Should the federal government be tracking our interpersonal relationships?
Should an immigration officer be privy to the timing and manner of communications that I, a citizen, have with other citizens? Why?
Why should ICE be able to collect this information when domestic law enforcement generally has to show probable cause to a judge to gather similar information? Who decided to make ICE the country's supreme law enforcement agency?
Related, ICE is arresting citizens on fake immigration charges[1]. Some US citizens have been deported.
US citizens "can't" be deported, but ICE has supralegal powers. Should we have a law enforcement agency that is not bound by our laws? Why? What guardrails does it have if not law? Who defines those guardrails?
1 - https://projects.propublica.org/american-citizens-detained-d...
The entire experiment here is to bring the surveillance apparatus' of dictatorships to the US. They no doubt see the durability of these dictatorships and one-party states around the world and are drooling at the prospect of running it in the US.
The really weird thing is, how people/journalists don't seem to untangle who's behind them. Or what their actual game is.
The perceived tail is wagging with the dog and the echo chamber on the left believes it to be just another craziness.
It's a luxury when nobody takes you seriously, you get away with the most incredible stuff.
we've known this forever
turns out nobody cares as long as gas is cheap
That's what I'm talking about: people have no clue, but presume they did anyway.
Look at who actually benefits from Trumpism.
Pinning it on this or that billionaire is simplistic at best. You have to actually look at what's happening on the right, not just parrot tropes.
That becomes much less likely when they are allowed to become overly partisan. The officials who wield power lose the ability to distinguish between civic duty and the rule of law, and loyalty to the party itself.
Until that's true, the 2nd amendment is meaningless when USAF can buy JDAMs and F35s and I, an American citizen, cannot.
Even if you could spend alike in aggregate, who maintains them? Where is the secondary military drilling people on tactics and/or strategy?
Nah, the 2nd never did what its proponents claimed, not even in the old days.
A DOJ with its ducks in a row would be charging this left and right.
Unless he pardons literally every ICE agent, a new administration can and certainly should levy all kinds of charges. That's one reason folks have been documenting so much about what's going on even if it can't be stopped right now.
Maybe the Republicans are worse, I don't particularly give a shit. They're both horrible and anti-American on this issue and nothing will change without systemic changes.
This is surveillance as part of a department that explicitly says it is not bound by US law or the Constitution.
All of that makes this program materially different than any other US domestic surveillance program or proposal of which I am aware.
Did you miss the Snowden reporting? How much do you think those programs cost? Whenever you hear someone’s political analysis contain “The Republicans…” “The Democrats…” you can be sure they have no grasp on how DC works.
ie: 25 years of Patriot Act renewal, Flock rollouts in liberal cities, Obama’s pursuit of Snowden and not the NSA itself
There is certainly liberal leadership concerned with our rights, just as there are conservatives, but they are the minority under both partisan umbrellas.
[0] Most things are decided long before SCOTUS involvement, and most courts are liberal-leaning.
[1] Republicans are far short of a supermajority in the Senate so nothing passes Congress without Democratic votes
[2] The White House is always singularly partisan by definition, what Democratic counterbalance you expect to see in a Republican White House, or vice versa?
If I take for granted that the waterline surveillance increases under previous administrations (and i do, i implicitly conceded it) then the only meaningful discussion is then on its magnitude.
So you tell me, are Republicans going further with this program than before? And furthermore, are Republican courts and Republican congresses going to curtail it at any point?
I already know my answers to this, but if i'm going to be criticized I think it should be against the meaningful alternative facing us where Republicans retain control of these branches.
this isn't Europe, so if you make that claim, you have to define "liberal"
> Republicans are far short of a supermajority in the Senate so nothing passes Congress without Democratic votes
in fact that's not how it works! read up on reconciliation and how ICE got funded
> [2] The White House is always singularly partisan by definition, what Democratic counterbalance you expect to see in a Republican White House, or vice versa?
both sides that fucker, good and hard, better things aren't possible woo!
Doesn't matter if the damage is already done. Raise dead doesn't exist in the real world. And the courts don't decide things. The executive has proven it will just ignore the courts.
> Republicans are far short of a supermajority in the Senate so nothing passes Congress without Democratic votes
First, this it 100% not true, and secondly, if you ignore congress, it doesn't matter. And once again, the damage is already done by the time congress gets around to it.
> The White House is always singularly partisan by definition, what Democratic counterbalance you expect to see in a Republican White House, or vice versa?
Expect? None. Hope for? Basic respect to the rule of law to start. But with pdf in the white house, all bets are off.
