Well anyone who has dealt with ICE, Border Patrol this does not even remotely surprise me. I had a French-American friend who went to France without his daughter's American passport. When he returned back the Agent did not even ask to see the little girls passport.

Had this guy been Latino he would be called a child smuggler.

Strange stuff happens when exiting France when you're not white too. I was in line at the exit control, and the black family ahead of me had issues because they couldn't provide the passport they entered the country with (they came for renewal of their French passport, the Prefecture had it, they were exiting on their Canadian passport). I was completely baffled at the policeman harassing freaking Canadian citizens exiting the country.

The passport control officers were probably upset/suspicious because they couldn't establish when the family entered the country (or schengen zone), and thus couldn't confirm that they hadn't overstayed.

From the officer's perspective, here's this Canadian with no entry stamp in their passport. One would assume that the usual procedure for expats to renew their passport is to do it through the embassy or consulate in their country of residence.

Probably because it's not 1 million Swedes entering the country illegally every year.

To be fair, it's not 1 million of anyone entering the country illegally every year.

70k arrested for illegal border crossing in march only. I would say it's definitely more than a million if you count the ones who didn't get arrested

well you can't assume who is downvoting

but the mods will tell you that it is "noisy" at the beginning and that you can't glean anything from it

they'll also tell you that you can't talk about voting (an interpretation of their site guidelines, when convenient), so you can't complain about it or even talk about it as that will also attract downvotes

and they'll also simultaneously believe that it is accurate for downvoted people to be rate-limited for hours on end, preventing them from even responding to a thread that could change how people view their original downvoted message, until any message that doesn't currently have consensus is censored completely and the "noise maker" is shadowbanned

there aren't that many mods here. would be nice if this was a little more holistic

except there's no need to make shit up, the CBP conveniently also publishes statistics regarding the total number of apprehensions every year, broken down by month. unlike you, who presumably got the information from Trump on Twitter, I will post my source: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/201...

the total number of apprehensions every year for the past 12 fiscal years has been less than 1 million per year. and no, you cannot assume that the number of people of people that didn't get apprehended is some arbitrarily selected multiple of that number, because one, reputable sources estimate that the number of actual individuals entering the country is on the same order of magnitude as the number of apprehensions (because many people are apprehended more than once), and two, because that's completely moronic.

Sigh. So where's your source that apprehensions ~= illegal entries? Intuitively it makes sense to me that more people get in than are caught, but I don't have data. Nor do I see how you can accurately count the number of people you didn't catch...

https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06770.pdf via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_entry#United_States

that's exactly what I said. Approx 70k per month comes out to approx 840k per year. THATS ONLY THE ONES WHO GOT ARRESTED. You can assume less than half got away without being arrested and you get a number that passes a million.

In no month has 70k been apprehended. The maximum was 66450 (so you are taking the max, rounding it up an projecting using that..)

Also the person you are replying to pointed out that this included people apprehended more than once.

> I would say it's definitely more than a million if you count the ones who didn't get arrested

With a lack of data it's not ok to just make numbers up.

First of all, could you please directly link to the source.

Second even if this number is accurate, it is misleading and I will attempt to put it in perspective.

People are coming to us border to claim asylum. They are unable to do that because border agents are understaffed (it's been like that since 2015 during Obama administration) and can only accept so many applications.

In the meantime they have to live in appalling conditions waiting for months to just apply for asylum, in this situation some people choose to cross 'illegally'. Source: https://www.gimletmedia.com/the-cut-on-tuesdays/the-women-of...

here you go https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration

That says "In FY18, a total of 396,579 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry on our Southwest Border."

It's on course to be higher this year, but well under 1 million.

What percentage of attempted crossings result in an apprehension? My impression of ICE/border patrol is that they're an ineffectual agency[s] who're wasting my tax dollars. Basically a glorified jobs program for mouth breathers who can't hack it as real cops, not unlike the TSA. Is that not the case? Are they actually good at their job?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa...

just because the conditions are appalling doesn't make doing illegal things okay. you don't see me break into my rich neighbors property and move into his garden cottage just because my house is in appalling condition.

if they 'stole a loaf' and left the house it would be ok but they are moving in to the kitchen to have constant access to the loafs, thats what makes it a problem. once they make it across the border, they still have to maintain decades of illegal lifestyle. the legal framework doesnt let them achieve a normal life where their hard work will afford them a decent life. the struggles and difficulties continue for them and keep pushing them into illegalities. just letting them in illegally doesnt solve a problem. it starts a long chain of other problems that sometimes ends up with them being deported 20 years later.

Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?

It might be illegal, but it is morally right.

To be fair, it was clear to me that was hyperbole and it got the point across, which is the purpose of language.

