy, even without knowing the full facts (or, any; it's willful ignorance out the wazoo), plus a handful of assumptions. And, just -- a person died and that's all you can muster? Callousness and an air of benevolence?
You can do better, friend.
So can you. Your past experience was terrible, but that's no reason to ignore or misrepresent what others are saying.
What GP and I are both seeing in the Renee video is assault with a deadly weapon on a law enforcement officer. Lethal force is a valid response. That doesn't mean she deserves it, but that she was doing something stupid without realizing just how stupid it was. Most of these protestors are the same, they're new to this and being tricked by anti-ICE activists into thinking it's completely safe without getting all the information.
Am I right to say that your argument can be summarized as, "She didn't deserve it, but her actions were deserving of it"? Or maybe "merited"?
I'm genuinely confused by what you mean by "deserves".
(just to be explicit, the disagreement we have here is very much about what the word "deserves" means rather than anything productive)
Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get picked up so you can get your proof.
You are lying. She waited for the pedestrian to cross.
Also, obstructing traffic is not valid reason to be violent against someone. ICE or cops being violent in that situation is them abusing their power big time. So, again, we are back to Brownshirts comparison.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-p...
> Gov. Ron DeSantis said that drivers will not be at fault if they hit protesters that block roadways in a clip that took social media by storm.
The officers told her to move. She had plenty of opportunities to do so. But she continued to yell at them, and block the road. At the point an officer is breaking your window to detain you, you don't resist / try to drive. You comply.
1. Don't care, blood is great.
2. Think they are the good guys.
3. Are more worried about their next paycheck and having bad things happen to them related to not paying rent.
i feel like a broken record: anyone with a resume good enough for Palantir would have no problem finding work for another company/public sector employer. but they stay.
Getting a worker to understand that their work negatively affects innocent people is a big uphill battle.
And it's not like everyone just complained for moral posturing and then continued to wipe the tears of disgust with wads of cash. Many people who left also mentioned the ethics part as why they left.
I think you know the answer to that.
I'm not saying Palantir specifically is necessary, but I do think finding avenues for Silicon valley to help the US government is necessary for them to be tech competent.
Sure. That's the price to pay for not setting morality aside. One that they're not willing to pay.
Is this a joke? Have you looked at the current administration?
You need to separate government institutions ability to use tech from Trumps obvious buffoonery.
Note: I'm not American, nor White/WASP, nor Asian.
28% of them think they are [0]. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that the devs would be part of that number
Edit: it looks like the poll it’s for the recent incident of the woman who was shot - my mistake. Then I would assume the number for the raids themselves is higher
Regarding Musk's "hardcore" ultimatum at Twitter.
[0]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-ultimatum
People need paychecks. Not everyone is going to get to build and lead their own businesses?
At least that's my theory.
Take a look at Palantir's trust center: https://palantir.safebase.us
Schellman did their audit and compliance - do they have blood on their hands?
How about AWS, GCP, Azure cloud resources used by Palantir - are they stained, too?
Is the manufacturer of the bomb responsible for when Israel drops it on a family home in Gaza? Yes. Is it the same responsibility as the general who gave the order? No. Is it the same as the pilot who followed the order? No.
Does that make it useless to hold people accountable? Of course not.
If you value your comfy life over the well being of others and the future of not only the country, but without an ounce of hyperbole, the human race, then keep your head down. If you don't, fuckin DO SOMETHING.
You know all those times you've said or heard others say "well if I was in Germany in the 30's...." well, guess what, games fuckin real now. So act like the person you want to be.
For people who think borders are just lines, our country as geography doesn't even exist. It's just lines. For people who think that all people are the same, everywhere, and deserve to go where they please, our country as a people doesn't exist either.
So if that's your conception of a country, why should I care about it at all? It's just a random place I happened to be born, and its disloyalty to me outweighs any I might show it. I inherited a house jointly with the rest of you, and you keep letting squatters live here for free. Once they're here, you screech if anyone tries to evict them. If I complain about them punching holes in the drywall and shitting in the kitchen sink, you tell me I'm racist. Whatever else, you and I are incompatible, and I am out of options.
If there were a world government that I funded, then borders would be unnecessary, but that is not the world in which we live.
Whatever ideological differences we may have, need to be shelved. We can bicker about that later. For now, the border of the U.S. exists, and it's killing people.
The ideological differences are, in no small part (directly or implicitly) over whether the border should exist and whether it killing the people it kills is a good or a bad thing. Can’t really just shelve that.
> Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.
Is ICE using a general purpose app for surveillance or is Palantir making a deportation-centric app for ICE?
All of them work directly / indirectly with ICE.
Disappointing to see you downvoted. I agree with this partially, but only because I think it applies more broadly.
I work in tech (although not in Big Tech/Mag 7/FAANG/whatever they're called now), and I feel quite acutely that anyone in the field is culpable in part for the enabling the absolutely massive dump that the capital-adjacent class is taking on the world to have their power play fantasies play out.
To the extent that I've started apologising on behalf of the field/profession to non-technical folks when they complain about yet another dark pattern/"growth hack" designed to steal their attention and money.
No, it doesn't mean that "mr gotcha"[1] argument is valid. You don't have to isolate yourself from society Kaczynski-style to either criticize society or to do something smaller (like choosing who you work for).
Even if you do nothing else of impact in your life, you can stop defending the bad guys.
I picked up a few shares, but I haven't checked if Palantir's growth has been unique or part of a general military-industrial complex melt-up.
> Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address
So essentially, the relevant app here is custom built in order to help ICE raids.
That's substantially different from generic office tech where ICE happen to be one of millions of users.