Political leadership doesn't want civil discourse until it becomes a self-preservation concern for them, same with data centers.
So let's not conflate the two, ok?
It is “don’t expect the Democrat party to save us when they come back into power at the Federal level. With regard to erosion of privacy rights, I don’t see a positive track record for them.
Please surface to me what I’m missing and I’m happy to change my mind.
It's the same core group of people controlling the centers of power in both parties for many years now, and it's not realistic to expect meaningful change for as long as they remain in power
You know what's funny, everything you said is valid, but, I've never seen this much outrage over flock cameras on here or on most tech forums. It's actually the opposite. Somehow spying is ok if they like the company.
A lot of users here have vocally admitted that having Flock cameras was okay because they were a HOA member and it gave them security of some sort and they had "nothing to hide"
Another example was Anthropic getting caught stenographically marking requests[1] and Anthropic's response when they got caught was simply "it was just an experiment" and everyone on here said it's okay.
> Why? What guardrails does it have if not law? Who defines those guardrails?
I wish we asked this question to all our favorite tech companies too, this being a tech forum and all.
[1] https://thereallo.dev/blog/claude-code-prompt-steganography
Are we on the same platform? Search Flock on HN, below are the top results
Stop Flock
Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves
This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers
US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera
YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras
Flock CEO calls Deflock a “terrorist organization” (2025) [video]
I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program
Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed
An interactive map of Flock Cams
Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics
Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera
Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
Flock Hardcoded the Password for America's Surveillance Infrastructure 53 Times
I have entirely the opposite impression of HN - I feel like I hear a huge amount of (rightful) resistance to that kind of surveillance.
https://www.newsweek.com/democratic-bill-abolish-ice-shut-do...
Ya, I am a fan of the coast guard... and I think we need the FAA/TSA to keep the planes running on time. And FEMA might be laughed at in some quarters but a federal disaster response is something we should have ahead of hurricane season.
No, what happens to the grouped-whole is not necessarily what happens to the parts.
You should rethink your position as it's not going to give you the electoral wins you think it will.
This is a huge, wealthy country. There's plenty of room and economic opportunity. The undocumented are not the problem. They're scape goated.
But even setting all that aside, ICE and DHS need fundamental reform, so might as well abolish them and create new agencies with all new employees.
This part always pisses them off for some reason and any conversations around this cannot be had in a civil manner here without suppression. It's a real insult to people who spent years, sometimes decades, coming into a country legally.
You know what does insult me? Members of the current administration demonizing people who did the same thing as they and their families do/did. I don't see ICE raiding Melania's penthouse for working illegally as a model or entering the country on a fraudulent visa (she was a "model" of no repute in her home country, for an agency whose largest claims to fame were involvement in prostitution and sex trafficking rings, not who they got on the cover of magazines. She certainly didn't meet, not even close, the bar of "who possesses extraordinary ability" or "who has a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement"). Or Elon, who worked, openly, and famously for startups while here on a non-employment authorizing student visa.
That insults and offends me. Not the common person eking out a life for themselves or their family.
The reason this "pisses off" us freedom loving people is we're sick of hearing your hyperbolic talking points repeated as if they have any bearing on the argument whatsoever, while you continue to glibly talk past the relevant criticism of how you're actually cheering on the destruction of our country.
A bunch of people crossing a border illegally can't destroy a country - just like how some planes being flown into office towers can't either. However, throwing our rights, values, and institutions in the trash as a "response" does.
But, right wing must always lie.
This statistic is completely false. But you can use is as a good credibility filter. Media figures and politicians who make this claim are liars - stop believing what they say. You'll become much more well informed overnight.
An estimated 2-2.5 million immigrants were allowed to reside in the US as immigration cases were pending. Most came through ports of entry, some crossed "illegally" (a misdemeanor).
There were an estimated ~9 million apprehensions. This is the number they cite to mislead you. Apprehensions does not mean 9 million unique people, nor does it mean they all now reside in the US.
Most of those people were deported or ejected. And most of those were actually the same people trying to cross multiple times. An unintended consequence of Title 42 (the covid restrictions imposed during Trump term) was an explosion in repeat crossing attempts.
Formal deportation makes it a felony to return. Under Title 42 though people were just ejected without formal deportation and could try again without consequence. Cartels/Smugglers even started selling packages that involved multiple tries to cross the border.
But lets be clear - its US public that allowed this, over and over. Saner candidates were suppressed as not patriotic enough, entire worse than pointless wars were waged and millions died for nothing. Not US passport holders so I guess thats just an afterthought.