The only known terrorists to be apprehended coming overland into America came from the North.

At legal crossings, no different than flying into the US. Which, for that matter, is how the vast majority of known terrorists have gotten into the United States -- 100% of the 9/11 terrorists flew into the US.

When there is some sort of equivalency drawn between the Southern and Northern border it is usually founded on absolute nonsense. The Northern border likely sees more smuggling of both people and contraband (e.g. guns) North than the reverse.

But stopping terrorism is not the only purpose of ICE.

Enumerate those other purposes?

Is one of them to privilege a white majority?

Perhaps there's a reason so many call to abolish the institution.

It's in the damn name. Immigration enforcement. We have a legal immigration process in this country, many try to come here illegally. Without a border, you have no country.

Whatever the policy on the books is, we have a pretty clearly different actual policy resulting from the way ICE chooses to enforce the law: brown people who want to live here are treated strictly and with hostility and white people who want to live here are treated on the whole with more leniency.

You still have a border, just like the 50 US states have internal borders with each other. Why haven't they ceased to exist as discrete entities?

Permeable borders abound in nature. Trying to obstruct the natural behavior of migration is as foolish as trying to halt the tides and arguably causes worse economic distortions than it solves.

The Netherlands is better off for having dikes.

Because we're the United States. We're not the United Countries.

The "natural flow of migration"?

Fewer people come here illegally than come here legally and stay illegally.

Most of your "illegal immigrants" are legitimate visitors who overstay their visa.

The legal immigration process has been slowed to a crawl by the current administration[1]. Any claims that they simply wish for people to follow the legal process are entirely misleading, to the point of being reality-muddling propaganda. The administration is making the legal process harder, impossible in some cases[2], and is advocating for the shutdown of many legal avenues, even those that the president's family themselves have used to attain status here[3].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19547565

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/trumps-...

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/nyregion/melania-trumps-p...

Counting by those apprehended is a pretty poor metric. Correlation, blah, blah, blah

>>Just seems like ICE employees are only targeting latinos... intentionally. And that's the most bothering part of this to me. We're cool with Swedes overstaying their welcome...

Different teams deal with visa overstaying. In that area, most of illegal immigrants are almost certainly latinos. I guess that if a group of 14 Nigerian males showed up at Motel 6, they'd call ICE too.

Seems reasonable to look more heavily on Latinos. Not that I agree with it but if your jobs success is determined by metrics, then you're gonna go for the lowest fruit. We're not that concerned with illegals from halfway around the world were concerned with the southern border, hence us building a wall just ok the south.

Again I don't agree but it's not hard to see why an agent would make that particular decision if they did.

The article is misleading and there's no indication there was any intent to target Latinos, rather, as a result of the handover, Latinos ended up being targeted i.e. if Latinos are more likely on ICE's target list (entirely plausible) than this is going to happen after cross referencing. Edit: re-reading now and it indicates ICE was highlighting Latino names specifically.

From the article:

> "According to our interviews with employees at Motel 6," he told NPR's Scott Simon, "ICE agents would circle the names that looked Latino-sounding and ran those names through a database and then would detain individuals based on those random checks."

Seems pretty intentional targeting to me.

Yes, I re-read that and that definitely implies some kind of filtering, my bad.

> We're cool with Swedes overstaying their welcome...

I think it has less to do with "being cool with Swedes", and more to do with the fact that illegal immigrants are -- statistically speaking -- overwhelming Hispanic, and anyone identifying illegals will have better results among Hispanics.

I don't think anyone is more cool with a Swede conducting a terrorist attack than an Arab. Rather, any tenancy to profile Arabs as terrorists comes from the fact that most terrorists are Arabic.

---

This is not to justify the practice of racial profiling. I merely assert that the motivations for racial profiling stems more from actual statistics and cost-benefit analysis than intrinsic irrational racism as I think you suggest.

Actual statistics show most terrorists are not Arab, they're homegrown right-wingers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-...

The majority of terrorists/murders/rapists/etc in nearly every country will be whatever is the largest demographic. That's not surprising.

>I merely assert that the motivations for racial profiling stems more from actual statistics and cost-benefit analysis than intrinsic irrational racism as I think you suggest.

That doesn't make racial profiling any more ethical or correct. The evidence is so overwhelming that intrinsic irrational racism is part of the reason why it is done. That evidence includes direct rhetoric of the current administration.

It is done because an overwhelming majority of those entering the country illegal are hispanic. There isn't much more to it than that. It's not racism just because they happen to be the race doing it. If it were any other race it would be treated the exact same way.

If I could convince you that the largest block of visa overstays are from Canada, and that a good chunk of them are from European countries, would you reconsider whether targeting Hispanic people is racist?

https://www.statista.com/chart/9550/foreign-citizens-who-ove...