I'm a stranger on the internet, if you don't already think that the USA's immigration raids and camps are a bad thing, I'm probably not going to be the one to convince you otherwise.
There's a lot of good journalism and commentary on the topic, so if you want to have your mind changed, do a web search and read from people much smarter and more knowledgable than me.
If the answer is “I don’t believe in immigration law and the government should not enforce it regardless of what people vote for”, that’s a completely acceptable answer.
Because surveilling people -- PEOPLE, not citizens -- without probable cause is a violation of the US constitution?
It is a bad thing because it leads to innocent people being brutalized, it's a violation of the constitution, it's very clearly the primary tool of an increasingly authoritarian government?
I don’t have a problem if people want to acknowledge this and risk their lives knowingly in protest of whatever they don’t like, but it’s absurd to pretend that’s not what you’re doing. I don’t think that’s what’s happening though when Good’s girlfriend asked why they were using real bullets.
The state having your address is also not surveillance in any meaningful sense.
edit: I'm ratelimited so I can't reply to the reply: no, he didn't answer. These people did get due process. So it's about something else. ICE is being used for its legally authorized purpose, which yes, includes removing people who illegally hinder them.
Self-defense is, however, an entirely plausible defense in this scenario, even if the agent could have acted differently to not be in the path of someone already behaving erratically, and even if people only with the benefit of slo-mo multi-angle replays don’t think so. That’s why nobody is being charged. This happens all the time, unfortunately. The minute you choose to endanger people around you in the presence of people with guns, you’ve rolled the dice on your life.
So do you have any actual examples of what you’re describing?
And my argument is that no matter what SCOTUS law one cites, or hand-waving about self-defense that is said, that shooting her in the head from the side of the car was not only tactically unnecessary, but objectively made the situation worse in a way that a competent person should immediately recognize.
One does not need slow-mo to see she wasn't trying to kill anyone.
>The minute you choose to endanger people around you in the presence of people with guns, you’ve rolled the dice on your life.
This is shorthand for "comply or die". Welcome to the free world. I wonder if Europe and Australia and New Zealand and the rest of the world know what they're missing by not having LEO as qualified as ICE running their streets.
First: I do not believe immigration laws should be enforced in their entirety vis-a-vis mass deportation. Decades of flawed immigration laws, flawed employment laws and flawed enforcement have led to the current situation where millions of people are in this country undocumented, who are otherwise law-abiding, decent people who contribute to their communities and love the US. The rhetoric about immigrants being a drain on society are flawed at best, and hatefully wrong and bad faith at worst.
Second: If we want to get a handle on immigration volume and change the system so fewer people are undocumented, the correct response logistically and morally is to create a path to legal status (not citizenship) for those currently here, who have been here for a long time, who have families and who have not committed violent crime.
Third: If someone wanted to maximize the effectiveness of immigration enforcement resources for the purpose of safety using deportation, they would still be doing targeting of violent offenders. They clearly are not. Stephen Miller wants all undocumented people out of this country because he is a white supremacist. When "moderating forces" in the administration tried to push back on raids at farms and factories, Miller angrily protested and got Trump to change his mind back to indiscriminate mass deportation.
Third, pt 2: If Republicans were serious about measured but effective reforms to reduce immigration, they would have accepted the 2024 legislative package that capped asylum volume and vastly increased border patrol and border judiciary resources to expedite cases and get people back out of the country in a fraction of the time the current system requires. Instead, they wanted to win the 2024 election with immigration as a wedge issue, and they want to pursue a maximalist position of fear and mass removal.
Fourth: The US federal government is a semi-democracy. We have a single-choice, no-runoff election system in most of the country that forces an extremist-friendly two party system, and the presidential election is further removed from popular choice by the electoral college. The president is the least "democratic" elected position in the nation. I do not think most people support the extent of the violence and maximalism of the administration.
Fifth: The surveillance technology being adopted by the government is not being used solely on undocumented citizens.
Finally: If I were in charge and wanted to take a stance on immigration, I would do largely what was in the 2024 bill, I would set up a work visa program for industries that heavily utilize undocumented labor, and I would target recent arrivals and criminals for deportation - not all undocumented residents.
---
TLDR: We're arresting and deporting veterans, PhD students critical of US policy, and people who have lived here for decades as part of the "American Dream" who have done no harm to our country. What is being done is not in the name of safety nor does it even indirectly improve the lives of Americans. Surveillance and tracking tools are being deployed against all citizens. In the broader context of the behavior and statements of Miller/Trump/Vance et al, this is part of a multi-pronged attack on democracy and the freedom of citizens from government intrusion.
Edit: and all of this debate is without the context of an administration that has declared itself above the law domestically and internationally, that has invaded a country for oil and is currently preparing to invade a treaty member of our strongest military alliance to steal their natural resources. So if the parent wonders why some people are hostile at debating this, it's because to debate the point at all is to ignore obvious truths.
Ironically all the big wealthy GOP donors all hire illegal laborers to clean their homes and mow their lawns, and to maintain the golf courses at clubs they belong to. But we can't actually have the conversation about illegal immigration get to the root causes of why immigrants are actually here, now can we?
> Stephen Miller wants all undocumented people out of this country because he is a white supremacist.
Another point of irony - most of the ardent white nationalists from the heartland of America would be aghast to learn that Miller is a rich Jew from Southern California whose grandparents were immigrants. For a lot of them, Jews are explicitly NOT white nor are they American.
> If Republicans were serious about measured but effective reforms to reduce immigration, they would have accepted the 2024 legislative package that capped asylum volume and vastly increased border patrol and border judiciary resources to expedite cases and get people back out of the country in a fraction of the time the current system requires.