Dont expect rollback in your lifetime. We havent reached even the bottom yet, not with current voting mindset. Still this is what US population wants, I don't see >200 millions even just protesting.
Only when the comprehensiveness of this 1984 is presented in an unflattering way like "we're gonna snoop on everything so ICE can round people up" (or an AI camera goes up on every street corner) do they even become uneasy.
Since he is the face of the Republican party, voters understand they are evaluating his decisions and performance since 2024, and will be voting accordingly.
Source: I'm a naturalized citizen.
Naturalized citizens can be deported and their citizenship can be revoked in cases of violent crime or other immoral behavior. That information is provided when swearing in.
It's more accurate to say that US citizens who are law abiding and moral, or who are born in the US, can't be deported.
US citizens cannot be deported.
Naturalized citizens cannot be deported for crimes they commit after they became citizens.
Naturalized citizens who obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means can have their citizenship revoked. Then, they are not citizens and can be deported.
US citizens cannot be deported.
(There should be a time limit on revocation after which citizenship becomes permanent and irrevocable.)
* https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship
More context:
* https://vertexlegal.org/what-causes-american-citizen-lose-ci...
The government should only get a finite period of time to press the issue. (Like with most crimes.)
Also, with this administration, if you didn't dot an 'i' or cross a 't' somewhere in your paperwork, citizenship can be revoked.
Basically, if they catch you in any kind of lie. It's fraud.
Could be ex post facto and seemingly innocuous act unconnected to paperwork as well. You came in. Applied for asylum. Went through the process. And, finally, you were naturalized.
Only you traveled back to your hometown in your country of origin at some point. Before or after naturalization.
Boom.
They got you. That's fraud.
Everyone needs to stay extra careful going forward.
Say more about this. You are hinting at a kind of conditional citizenship that I do not believe exists under US law.
Are you suggesting that there is a class of citizens who did not commit fraud on their naturalization paperwork, yet who are barred from travel to countries that other citizens are able to travel to?
* The US passport lists your place of birth, barring you from entry into certain other countries, if you were born in countries they don't agree with.
* Your citizenship can be revoked and you can be deported as we discussed above.
* You cannot be elected to certain offices.
This is not a restriction placed by the US government, is it?
There really should be a time limit on revocation.
re: offices, it's just President & VP that are (Constitutionally) off the table, right?
"Some US citizens have been deported" is also a mischaracterization. Aside from minor children of deported parents, the only case where an American citizen was deported was Brian Morales Garcia.
There is no such thing as a legitimate immigration charge levied against a person born in Chicago or Los Angeles. It's definitionally fake, even if ICE says otherwise. This is part of the reason they deport people before the courts can weigh in.
> "Some US citizens have been deported" is also a mischaracterization
You are simply wrong on this, as you admit in your next sentence. I wonder at the motive for knowingly something flagrantly incorrect, then admitting as much in the next sentence.
In any case, the link I provided includes links to cases where native-born US citizens have been illegally deported without due process. In one case, the prosecutor admitted that the deportations were illegal. But because ICE is supralegal and does not follow due process, those citizens never went before a judge before being deported.
The link recounts one case, the one I mentioned, Garcia, and the circumstances around his deportation are complex at best. No question that ICE was mistaken on the facts, but the situation was complex -- he had crossed the border into the US illegally; he did have a Mexican passport with a different spelling of his name. I am not aware of any others and the propublica does not cite any others. Please give names if you are aware of any.
My claim was that you mischaracterized the propublica article and I stand by it. You claimed that US citizens were being detained on fake immigration charges and this is not the case (Garcia was a mistake but the charges were not fake, they were just incorrect). You claimed that US citizens have been deported, and the article only provided a single example, which does not support the claim of "people", that being the plural of "person".
It also highlights the importance of adherence to the due process guarantees of the Constitution; Garcia was deported before being allowed to prove his citizenship in court. A US citizen is allowed to have had a passport issued in another country; how else would a naturalized citizen have arrived in the US in the first place, except with a passport in their name? The main point here is the Constitution prescribes how all this is to be handled, and ICE does not want to do it that way so they don't. That's a huge problem here.
Anyway, you asked for names. I'll just pull from the ProPublica database. Most of these boil down to ICE habitually violating Constitutional due process. I'm omitting "obstruction" charges. This person:
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/bronx-man-wrongfully-de...
These two people were deported on fake immigration charges, and then deported. Two individuals, "people," being the plural of "person." "Fake" charges, because people born here are not subject to immigration charges.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/03/12/orlando-born-twin...
This citizen was illegally arrested:
https://www.investigatemidwest.org/a-new-immigration-strateg...
