I would say being tan has nothing to do with it, but...
The 6th Amendment guarantees the right to a lawyer during critical stages such as interrogation and court proceedings only, e.g. in California the window in which arraignment is guaranteed is 48 hours (this is where the court will offer defendants the opportunity for a court-appointed lawyer).
> The 6th Amendment guarantees the right to a lawyer
I think people arrested by ICE are not guaranteed a lawyer, because, as you say, it's a civil matter. This means if you find yourself sleeping on a cot behind a chain link fence in Alligator Alcatraz, and you want to speak to a lawyer, you'll have to pay for it yourself, because it's all a civil matter.
Are we great again?
The past few years of screaming "being undocumented is a civil infraction, not a crime" turned out to be a self-own.
Deportation is a civil treatment. It's one of the actions the government can use when you violate civil immigration laws:
The Court added that an alien being removed by the government is not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property” and that “the provisions of the Constitution securing the right to trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments [therefore] have no application. That is also why federal immigration officers do not need a warrant issued by a judge before arresting and detaining aliens and why aliens are not entitled to be advised of their Miranda rights or to the assistance of a government-appointed lawyer during their deportation proceedings.
This is true, good catch.
However, one of the issues with this - without guaranteeing proper due process in a civil immigration matter - is that the lack of right to due process or deliberation can make it harder for citizens (or otherwise lawfully-present individuals) to present documentation proving their lawfulness, in the event that they are accused of a civil immigration law. We've already seen folks held for extended periods of time - with intent to hold indefinitely - that were ready and able to prove identification, immigration, and even citizenship. It's a big problem that relies on believing in good-faith for the government ("Why would I be held for an immigration law? I can show my passport with just a car ride home and the passcode to my safe!"), when the government is already acting in bad faith - and not offering strict standards or guarantees (due process, deliberation) for you to prove your lawfulness - before their detention, even if unfounded, starts negatively impacting your life.
And on the note of the case law reinforcing these actions, there's case law for many other actions that we've been compelled to disagree with over the history of this nation. If anything, ongoing case law just means Congress routed a life-altering decision into a DOJ tribunal where hearsay flies, evidence can be withheld as “law-enforcement-sensitive,” with no lawyers provided, and people can sit in detention that I described in my above paragraph for months. My point remains that we often start (and finish) the process to boot someone from the country with less process than you get over a $20* debt. THIS IS BAD PROCEDURE
The Court added that an alien being removed by the government is not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property” and that “the provisions of the Constitution securing the right to trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments [therefore] have no application. That is also why federal immigration officers do not need a warrant issued by a judge before arresting and detaining aliens and why aliens are not entitled to be advised of their Miranda rights or to the assistance of a government-appointed lawyer during their deportation proceedings.
It is Hacker News so of course someone is gonna rationalize fucking abducting people.
Due process is ultimately what keeps this from happening to YOU.
Being deported without due process is a huge problem! But the place to address that is the courts. Indeed, progress is being made on that front.
I also know that the courts are turning into wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Trump Organization. Not all of them, of course. But as for the rest, if there is no way for them to enforce their rulings -- and it seems there is not -- then they have no more power than random commenters on Hacker News, and deserve no more consideration.
Progress is being made in both directions on this front. If you truly believe in the law, then argue for it. Considering the fact that the current POTUS is a convicted felon, and the supreme court has practically eliminated all checks on his power, I'll be taking arguments for lawlessness seriously.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know, officially, how much a multi-generation born-in-America person is actually obligated to cooperate with or answer to ICE?
You don't have to say anything to them without a court order but obviously they're still cops so they can screw you if you make a jerk of yourself doing it.
This is the wrong question. The right question is "who will hold them accountable if they violate your rights or try to punish you for lack of obedience?"
Politicians looking to score brownie points with either the public or the state itself.
So basically you're SOL if you're not a more equal animal or connected to them (Skip Gates), a public persona (Whistlin Diesel), attractive woman (Karen Read, though you can argue that nobody has held the cops accountable on this one, yet) or highly sympathetic individual.
There is some argument to be made that the truth comes out eventually in these sorts of matters but that's not gonna make Breonna Taylor any less dead or the Phonesavanh's kid from being any less disabled.
I think the Floyd factor also prevents cops who are alone or in a pair from escalating stuff unnecessarily as much as they used to which is where a lot of these abuses historically come from.
And when they do call it out, people will be told by Fox News and others that "this senator is opposed to the work ICE is doing to solve the problem of illegal immigrants", and other news agencies will say "such-and-such official says this senator is opposed to..." and the propaganda will spread and people will believe it.
Sure you might be fine (they just harass the brown and black people), but it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
A judiciary can only function as a check on other types of power when it is allowed to do so. Merely being called by that name is not enough.
Practically speaking, of course, there's news stories every week about them arresting citizens, even when they're saying stuff like "please, check my wallet, my ID is in there!". I haven't followed up, but I'd be shocked if any of these incidents resulted in any sort of reparations for the victim.