Or, even earlier, they could have backed e-Verify as federal minimum standard for all employment as far back as the 1980s. But no, let's not go after the businesses hiring illegal laborers.
Strong borders are entirely about making easy to exploit cheap labor. That's entirely the reason why neither democrats nor republicans have addressed immigration. It's also entirely the reason why the only lever being pulled is deportation.
Businesses simply love being able to say to workers "Do what we say or we'll have you deported".
This is why undocumented workers pay taxes and can get jobs, even in the reddest of states. It's not some sort of "flaw" or "impossibility" that couldn't be fixed pretty quickly.
Rightly targeted law would penalize businesses hiring undocumented workers and would protect the workers regardless of documentation status. Doing that would immediately fix any perceived problems with immigration.
(Except clippy, he's just a guy)
This isn't the interesting argument you think it is.
Here's his thinking:
1. He's white and lives in a blue state. Doesn't affect him. Oh, and money. 2. The attention on Palantir and their customers makes his stock and options go up. He's happy, because money. 3. His GOP-worshipping parents get to brag to their GOP-worshipping friends that their son is helping God's Gift to Humanity - Donald Trump. And making bank while doing it. 4. He believes that Palantir is doing good work, and that's the end of it. He believes himself to be a genuinely good guy, so if he's doing something, it must be good.
- I think Yarvin has a lot of good points. No one should be ashamed to admit the truth of a matter. I can't stand his voice, I think he has annoying mannerisms, but nonetheless the man has a point and I'm not ashamed (especially by unknown and strange online personas) to say so.
- Palantir is objectively a profitable job. I've learned a lot here and the people I work with are brilliant.
- I don't think I have "blood on my hands" and rather instead think that people who use that tactic are resorting to strange emotional manipulation in place of a salient argument.
Let's be honest, simply conjecturing that someone ascribes to a political view isn't discourse. It's a potshot. You're assuming that anyone who reads your comment and leans in your direction is going to agree and vote with you. This is literally the lowest and cheapest form of engagement. It's also the most self serving. It does nothing to advance the conversation or prove your point.
Most importantly, this is the exact type of behavior that is furthering political polarization and discouraging actual discourse.
Really shows the state of things right now tbh.
The problem in my mind is that these systems are exclusively in service of dishonesty. ICE is clearly being used to further political ends. If it were actually trying to stem immigration it wouldn’t concentrate its officers in a state with one of the lowest rates of illegal immigrants.
Are you saying you agree with that cause or that you bear no responsibility?
Using the word "defiance" indicates that your perspective is decidedly not American.
Both the States and the Federal government are co-sovereign, mediated by the US Constitution that spells out the rights and responsibilities of each. The Federal government is currently in willful and flagrant default of this founding charter - both overall in terms of how it is supposed to function (offices being executed in good faith forming checks and balances), as well as openly flouting the handful of hard limits outlined in the Bill of Rights. As such, the Federal government has lost the legal authority to dictate anything to the States.
It is of course still prudent to recognize the realpolitik of the "Federal government" having command of a lawless paramilitary force currently unleashing terror and mayhem on civil society. But the point is that we need to work towards re-establishing law and order in terms of the remaining functioning sovereigns.
> For even if I accept their sovereignty, they have exercised their sovereign will in the Electoral College to elect this administration
Simply repeating the word "sovereign" doesn't mean you've applied and fully accounted for the definition.
> A state can not go and rebel against the Union
I'm not talking about rebellion here, but the provision of law and order in spite of the federal government's policies of repeated lawbreaking.
> when the whole agreement on the separation of powers can be changed with a particular state voting against it - that's a mockery of sovereignty of that state.
This subject is not like computer programming where finding some lever you can pull to affect an axiomatic-deductive result invalidates the independent meaning of the original thing. If two-thirds of the states actually wanted to scrap the current Constitution and turn the federal government into an autocracy with two impotent patronage-review councils, then you would have a point. As it stands, you do not - the entire point of these necessary supermajorities is to put the brakes and pull us towards a foundation of individual liberty and limited government when things are close to evenly divided.
As I said, you really need to read up on the founding of this country. It's got all of these dynamics and more - including the "liberal media".
We have a freedom of speech and protest precisely to signal our discontent with our leaders. It is precisely for citizens to harass law enforcement that they view as unjust.
The entire reason we got those freedoms spelt out in the constitution in the first place was because of British occupation and the views that the British governments laws and enforcement were unjust. There is a direct parallel. The spirit of the 3rd amendment is that we should be able to kick out law enforcement that we hate. That we don't have to tolerate their presence.
How about not violating the 5th amendment by going door to door through neighborhoods randomly? I don't give a single FUCK if ICE can do their jobs today if they have to violate half the damn bill of rights to do it.
Of course with the Trump FBI the message is loud and clear, those crimes will not be investigated
At the end of the day it sounds like the people making this argument don't really like how ICE is using the product. That's unfortunate, but it seems like the response is making a proximation error though. For those taking this view: Do you yell at farmers for planting, growing and packaging strawberries because you're upset about the obesity crisis and people's craving for strawberry flavored products? Do you run out into the fields and grab them by the shoulders saying "This is your fault!". I'd hazard not.
There is a larger epistemological argument to be had there, but needless to say I'm just not convinced that any sober person believes that qualitatively ascribing moral outrage to a single group of people is really that simple.
In general I think whenever you find a "red pill", you also end up confronted with a whole slew of new easy answers. Whether you end up buying into them or not really comes down to who you are as a person.
I wonder how he feels about what the administration is doing and how his own work is directly helping them. Surely he is aware of all of the supremacist rhetoric coming from the official Twitter accounts of various government agencies or Elon Musk or Stephen Miller. Surely he has seen the kind of racist abuse that Vivek Ramaswami endured on Twitter, which led to him recently quitting social media.