I am going to pause here to remind you that citizens are not required to carry proof of citizenship. Even if they don't "look American." Many/most Americans do not own a picture ID that proves their citizenship. Fewer carry one. Most children do not have picture IDs at all.
And why should they? We are not required to do carry proof of citizenship, even if we are physically proximate to people who are not here legally. Which none of us generally know about the people near us. Outside of my family, I have only seen a handful of citizenship documents of other people I assume are citizens. I would not testify to anyone's citizenship outside of my family, whose citizenship documents I personally procured.
Here's a citizen being arrested because ICE agents did not like his accent. Again, a reminder that many citizens, even of those born here, have accents. That does not change their citizenship in any way or require them to carry proof of citizenship.
https://www.kptv.com/2026/01/18/border-patrol-agent-detains-...
Et cetera.
"how else would a naturalized citizen have arrived in the US in the first place, except with a passport in their name?" -- part of the complexity of the case, as I note, is that he did in fact enter illegally, smuggled across the border. He did not have to enter illegally; he could have simply presented his passport at any border crossing (or, lacking a passport, an affadavit), but nonetheless he did.
The second case was minor children. Known by ICE and immigration judges to be citizens. Deported deliberately to accompany their mother. This was in conflict with the mother's expressed wish for them to remain with other relatives. At no point were the children charged with any sort of immigration crime, fake or otherwise.
I agree that American citizens are not required to carry proof of citizenship and agree that they should not be required to present papers to prove citizenship.
But you are describing a world that does not exist. No US citizens are being deported mistakenly (Garcia being the lone exception). Notably, this has not always been the case -- under previous administrations there have been numerous cases of citizens being deported, but in the Trump administrations this has not been the case (with the exception of Garcia). We are not living in a nightmarish dystopia.
You wanted to nitpick my characterization of ICE arresting US citizens of fake immigration charges. Now you characterize ICE as making up bogus "obstruction" charges to arrest US citizens. I'm not sure it matters what fake (or, I'll use the synonym you prefer: "bogus") charge goes on the sheet. By nitpicking, you've conceded that there should be masked secret police harassing US citizens over whom they have no jurisdiction.
You are not willing to engage with the core problem issue that I have raised repeatedly, which is that ICE engages in Constitutional violations as a standard operating procedure. For that reason, I'm out.
Don't fall into the conspiracy theory trap. ICE can be bad even if they aren't demonic agents of evil. When you believe dramatic but untrue and easily disproven things your world view is going to continue to disconnect from reality.
On what grounds were those children deported? They were US citizens who had family who were US citizens, whose parents have, in some cases assigned guardianship to said families.
Why were they deported? Citizens who as you say, were not charged with any sort of immigration crime.
Why were they deported? Farcical deportation hearings with 2 year olds (and in one case, an 11 month old in a car seat) "defending themselves" "pro se" against ICE lawyers arguing for deportation over again, as you acknowledge: US citizens, not charged with a crime. Because however much Trump would not like it to be (and for positively hilarious irony, Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka all benefited from it), birthright citizenship is still a thing, and neither a post on Truth Social or an EO override the Constitution.
If that ends up being the case, then you're talking a reality where American citizens become the target of warrantless domestic surveillance, using data collected by the NSA. Every phone call, e-mail, text message, DM, group chat; anything a person has ever said or done in their digital lives going back years.
It's worse now with AI, because human effort is no longer required to read intercept transcripts or conversations. Instantaneous surfacing of dirt/leverage.
in fact it sounds uncannily similar to what a bunch of organizations in USSR were doing to citizens, like NKVD and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka
And if you think: "Why would they want to do that?", consider that even something stupid like someone misinterpreting a gesture or working for a competitor of a company the regime currently favours can get you there.
They don't need to, because the US has a finely honed system of railroading.
They push captured migrants through the system to deportation via a "rocket docket" and our rubber stamp justice system.
The system being discussed simply allows them to lay their hands on more migrants to feed that existing quick deportation pipeline.
It's worse than disappearing people. Disappearing people implies they need to hide what they're doing from an objectionable public. Clearly, the people currently in power are blessed with a constituency they don't need to hide from.
It's also really unhelpful to act like deportation under any* circumstances is WORSE than enforced disappearance, which generally involves murder and anonymous disposal of remains. I don't like how we're treating migrants and I believe that immigration is one of our greatest advantages over countries that reject it. I can still maintain enough objectivity to tell the difference between disgustingly harsh "push vs pull" tactics and organized mass murder.