Yes, so long as most illegal immigrantion is visa overstays.

Most illegal immigration is visa overstays.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/686056668/for-seventh-consecu...

Then we have some non-intuitive results.

Because the majority of the U.S.'s 11 million illegal immigrants are Mexican, and 80% are from Central and South America. [1]

[1] Migration Policy Institute, 2015 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/analysis-unauthoriz...

Are most of these Canadian visa holed up in the various Motel 6s in the Washington area? I imagine the ICE fished in this area, because it was a good spot to catch fish. In general, I don't think much of the government, but I am sure they have metrics. The local ICE satrap isn't going to keep sending people to Motel 6 if they aren't catching any fish.

It's amazing the mental acrobatics that people go through to try to find an after-the-fact justification for targeted racist policy.

The administration is run by white supremacists. They overtly and covertly signal their support for neo-nazis, and have campaigned on their overt bias against hispanic immigrants.

Where is Occam's Razor in this case? Why is this simple explanation invalidated by a more complex one?

Why was this particular policy started under Obama? Interested to hear your mental acrobatics.

Let me apply Occam's Razor, a lot of government employees are lazy, so going to the Motel 6 makes sense. Get the names, run some queries, arrest some people, hit my target number, the boss is happy. We have been doing this since 2015, why fix it, if it isn't broken.

Why do you assume Obama was or could have been any better?

The same people held power in 2015: Graham, McConnell, Sessions. The same media institutions toed the line. McCain got the whole nationalist jingoism ball rolling with Sarah Palin on his ticket.

Because Obama is in charge of the Executive Branch, the President sets policy and Obama was President for 8 years.

I also don't have this cognitive dissonance where I blame the current occupant of an office for the policy his predecessor started.

I hold to account whoever has power now. I don't play the "whataboutism" game, because it is unwinnable. There was always someone in the past that has done worse.

What matters is progress.

No, you are not. You are blaming Trump for a policy that was started when Obama was President. This isn't a "whataboutism" situation. When called on it, you tried to blame Republican Senators, even though they were in the minority when this policy was started.

I'm blaming Trump for continuing and amplifying the policy's negative effects. Hundreds of families have been separated by border enforcement without any records[1]. Children are being taken from their mothers and fathers and forcibly adopted via agencies run by white evangelical churches[2]. You're trying to deflect from the actual, unprecedented harm being caused now to people on the border by pointing at history.

Even the fact underlying your basic premise is wrong: Republicans had the majority in both houses of congress in January 3, 2015[3], gaining the Senate after having held the House since January 3, 2011. They continued to hold both in majority until the past midterm elections seated a Democratic house majority this January.

1. https://www.vox.com/2019/2/21/18234767/parents-separated-chi...

2. https://newrepublic.com/article/149161/uncertain-fate-migran...

3. https://ballotpedia.org/114th_United_States_Congress

You are correct, the Republicans were in charge of the Senate in 2015 when this policy was in effect. I acknowledge my mistake.

This is something that you are unwilling to do. This post is on a particular policy started during the Obama administration. You blamed it on Trump. When called on it, you change the subject and accuse me of deflection.

>It's amazing the mental acrobatics that people go >through to try to find an after-the-fact justification >for targeted racist policy.

So if I understand your mindset correctly, blaming Trump is your way of creating an after-the-justification for Obama's targeted racist policy.

For the record, I don't find your mental acrobatics amazing, just lazy. It seems like it all flows from "Orange Man Bad".

You're trying to get me to say Obama was bad? Yeah, he was. Locking up the unaccompanied Central American kids and incentivizing Mexico to deter migration behind the scenes while putting on a sympathetic face was bad.

That doesn't change the fact that "Orange Man" is in charge now, and is exacerbating the bad policy, AND is encouraging people to hate on top of it. His people are ripping kids out of their parent’s arms. He’s rallying white supremacists, calling entire ethnicities rapists and entire countries shitholes.

You’re looking for excuses to pin the pinheaded totalitarian’s decisions on someone else. It’s always someone else’s fault in MAGAland.

I keep looking for excuses?

Let's recap:

I blamed the Motel 6 policy on the local ICE satrap. No you said, that is amazing mental acrobatics, it is Orange Man's fault. I point out the policy started out under Obama. You change the subject to the Border and accuse me of trying to pin Obama's policy on Obama. I never mentioned the Border, that was you changing the subject.

Wouldn't it been easier to just admit you didn't read the article carefully and you didn't notice the dates?

Maybe in your land admitting a mistake isn't allowed, perhaps there is this fear that it diminishes the Badness of Orange Man.