Doesn’t he see how all of this is going to come for people like himself next?
People are often remarkably good at this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...
Why try to inflame the conversation even more? Just curious what you get out of it, because you're clearly not curious, or trying to understand something here.
The Nazis were doing what many people in their society thought needed to be done.
It is a rather uncommon position (though, ironically, frequently a strawman position falsely attributed to their opponents to mock them by roughly the same political faction that backs the current ICE action) that “morality” is just whatever a sufficiently large number of people currently prefer.
If you want to go after prominent employers of illegal labor (and others who profit from it) I shan't shed a tear. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening.
I live in Minnesota. This is my backyard.
https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/alex-karp...
It’s quite clear to me that these elites are just grabbing power by any means necessary. It won’t end after Trump. He’s just providing the cover in the current moment.
History show most will choose authoritarianism.
Go read the work of historians who study this. The transitions in Russia, Hungary, etc are well documented. There is a pretty solid consensus understanding of the dynamics, the typical playbook, etc.
Response by Garry Tan (CEO of YC)[1]
“You're thinking Chinese surveillance
US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims”
If its not, it sounds like the output of an LLM if prompted "You are a toddler. Write the most naive and illogical ideological propaganda possible. Offer no rational justification for your thoughts"
The entire world runs on technology now. It's all inherently political.
Everything we do is political. When we are making software and publishing it, whether or a company or ourselves, for sale or for free, there are political implications to those actions.
The reason "no politics" zones exist is because there are enough people going out of their way to shout at everybody, everywhere, in every corner of the internet and enough people are tired of it that they flock to...no politics zones. In real life, a person like that confronts you...you remove yourself from the situation, because that person who can't stop shouting at everybody comes across as nuts.
And besides, what does discussing technology itself have anything to do with it? If you work at big tech you're not allowed to particpate in tech forum as a hobby?
We already discuss politics here as it has to do with tech (privacy is a pretty common topic here for example).
Right, but we should be able to shame, ostracize, and criticize the people that do work at those places because if we don't then it's a tacit approval of what they do.
You know that saying about how if you have three people sharing a bench with a Nazi, you actually have four Nazis? Tech has social and political ramifications, the discussion of which is artificially suppressed on HN.
Most of the time you can't do that here. Try saying something negative about Sam Altman, for example. dang has certain topics he just won't permit and then hides behind the excuse of "if everyone is upset with you, you must be doing something right".
>If you work at big tech you're not allowed to particpate in tech forum as a hobby?
I don't understand what you mean, can you please clarify?
As far as I can tell nobody's advocating this. Anyone is free to spin up a private instance of a hackernews clone (e.g. [0]) or a phpbb instance, or a discord.
But working at DOGE or Palantir or whatever doesn't mean you're entitled to the freedom from consequences of your actions.
I'd agree with your no politics preference if we were in a functioning society that wasn't actively spiralling towards fascism. I recognize that this line is blurry, and that's exactly the reason why no politics zones exist, there is always someone yelling about fascism. He might be a crazy guy on the corner who yells about everything.
I think the difference here is that there is a big critical mass of people who have recognized that the pillars on which our country sit are being actively sabotaged. It's not that everyone wants to be talking about politics all of a sudden, it's that the frog is finally boiling.
It's not about changing minds. It's about changing behaviours.
Right now, HN is a place where you can come to talk about the neat technical problems you solved while building software that does the digital equivalent of going to the corner store to buy Hitler a pack of cigarettes, while ignoring the fact that your work is harmful to society.
And nobody is allowed to talk about how maybe we shouldn't do the digital equivalent of going to the corner store and buying Hitler a pack of cigarettes, because it's not cUrIoUs CoNvErSaTiOn.
My man, the dude is a former heroin addict that has admitted to eating roadkill. He's pushed the vaccines cause Autism narrative.
Trying to make the country healthier while taking huge gifts from lobbyists who work for industrial scale meat producers? Come on.
That said, there's a disappointingly significant number of HN members who hew to the latter and embrace the current regime. I consider this to be a forum of intellectual engagement, and that those people walk amongst us is quite distressing.
I generally try to assume that everyone has good intentions, but we’re all being fed massive amounts of different information. I learned years ago that it wasn’t an issue of people reporting things that were factually inaccurate, it was an issue of people leaving out details to frame the story in the context that supports your readers/viewers belief system.
And then there are the Stanford studies like this:
There's a nuance to this -- the current political environment is not normal and cannot be emphasized enough. The GOP is now a cult of personality and there is no allegiance to country by its members. Its all to one man, who many believe is wholly unqualified for the job.
Its a well-documented phenomenon that millions of people have joined this cult -- many coming from the other side of the aisle. There is no possible reasoning, dialog, or engagement that can make them reconsider.
I would be classified as a "Lefty" if evaluated on my values, but I actually believe in the value of old school conservatism as of "limited government", the value of families, and the ability to have their own personal relationship with God (I am an atheist but I get it).
One of the things that makes America great is the Constitution -- that we are ostensibly a nation governed by law. The current regime does not share those values and is actively hostile to all who do not worship or pay tribute to their leader.
I've been following US politics for half a century and what's happening now would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago.
And which politics? American internal politics are foreign and distant to me. How much do you care about my country internal affairs? Probably not much. And it's OK, you can't fix every country in existence, and if you tried to care you would get insane.
Also, I totally understand pruning back discussion that is political, and way off the topic of the actual post/story. People should reasonably be able to read and discuss a non-political story without big political discussion springing up.
No politics is a privilege that many do not have.