I'm sure Trump has had plenty of input from Putin about all this. Even if he's not formally an "asset", it's more a case of shared goals.
Whatever functions we need can be rebuilt from scratch later. But this is a rebuild moment, not a refactor moment.
look at the longevity of the Patriot Act - once in place ("because of X!") it's extremely difficult to kill as all kinds of forces work against killing it and it's easy to scare the public about "what will happen if it's not there"
They will have the power to at very least lay off every person involved. But will they? Probably not (your point). Trump (illegally) shut down the DOE and USAID by simply firing everyone employed there.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
"Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I wish we had a functional congress that was actually motivated to do their job.
https://citizensimpeachment.com/active-impeachments/
All of the impeachment resolutions are dying in committee, too.
* Which US citizens have been abducted and by who? Which have been killed?
* Which US citizens found themselves in US detention centers (without lawful arrest) ?
* Which US citizens were placed in other countries without judicial review?
As far as I can tell:
No US citizens have been deported. No US citizens have been detained after evidence of their citizenship has been produced, which is a fast process in practice (taking a few hours), and has affected a few hundred people in total swept up during larger enforcement operations. The worst examples I can find are "At least 36 citizens were held at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or family." No US citizens have died in detention, nor been killed. In detention, deaths have risen on previous years, but are due to existing medical issues being untreated rather than anyone being killed.
But for just a taste, here's a propublica article on the matter.
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
It's unclear how that number could be "0" if there's any immigration enforcement at all. That is: supposing a person is likely to be present without authorisation in the country, and is unable to offer any evidence of citizenship, then what?
It seems this is an incredibly small number for such a large operation, ie., the worst case treatment of US citizens appears to be 36 held for a day.
Could this be improved? Presumably.
In the US, we believe people are innocent until proven guilty. The way this number can be 0 is by ICE and CBP doing the bare minimum investigation "Is this person here legally" before arresting, not after.
There are, of course, situations that make that particularly difficult to determine, for example at home birth and homeschooling. But that's a burden for the state to resolve, not the individual.
> supposing a person is likely to be present without authorisation in the country, and is unable to offer any evidence of citizenship, then what?
It's not their burden to show citizenship or authorization. Before being arrested the state should have gone through a process "Is this person a citizen? where do they work? Do they have an SSN? Do they have school records or is there a birth certificate?" These are all tasks for the state to do before arresting someone.
> It seems this is an incredibly small number for such a large operation,
1. It's entirely too large, particularly because citizenship can be determined before arresting.
2. This is only what has been found by journalists, not the sum total of illegal arrests. Like I said, ICE is specifically trying to obfuscate their operations (the article mentions it) specifically to get around thing like FOIA requests to see how often these false arrests happen.
> Could this be improved?
There's almost no way it couldn't be improved.
> These are all tasks for the state to do before arresting someone.
There were certainly done in the case of these 36. That isnt the issue. The issue is that there are some non-zero pool of US citizens, who associate with non-US citizens illegally in the country, who cannot readily prove their citizenship. Since they are present with illegal immigrants, and are reasonably suspected of being one, they are reasonably detained.
> There's almost no way it couldn't be improved.
This indicates you aren't aware of the issues involved.
No one thinks its a good thing for US citizens to be mistakenly detained. The onus is on people who agree that there should be some level of immigration enforcement to explain how a perfect process avoids 100% of all such cases.
If you dont want immigration enforcement, that's a clearer position. Then the question is: what does the US owe to non-citizens who have build nothing, and paid nothing? If the answer is "nothing" you've got a lot of homelesssness, medical, etc. issues to address --- if your answer is "something" then you've got 8bn people on the planet, and the question is: how much?
Yes it absolutely does. Cops need more than just a hunch before they can arrest someone. They need clear articulable evidence that the person they are arresting more than likely committed a crime. That's what the 4th amendment protects.
For obvious reasons, we don't just allow cops to go out and arrest people on no grounds. Only ICE seems to get that benefit.
> There were certainly done in the case of these 36.
No it wasn't, they wouldn't be arrested if it was done before.
> who associate with non-US citizens illegally in the country
We have the freedom of association (1st amendment and NAACP v. Alabama). There's no such thing as "illegal association".
> This indicates you aren't aware of the issues involved.
Oh I'm aware that there are a number of racist people who want mass deportation and don't care who gets swept up in it. The problem they have is you can't do mass deportation and due process, which is why ICE has abandoned due process. So, people like yourself defend that abrogation because you like the thought of a few more mexicans being thrown into CECOT.
We can stop pretending that's not the "issues involved".