"My children are starving. Militants have surrounded our village. But let me pop into HN for a bit and drop my hot take on the San Remo Pasta Measurer."
HN does not have, and never has had (except for a very brief experiment that failed spectacularly and was very quickly aborted) a “no politics” rule, and, in fact, politics is usually all over the site.
Not to mention every leader of YCombinator has had some kind of wild politics that come from having money that separates you from any kind of consequence.
Right now, there are people commenting on HN who built software enabling the wholesale violations of the rights of US citizens.
Right now, there are people commenting on HN who built the systems used at Facebook when they experimented with trying to create "symptoms of depression" in their users by manipulating the feed.
And so on and so forth.
But thank goodness we have dang to shield those people from criticism because ItS sO uNoRiGiNaL.
This entire submission got artificially pushed off the front page. This is exactly what I'm talking about.
It is true that some users here spew vile ideology while hiding behind HN intellectual rhetoric. Then posts that understandably react strongly to that get flagged, and users get banned. I wish it was different, but I’ve made peace with that being a significant percent of the user base here.
A particular interaction I had comes to mind. A user here boldly and openly proclaimed he discriminated in interviews against people that look different from him, or that are neurodivergent. Actual illegal behaviour that will get you sued in many countries. I reacted strongly and my post got flagged and I received a comment from the moderation team.
I don’t envy the moderation team though, it’s a tough job.
This is the "moderate discourse" problem, where you can express horrendous opinions as long as you are polite, and anyone who reacts emotionally gets criticized instead. You are required to engage these arguments in a detached, logical way as though they have equal intellectual merit, while they advocate for your suffering. This is also why places that enforce moderate discourse tend to become populated with polite fascists.
Yes the moderators here are 100% part of the problem.
Making those people into pariahs, through repeated public shaming, until they stop being wilfully blind to the harms they're perpetuating.
I am 100% serious.
Came here to say the same...
> In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.
Nope. First is a failing govt system (not upholding the constitution) that's enabling this.
Second it's not the devs but the business men (that are so much in bed in govt that they have become indistinguishable).
Look, there are software devs (and probably business men) that are equally greedy in, say, Finland/Iceland/etc. But it's not happening there: they simply have a govt that's better for the people at large.
Obviously there's always the cop out of "someone else would have done it anyway" but it doesn't really change the (un-)ethical side of your choices. I'm not saying it's black and white either - if the other choice is to leave your kids without proper medical care then it's a different thing than just being intentionally blind to ethics.
Just another radicalised-by-the-internet person trying to be vile online... The mark of the 2020s.
Palantir is the main software vendor for Europol. Equally pretty much all the 1984 proposals for age or id online verification that are being massaged into existence (both in the UK and pushed by the European Commission) have their fingers all over them.
They sell pre-crime and opinion control to our democratic leaders and apparently everyone in Davos loves it.
- Well, I'm working on interesting technical problems at massive scale. Leave it to the business guys to figure out how to apply it--not my problem.
- Well, I just move protobufs from one middleware API to another. I don't even talk to the application guys.
- Well, I just write the code my boss tells me to write. I don't want to be fired!
These people don't care what harms "deporting illegals" means, because they aren't really attached to reality and are utterly lacking empathy.
"Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man imprisoned" is clearly not something they consider acceptable.
But it does say they have been working with ICE for “years” in the article. What is not really clear to me is was the app made worse recently, was it originally commissioned under trump?
Nothing about that changes that they should not be working with ICE and they deserve any pressure they get to cut ties. But there is some history here I am very curious about.
All of that being said, I am concerned about how this will be turned around and used in more than just ICE and targeting everyone. Especially since we can be sure this will be used in largely blue big cities.
Physically attacking citizens takes it to another level.
It's one thing for tech companies to be complicit in eroding privacy, it's quite another to be complicit in overt fascism.
"That changed in the second Trump administration, with Palantir now working on ICE’s deportation efforts."
https://www.palantir.com/newsroom/press-releases/homeland-se...
"...Since 2011, Palantir has partnered with HSI"
I don't believe you or you wouldn't have bothered to muddy the water in the face of repeated violence and dehumanization.
We have to have all of the information and actually inform people instead of the half and twisted “truths” that is all that ever spew from this administration.
It doesn’t change or diminish what is going on right now, but it changes some of the conversation around this particular contract.
I guarantee you that if this contract started under the Obama or Biden administration and we just conveniently ignore that, it will come back and bite us in the ass. This app existing before this administration, what form did it exist, and how much use did it get is critical information.
But I do agree that all the other administrations have paved the way
I think it's pretty clear that we've slidden into this situation for years.
This is what privacy advocates have been shouting about a long time. When the systems are in place all you need is a trigger for everything to go to hell.
If you ask about my personal opinion - it is an internal problem of US citizens, and they need to fix it.
At first you'll learn about something horrible in the past and think, How could people let that happen, yet alone participate in it? Well, its spelled out pretty neatly here.
Some people don't care - its "them" being targeted (jews, tutsi, immigrants), not "us". Some people care, but not in the way you'd think - they agree with the actions. Some people just wash their hands - I was only following orders, I was only working for Palantir. Some will be dismissive or downplay what is happening: its no big deal, its overblown, its being exaggerated and distorted by Radical Left-Wing Terrorists™.
This is how bad things happen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qbawlr/minnea...
There is a sickness curdling in the dark corners of Silicon Valley. These people need to be humiliated for being the sniveling, authoritarian toads that they are.
> This is really over for anyone who opposes us. The Lord saved Donald Trump from assassination and is using him as His instrument. The cognitive dissonance to continue to resist the Will of God and will of the people which are united, is just pure bitterness of loss and defeat.
Let's be honest, you aren't gonna believe video, either. It's a matter of literal religious faith for you.
I'm hardly suggesting it.
> recovering from internal bleeding in his chest
Guy had a bruise.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/14/ice-ag...
"Internal bleeding covers a wide range of severity, from minor bruising to life-threatening injuries… The day after the fatal Jan. 7 shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters Ross had been taken to the hospital, but he was released and home with family... DHS declined to answer USA TODAY's additional questions about the injury."
This works better if we can't see your posts.
> you assume the officer's injuries are minor.. First, you don't know that.
I do know that, as he was released from the hospital same day.
Of course with your limited worldview, you don't understand and never will. My "ideology" is submission to the Creator. It's not "my" ideology. You have your ideology though. Though it's not really yours at all, you're just society's pawn that blows with the wind. The most disconcerting fact for you is that in 2,000 more years, there will be someone just like me. In 2,000 years, you will be viewed as a misguided soul, manipulated and controlled. Under the premise that you wish and hope that you're an autonomous, independent entity. You have a lot to learn.
>I do know that, as he was released from the hospital same day.
More wishful thinking. Spoken from your easy chair, not being the one hit by a car. You have no idea what you're talking about, no access to his medical records nor do you know what was or wasn't done. You wish the reality that aligns with your views.
Of course this tracks with your views on your President, RussiaGate, and the rest of the lies you believed and are now proven to be untrue. But par for the course, you just move onto the next subject every single time. Same playbook with not addressing my actual comments here, but searching for something else to address instead. What a joke. People see you for what you are in wider society. Your side is losing ground daily, you're panicking. And that's a good thing. Time is up.
> You have your ideology though. Though it's not really yours at all…
Aww, we're twinsies!
Meanwhile in Minneapolis, the overwhelming majority of violent crimes (including aggravated assaults, theft, murders and sexual assaults) are being committed by ICE agents.
But in the US no one believes they can meaningfully influence govt for real issues. And they are right.
Sure you can get them to paint a rainbow zebra crossing. /s
But not stop/prevent a (civil) war. Democracy dies and lobbyism (what we call corruption in "modern western democracies" -- because we dont do corruption, that's for poor countries!) takes over when the power is consolidated at a high enough level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrolmen%27s_Benevolent_Assoc...
> Approximately 4,000 NYPD officers took part in a protest that included blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and jumping over police barricades in an attempt to rush City Hall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_San_Francisco_P...
> The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/nyregion/chiara-de-blasio...
> Among the hundreds of protesters arrested over the four days of demonstrations in New York City over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only one was highlighted by name by a police union known for its hostility toward Mayor Bill de Blasio. The name of that protester? Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter.
Local PD's could in effect do something similar but have shown to back the authoritarian-aligned party.
Propaganda has aligned nearly every single level of law enforcement to authoritarianism. I can't see a scenario where this is undone.
The ability to en-mass record, lookup and intimidate citizens is unprecedented and while I have no hard proof that this is due to Palantir, it sure smells like it
[1] https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/politics-...
The existence of this technology means that ICE can grab anyone they want, scan their face, and instantly have (or not have) probable cause to arrest them. Without the app, there would be hours before probably cause could be established which makes justifying the detainment legally much harder. I.e without the app, ICE has to actually build a case or see something suspicious for each target. With the app, ICE can just mass sweep people.
Which should be illegal, but thanks to the shadow docket order on Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, is happening anyway.
How hard is it to do facial recognition on just this dataset in real-time?
This, incidentally, is why the "confidence score" is needed. And why the app frequently gets data (including citizenship) wrong.
What constitutes this "high value"? & valuable to who, ICE agents with an itchy trigger finger?
It's pretty simple[1].
1: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/family-guy-skin-color-chart
To echo another commentor, we're not. And even if we were, this is not how it should be done. Enforcing the laws is one thing, but we have to have due process. Without due process, we have no rights.
Proving whether or not someone is supposed to be here requires due process. If they pick up the wrong person (because people have the same name, or look alike, or any reason) and deport them, then what? Are you going to accept that you or your family or friends get deported?
We shouldn't accept any false positives. And that's what due process is.
The last thing I worry about at night is my accidental deportation.
Due process is being abused as a process and term, to pretend we have to tie up the courts for years with some sort of nonsense debate between the government and lawyers about someone's legal status. It's just to stop American law and order from being enforced. People aren't putting up with this whole situation anymore and ultimately we're in control.
YOU would not even get a chance to prove your case when they deport you. And I use "you" here deliberately because everyone is at some point at the lowest rung of the ladder in a fascist regime.
No, we're not.
Selectively enforcing only the laws you want to is the key enabler of corruption.
Like expanding Presidential immunity specifically for a President with 34 existing felony convictions?
Or the admin refusing to even investigate the agent in the Good shooting (https://www.axios.com/2026/01/14/ice-trump-minneapolis-inves...) while going after her widow (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/prosecutors-doj-resign...)?
That in no way justifies this move to an unaccountable paramilitary force attacking US citizens who are legally exercising their rights.
This is why it is clear the problem with ICE is not their mode of enforcement, which is far less egregious than the Waco situation, but the fact they are remotely effective.
Sure you do. The left has been very critical of this sort of police militarization. They gave the cops an M1 Abrams to play with, FFS.
Otherwise Waco would be a rallying cry of the US left, and it isn’t.
Leftists have long warned that expansions of government power (in general) and police militarization (specifically) are most likely to be eventually used against leftists.
The late Murray Bookchin was the exception that proves the rule, and he was hardly popular or widely known, and made some astonishingly prescient interviews before he died about the direction it was all headed in.
Care to name a specific example?
This is tangential to whether those things are good/bad in and of themselves.