At this point, I dont think i'm talking to a person offering arguments in good faith. Nothing you've said advances or clarifies how such a procedure could be enacted, and your replies are simply restatements of your assumption.
If you think this is bad faith, fine. I think you just don't have a strong retort other than "I don't like that idea".
I don't think that such a thing is possible, for any effective enforcement procedure. I think all effective procedures of any kind, which exist in the real world, have an error rate. And error rates, for any real procedure, are never zero. And all government policy, which incidentally here arises from overwhelming democratic support, exists in the real world.
If you want to say A) "the only permissible enforcement procedure is one which is error free" and B) "such an enforcement procedure is possible" then I deny both premises. If you are saying something else: what's your allowed error rate?
My arguments against A, B i've already given. To accept A is to say that the government has arbitrarily high costs for either: 1) perfect enforcement or no borders: ie., if such a perfect procedure is possible, its costs are arbitrarily high (how does one in every possible case, spend arbitarily long amount of time, in arbitary situations, determining if a person is a US citzien? flawlessly ); or 2) if it isn't, then a borderless country which raises taxes and has social systems thereby awards all people within travel distance benefits from these.
As for B) this follows, a priori, from a claim that all real-world processes have error rates. To be more specific: immigration enforcement is a social process involving: people, human judgement, a wide vareity of unusual situations, and so on. At each stage there are signficant rates of error which follow from this.
Then don't arrest them and send them to a concentration camp would be a great start. The onus should be on the arresting officer to have a reasonable suspicion that the person in question is in the US without proper authorization (with reasonable suspicion being a pretty high bar, much higher than it currently is).
We have a court system. ICE even has their own special extra-judicial court system. There is absolutely zero need to proactively be disappearing people just because some guy who's only training is that Family Guy meme decided that this particular brown person needs to have their life destroyed.
Also, these detention centers are horrific and something history will not judge kindly, especially given that "the cruelty is the point" seems to be the guiding light for the folks building them.
36 US citizens being incorrectly and illegally arrested is 36 too many. Period. End of story.
Demand better of our government, not "eh, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet."
My question is: suppose they have such suspicion.
> 36 US citizens being incorrectly and illegally arrested is 36 too many. Period. End of story.
This doesnt really make any sense. Since you want to say that the process of immigration enforcement must be designed to never make a mistake that places a US citizen in detention for any amount of time, i assume that your real goal is to end all immigration enforcement.
It would be better if you said that, rather than laundered your view thru a claim about the possibility and necessity of perfect enforcement.
OK, fair enough. By this logic, those Jan 6th protesters who placed themselves between police and buildings/crowds such that they were injured/killed/etc. by the police -- those people get to cancel a federal election. For, if we cannot have elections without people dying, then presumably there should be none?
Being responsible for telling otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants that they need to leave is not a violent job, thus they don't need to be armed.
You don't need to murder someone to remove a heckler, especially one that you have zero jurisdiction over.
Its unclear how other than requiring the process to be perfect, and without any error at all, that the number could be much lower.
And such a requirement is, in practice, impossible. So requiring the number to be 0 is to require there to be no immigration enforcement at all.
did you speak out?
because those of us who marched in the streets and got tear gassed in front of ICE facilities did speak out
and brave souls like Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed for speaking out
And what did you do about it? Probably the same as the rest of us.. nothing that actually matters.
We have no power except a vote. Our country is too big (physically) to effectively protest. Our wealth distribution is too large. Our social safety nets are laughable. People can't even take time off work to protest, or if they just didn't show up they can be fired without recourse.
Our country and government is basically built for the people having no actual power. We are at the mercy of the ultra rich that control everything and a large majority of all of our "elected" officials.
If everyone who was allowed to vote actually voted, I think there's a reasonably high chance we'd have better politicians. As it stands, there's this pretend "virtue" from a bunch of pseudo-intellectual morons who think they're cool by abstaining from their right to vote, and dedicate a lot of time trying to convince people that their votes don't matter.
Cynicism is always tempting but ultimately lazy; if they votes didn't matter then there wouldn't be politicians wasting their time trying to make it hard or impossible for you to vote.
The Serbians did that for two years straight, until their government resigned and called for new elections. Look at videos from a protest: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1jc29fk/breathtakin...
If a much poorer country with (for now!) much worse repression can do it, what's your excuse, Americans?
Politics isn't just the ballot box every couple of years. Politics is always and everywhere.
There were larger protests at ICE concentration camps but ICE made it clear that they'd use deadly force to disperse them. From the Left, the worry was that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act to suspend elections, deploy the military, etc.