The reason Bookchin was interesting, and why he was isolated even from Sanders, was he accurately saw any hierarchy as oppressive, whether class, capitalistic, cooperative, or even a temporarily well meaning state bureaucracy. It also says something that such a person didn’t manage to create a sustainable movement.
The classic right wing policy which confused everyone was “the negative income tax” that Milton Friedman was so keen on, yet it is UBI by another name. Aside from advantages compared to a minimum wage the important point is by being universal you remove the scope for bureaucratic decision making, so they went to enormous lengths to ensure it never happened.
Are you not being selective?
Do you believe Trump should be immune to those felony convictions? Are you… selective in which laws you like?
But that's a bit like responding to "Auschwitz was bad!" with "so you oppose giving free food and housing to Jews?!" I object to how enforcement is being performed, and the collateral damage ICE is willing to inflict on citizens not in their legal purview.
Now let's do you. Do you think the President should have a relatively blank check to get away with being convicted of felonies? Do you have concerns about the Vice President's claim that ICE agents enjoy "absolute immunity"?
The rot of the bureaucracy coming to convenient decisions extends from illegally allowing millions of people to take up residence in the country to convicting people of trumped up nonsense in an obvious attempt to keep them from office to subvert the democratic intent of the people.
This is why Trump and co are the clean up crew before returning to a happier place. It is not a nice job, and nice people wouldn’t be able to do it, but it is a necessary one to prevent things getting so much worse.
Also you: "convicting people of trumped up nonsense..."
Whoops. Someone sure seems… selective. (And we've gone full circle, to my original point.)
> Your problem is you want things more than think about them.
This is precisely the implementation problem inherent in "immediately deport tens of millions of people upon which American society has relied on for decades for cheap labor".
You cannot expect institutions that selectively ignored laws for decades to think it is legal for anyone to stop them from doing so, despite not being able to pin anything concrete to anyone at all. In fact you expect the kind of “ha!” you are trying to pull here.
Trump would not be close to the presidency without the historic selective enforcement by people you happen to have aligned interests with who opened pandora’s box. It is only now you feel on the wrong side of it that you have a problem.
As it stands they are in power, for almost another three years. It seems odd that they could manage this were their position as illegal as you claim. Somewhat reminiscent of the British declaring the American Revolution illegal.
The problem is that without an independent congress the US system is able to descend into authoritarianism. The court has (reasonably) decided that on many broad issues regarding presidential actions and abuse of authority only congress (via impeachment and removal) is able to constrain the president.
The current congressional majority has, for now, decided to allow the president to do almost anything he wants, regardless of the law and constitution.
That's what the OP is saying.
I'm skeptical about their ability to reclaim it, too. Lots of them remember being terrified and running away Jan 6, even if many now pretend not to... and SCOTUS has been on a tear wiping out long-standing legislation Congress was quite clear about like the Voting Rights Act.
I'm not an expert, but while many of SCOTUS' rulings have been against the plain letter of the law, few of the decisions ruled out Congressional power in those areas categorically. Congress could pass a new Voting Rights Act, or redefine the EPA's powers over wetlands, or any number of things, they just choose not to. And of course, even with a Democratic Congress, getting past the veto may be impossible.
They could, and SCOTUS could toss it, like they did bit by bit to all the important parts of the first.
Or just invent a new legal standard, like the "history and tradition" one they used in Bruen, Dobbs, and Bremerton.
This makes the fight unfair, as without law all we have is unbridled violence as a tool and that is a path to ruin for all.
They are simply enforcing a law that people have had every opportunity to democratically change in the decades since it just stopped being enforced properly, and yet they failed to secure a democratic mandate to do so.
Complaining from that position is far from being on a moral high ground.
You are just wrong.
America didn't even really have borders for most of it's existence, as the very idea of a Nation wasn't really a thing until into the 1800s.
We had a purposely pourous border with Mexico until relatively recently.
How many mexican immigrants do you happen to think live in Minneapolis?
There was significantly more inter ethnic strife in the US pre WW2 than most people seem to appreciate, much of it relating to if encountered (by whatever means) people should be settled/assimilated/rejected. There were riots/protests of this type in major cities at least between the civil war and the 1930s, and state policy reflected this, such as with the Chinese exclusion act which would hardly have been possible without a border.
Edit: Challenge: If you downvoted the parent post here (It's currently grey), I would love to hear why you think this doesn't match the pattern. Are you living in the US? I in general am struggling to understand my fellow US citizens, given the history of our nation.
> Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations because they are "illegal" or live in a gray area of legality.
People have been complaining about the attack on immigrants for a good, long while. And the complaining has been getting louder, more frequent, and from more people with every day. When they kidnapped workers and suddenly the price of everything went up, there was a lot of "see?!? this is what we're talking about"
So no, "everyone" isn't ok with the targeting of immigrants.
Unfortunately, there are still enough people who are fine with the Trump / Miller / Noem / Bovino approach to immigration enforcement, or they're not impacted personally enough to make them speak or act.
I hope the cartoon villain responses coming from the administration when they're challenged on any of this will get more people to stand up against it all.
"A pair of armed and masked men in tactical gear stood guard at ballot drop boxes in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 21 as people began early voting for the 2022 midterm elections."
They might be "off-duty" but this is during Biden's admin. They're immensely more emboldened now and local LE will absolutely not enforce any laws restricting this.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/06/election-officials-facing-ar...
MOST states (purple, blue, red) have mail-in voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_St...
Challenging the rules: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-revives-...
Changing the rules at USPS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-this-new-mail-rule-c...
And I'd fully expect some fuckery via executive orders closer to the election, and SCOTUS to use the emergency docket to let them "temporarily" be enforced.
I live by one of his golf courses.
The folks there watering the course, cutting the lawn, moving the greens, and cleaning the facilities are most definitely not US citizens, most definitely are not English speakers, and I'd bet a lot of money are not valid green card holders or work visa holders. You think his courses in immigration hotbeds like New York or Southern California are any different? Fuck no they aren't.
You're backing a wanna-be tough guy who can't even practice what he preaches.
I certainly would consider voting for a candidate who expressed a desire to exercise this authority and presidential power to defund ICE, fire and federally blacklist all of it's former employees during that presidents term.
Are they just going to go home and go back to their old jobs? Or do you think the Administration is going to find something else for them to do.
Thinking that they’re going to deport all the immigrants isn’t realistic or supported by the numbers. Immigration control is a constant ongoing operation in every country. This administration is just making a big show out of it for political points.
Remember this thread when you hear for the first time that ICE agents are tasked with doing something that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Coming soon.
And when it doesn't, will you remember the wild accusations you made or off making others with no accountability?
This is relevant to mention because the number of people in ICE detention right now is spiking: https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/detention.htm...
Just saying, similar outcomes could occur here. It's happened before. Their goals being unrealistic doesn't mean they'll stop, and may be part of their justification for doing even worse things than they're already doing.
Would be very bad if "immigrants" (i.e. not wearing a fair face with a matching MAGA hat) could vote, amirite?
It's not hard to shift "anti-American" speech to mean "anti-ICE", anti-current-administration, etc.
But it should not be enforced, or the constitution became toilet paper. I think we are arriving at the latter.
If it is this tweet you are referring to, it's about _teaching_ hate, which is only a slight nuance and still a terrible point to make for a self-labeled "free speech absolutist"
> Teaching people to hate America fundamentally destroys patriotism and the desire to defend our country.
> Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned.
Which is free speech, unfortunately.
And a very difficult thing to define, and very clearly not the sort of thing that'd be enforced against, say, the current President no matter how clear the violation.
If you think this is only immigration enforcement you haven't been paying attention. That was ostensibly what Trump campaigned on. That is not what is happening in Minnesota and other previously safe places. What is happening is a massive terror campaign against all US citizens who don't happen to be the right color. And increasing, against everyone.
"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me"
Those are the two ways of thinking I've noticed.
There is a list of suspects. It does not say this is sourced by Palantir, but it is at least consumed. [1]
It puts flag on a map where the list says the persons(s) may be. Based on addresses listed in government documents.
It indicates the lists ranking of importance. And whatever links to crimes done or crimes suspected of.
ICE leadership can add priority meta data to the list.
This is not 2026 hyper advanced software. And the government paying huge money for it well that is just public procurement.
I mean imagine
[1] The list itself being pulled from several data sources.
IBM and the holocaust
the past 15 years of my life feels like a bus full of people yelling at the driver to not hit the wall he's speeding towards and he's just ignoring them saying "it will be fine." and here we are!
Let me tell you a story. When I was young, just out of college, I worked for a tech startup. The tech startup was a mapping company. At some point I overheard the company CEO talking about how the software I built was being used. I thought it was being used to help track miners and equipment working in mines so that if there is an accident, they know where all the people and equipment are so they can be saved.
I learned by overhearing him that the software was being used in the Iraq war to track people to kill. I wasn't supposed to know since I didn't have a security clearance to know.
I quit that job over this.
I told this story because there are certainly employees there that don't have the clearance to know what is happening. But the reporting is making it clear. You can quit your job. They can't function without you.
Congress and Supreme court ought to be reigning the executive branch and enforcing citizen rights according to constitution and bill of rights.
The thing is, I know palantir engineers are well paid. Money warps people's brains. It's much easier enable evil if you can go back to a home you own in Silicon Valley.
This is a wild point to me, yeah.
The Palantir is literally a cautionary tale on the risks of thinking you can use the enemy's tools without being corrupted by it.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/01/pentagons-arsenal-of...
No, it wasn't, it was full of people who said they wanted to use technology to make the world a better place because saying you would use technology to make the world a better place was viewed as the path to investment and success.
Now, as soon as feigned empathy is no longer required for $$$, the mask comes off. It was never about anything other than profit.
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4385-failing-to-plan-h...
> He radically restructured operations, splitting the company into thirty, and later forty, different units that were to compete against each other. Instead of cooperating, as in a normal firm, divisions such as apparel, tools, appliances, human resources, IT and branding were now in essence to operate as autonomous businesses, each with their own president, board of directors, chief marketing officer and statement of profit or loss. An eye-popping 2013 series of interviews by Bloomberg Businessweek investigative journalist Mina Kimes with some forty former executives described Lampert’s Randian calculus: “If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.”
Tech has been a cesspool for thirty years.
Palantir is probably similar
> That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.
If it was illegal, why were charges either dropped or never filed to begin with for the majority of these cases?
If you are open to understanding why people are so upset, do your mind the favor of reading this high quality reporting on the treatment of US Citizens by ICE
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
Please, please take the time to read that article. Share if you think the administration is making those good faith efforts based on your read.
1. ProPublica is a multi-Pulitzer investigative reporting group led by former WSJ managing editor Paul Steiger. He is not a socialist, nor is WSJ, nor ProPublica.
2. In the article you will find verifiable claims, records, and quotes which can be easily distinguished from opinions by any discerning reader
I personally know people in Minneapolis (where I live) who's constitutional rights have been trampled on by ICE. ICE is the enemy, all who support them have blood on their hands.
Why am I being downvoted? Has HN been invaded by Trump's scum too?
If anything, it appears that Minnesota/Minneapolis are under-discussed relative to Iran, no?