That is, of course, the minimal thing, but I think we'd have way better elections if people just used this fundamental right.
[1] Yes yes I know about disenfranchisement for felonies and the like, you don't need to lecture me.
I will be voting, like I always have, but I live in a state where that's easy to do. This administration is testing the limits of what people will put up with.
The infra we are building for our future dictator is awesome.
They were legal, every last one of them. They were under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). There was no "law and order" justification to object to their presence. Didn't stop the GOP from going after them. Trump and Vance viciously attacked them with the full support of the conservative media. The administration repealed their TPS protection, turning people who had done no wrong into fugitives.
This is about race. Always has been. When they run out of "illegals", they'll turn people into "illegals". When they run out of immigrants entirely, they'll overturn the 14th Amendment and start stripping citizenship from native-born Americans of the wrong color. They've already tried just that, and three motherfuckers on the Supreme Court voted to let them.
For me personally, the conditions should be as safe or safer than the current conditions under which a person resides before considering removal of protective status, or else it would be cruel and inhumane to move them (to worse conditions).
I think preventing unnecessary human suffering should be the number one concern, do you not?
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
The people fleeing dangerous countries are not the ones making the country dangerous.
Yes, I’m sure we could make up plenty of rational-sounding reasons why we should deport some people. Trump is not doing that, though. He’s doing it because he’s racist, and he certainly doesn’t need the likes of you trying to make him sound sane.
> So the country is too dangerous because of the people? Why would we want people from one of the most dangerous places in the world in our country?
So it turns our you weren't "just asking questions" in good faith, but rather pushing the standard progressively-louder dog whistles. It always boils down to the collectivism of handwaving about "those people", doesn't it?
At this point I not longer give any credence to arguments about "immigration". There are legitimate criticisms to be made for sure, but they're utterly minuscule relative to this revanchist movement to destroy what little Constitutional liberties we have left.
Let's add some levity to the situation, and here's the link: https://youtu.be/EJR1H5tf5wE?si=lGJ7_L0IN31WNMKE
You will have to know someone personally or read sites that don't just reflect back your existing world view.
Good luck.
They never address the meat of the issue, it's always some sensationalist whataboutism. In this case, what about all the illegal immigration. Big scary urgent threat! No time to think about civil liberties! No time to consider the restrictions on the government written into its very charter! Oh but don't you know Democrats did bad stuff too!
I'm most certainly willing to update my views, and my characterization. But they would have to engage with the actual points being made, and they never do.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
It’s frustrating seeing people’s genuine questions being mocked.
If you really want their viewpoint, plenty of sob stories at https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/hot/
I really do hope that in the future this strategy will stop being necessary, or that we can at least restore the norms against it. But I'm not going to unilaterally disarm.
Forgive me, but hacker news is the only social media I participate in. Is this a pretty commonly held sentiment? Like are other social media users commenting on this trend? Any news articles? Thanks
This was a rumor based on a misunderstanding and has since been debunked. It was Yandex search crawler traffic that was reduced.
We do plenty of manipulation and divide-and-conquer on ourselves, which is heavily documented at least since the Cold War. No need to blame it all on outsiders, although certainly some of that is present as well.
You can't really understand a hypocrite by taking their public utterances at face value.
Trump is the prime example. If we want an accurate impression of what trump and his supporters believe, we should listen to trump right? Well Trump basically only says batshit stuff, so that doesn’t work.
But no we're like "oh so we have one candidate that wants to adjust the budget to fund some libraries and this other one that wants to build concentration camps and imprison transgendered people. Alright, let's allow both on the ballot"
Being a violent hateful ignorant bigot isn't a qualifying condition for administering civic life.
Never underestimate how much most Americans will gladly shit on their freedoms if they're told it will hurt someone slightly different than them.
As for swing voters, they really just wanted inflation to get under control. So they didn't even trade away their rights for DEI or migration control, just inflation. A bit disconcerting to see that people will so easily give away the very rights that people fought decades to have.
Did this actually happen though? Friends/family in e.g. Texas/California are unconvinced, and I don't think I ever saw any real data versus just scaremongering ("they're eating our cats and dogs").
The details are complicated, and higher numbers seem to come from the fact that usually _encounters_ are counted, in the wild and at ports of entry, which includes millions of people who were turned around, many of whom will have tried and been encountered multiple times.
The source is extremely comprehensive and deep, way beyond what I wrote above.
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigrat...
That being said, the HR bit that you also quoted from GP is a bad analogy. It should be clear that immigration is quite different than onboarding new hires, something a country literally built on immigration like the US is a testament to.
Edit: As someone is mentioning elsewhere in the thread, let's not forget that during the Biden admin there was a bipartisan immigration and border security bill, including many provisions previously demanded by the Republicans, that got rejected in a turnaround by the Republicans in the end in the election year.
(Also, this video is in reference to the legal fight between the federal Border Patrol and the Texas State government over Texas putting up razorwire at the border and barring Federal Agents from operating in certain locations along the border. A dramatic video, sure, but hardly the facts and data I think people would expect)
How many, specifically, is "millions upon millions upon millions" and why do you think a random video from a literal no one on X is proof of anything?
On what basis are you deciding what is or isn't an issue? You think right wing media doesn't talk about DEI and trans people all day? It's like the only issue they have left to win "middle America" over on.
Who likes seeing ICE thugs round up non criminals on the basis of skin color and nationality alone? Not enough of the middle. I'm seeing more and more Trump voters saying they didn't vote for this. The presidency is won on the Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump voter not on partisans. How many of these voters have articulated the same regret when it comes his policies re DEI or trans rights?
Maybe you are projecting because it's easier to come up with an excuse based on alleged economic malaise?
How common is the Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump voter? (Edit: I asked Gemini that question and it demurred). These would be the voters who don't really pay much attention until they get into the voting booth. I'm not sure, maybe that's up to 1/3 or if it's like 5% or less? I suppose it's possible that a chunk of the electorate just votes on feelz and that's pretty depressing.
I'm speaking about the Electoral College for President, which is rather notorious for making only a small fraction of the overall electorate count.
Theis issue with conservatives isn't the policy you believe in, the issue is that you are just so unbelievably ignorant of how the world works, to where you see an issue like migrants coming in, and think that its such a big problem that the best course of action is giving a flamethrower to a convicted felon rapist and likely a pedo (all the things you supposedly firmly stand against), and trusting him to burn just the right parts down with authoritative force (something you are also supposedly firmly against)
Furthermore, if you bothered to actually care, you would have paid attention, Dems completely would agree with you that undocumented migrants were a problem - Biden had a border bill that was bipartisan, supported by border patrol, that would have allocated all the correct funding to reign in the asylum process, which would have correctly filtered the people that were coming here to work, versus those taking advantage of the system. And consequently, Trump told the Republicans to vote against that bill because it would hurt his chances of getting elected.
So for people like you, it was never about the migrants - you don't actually care. It was always about racism and sexism. At least there isn't any questions about it anymore.
You can't sit back here and be upset that Trump decides to selectively enforce the law in the ways he sees fit while approving of the exact behavior when there's a different executive.
This is why the problem of executive power exists, people only care when they disagree and actively approve when they agree.
I dont make judgements about what a problem is based on whether a law says it is. You should be experiencing the world outside the framework of imaginerary legal constructs.
If America tends to create laws that are antithetical to common sense and goodness, maybe its the problem. Maybe we need to do away with the whole system, not patch it.
I think you've misjudged me, I think Biden, and Trump should be sharing the same jail cell. I dont approve of basically any US politician, they're all morally corrupt and outright evil.
That isn't the root of the problem at all. The root of the problem is we have certain laws that, under some administrations, are barely enforced. Then, under another administration, there are a large group of people who have been flouting the law because it wasn't being enforced.
You've now created huge class of people who have very tenous legal status, based on the whims of the executive. That's the problem.
US immigration laws are some of the most relaxed in the world. There's plenty of debate on whether that should change or not (and how). But circumventing the legislative process might make you feel good about the immediate problem but it creates a side effect of having an underclass of non-citizens that live under constant threat of deportation and have limited access to social programs.
The only judgement I've made of you is that you seem to think not enforcing the law based on personal feelings is right and you've only confirmed that.
In a democracy, the law isn't just some words on papers, it represents the collective moral judgement of the voting population. It is inherently antithetical to democracy to ignore laws you don't agree with.
> Maybe we need to do away with the whole system, not patch it.
Pretty ironic considering this entire situation is caused by people ignoring the system rather than patching it.
Now the submission has been flagged off the main page. Imagine that.
Will I have to pinch my nose to vote Democrat? Absolutely. Will I feel icky doing it? Absolutely. But will I do it anyway because it's the best choice given the current situation? Absolutely.
If you try to visualize this in action, replace somebody with a bad guy. And you quickly see there’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea.
Is this a joke?
I mean if I can choose, I want my tax money spent on making Americans healthier, but I don't get to choose. ICE has $70B to spend, this is just 1/700. I'm sure they will do more before next congress trying to crawl back their money.
You can say no.