As a side note, I'd be way more afraid of "flunkies" than any other type of law enforcement. Getting arrested is bad, but getting shot by someone with terrible trigger discipline and no training is worse... At best, they're especially aggressive, masked cops with absolutely zero accountability.
That's my understanding, too. I do happen to be white, but by multi-generation, I mean that I'm not a recent immigrant, nor are my parents, or theirs, so ICE doesn't have any clear power over me that I'm aware of. Similarly, the vast majority of my Black neighbors have been here for many, many years; same deal for them.
> As a side note, I'd be way more afraid of "flunkies" than any other type of law enforcement.
Same here. Being arrested for a BS reason would be quite the hassle, but it sure beats getting shot by a masked try-hard.
They have a bunch of guys with guns. Maybe no warrants or id's or anything legal like that, but guns are probably enough.
With this latest bill, they are going to be one of the largest armed forces in the world. They'll get more money than the US Marines.
That's the problem with not defending Rule of Law. If law is arbitrary and only serves the interests of one person and isn't grounded in some greater objective truth, then it doesn't matter what is officially allowed or not. If judges and enforcers are loyalists then they get to make the call whether your lack of cooperation is obstruction of justice or not. Who is going to punish them for violating your rights? Other ICE agents? The DOJ? You might not even be given standing to fight for your rights in court.
An ICE agent may choose not to believe you are a US citizen and call your documents fake, and put you in a concentration camp or deport you to El Salvador.
As with Kilmar we saw that ICE can act without due process, and due process is what determines your citizenship status.
Trump is also openly talking about revoking the citizenship of citizens.
It's worth a reading about de-naturalization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturalization#Human_rights
Stop it. Be serious.
By the time someone might decide to check ICE records you could be in South Sudan already. No one is safe.
All they have to do is assert their authority, and they don't even have to do that on a particular timetable. If you don't like it, tell you legislator to do their job and change the law.
Well then since federal agencies are now abusing this letter of the law in complete bad faith and disrupting the general peace, it sounds like it is up to state governors to tackle this epidemic of masked gangs of thugs running around and abducting people - order their law enforcement to interrupt any and all masked gang activity and arrest the perps (and order their national guards to deploy if additional force projection is necessary to restore law and order). If it turns out a given gang was acting under "legally valid" federal authority to carry out "legally valid" federal actions and therefore has immunity (and wasn't say a drug cartel hit squad emboldened by the general disorder), that can be sorted out and verified through due process in the courts. States owe no less to their citizens.
I'll also add that masks are illegal to use during crimes to hide identity - which is exactly what these people are doing. They are committing crimes by abducting US citizens and they are blocking due process and they are exporting people to foreign 3rd countries. What they are doing is against the Constitution. We will track down and prosecute these people after this fascist regime is over, which is why they are masking and trying to hide their identity - they know what they are doing is illegal.
https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-lawsuit-trump-adminis...
i have seen many such videos, and not once have i seen any evidence that ICE agents are identifying themselves.
the mayor acknowledges this. city council acknowledges this. if you're talking in good faith, it's time to acknowledge this.
Plenty of articles out there... go read for yourself.
Arresting US citizens without any cause is illegal, and that's exactly what they have been doing, and they will make up excuses to cover their ass. They are also arresting legitimate tourists, without justification.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/26/immigration-...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/04/12/ice-to...
That's good cause for an arrest. Civil disobedience carries consequences.
[0] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/family-outraged-fed...
It's also a lie.
> During a typical Gish gallop, the galloper confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations and outright lies, making it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of the debate.
See also Brandolini's law [1] if this feels familiar:
> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
If you call somebody’s claim “easily debunked,” that’s a proactive offer of counter evidence. It isn’t Gish gallop to accept that offer of counter evidence.
Anyway, where else is the conversation supposed to go? The post had the offer of an easy debunking and no other content.
In general, the government justifying itself to citizens is called leadership. This "government" does the exact opposite across the board, and compensates with divisive propaganda that nurtures loyal all-in extremist followers.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20240529/what-happens-if-you-board-a...
Paying for public services is a duty of the public. Otherwise you won’t have public services anymore. It’s morally equivalent to being a tax cheat, in my view.
>Paying for public services is a duty of the public. Otherwise you won’t have public services anymore. It’s morally equivalent to being a tax cheat, in my view.
Man your comment is a great example of horseshoe theory.
The people who support ICE's current activities justify it with all the same mumbo jumbo about "degrading public trust" and "better for society"
Only they're trailer park clowns not ivory tower clowns so they use words tinged with racism instead of words tinged with communism. But you're all f-ing clowns at the end of the day.
With that out of the way, if we (and I personally do) want to support transit for the masses and even make sure that those who are struggling financially have a means to use transit to maintain their qualify of life and dignity, we should do so through publicly supported programs and funding instead of "yea go ahead and jump the queue" because that leads to other problems, perhaps chief of all is the perception of anti-social behavior.
You can't have public programs or support a strong community when people perceive that there is injustice taking place, and when they see someone cutting line and seeing no repercussions, you will lose broad support for public works. In other words, the bad apple spoils the bunch.
You mean like how a bunch of states imported every tom dick and harry from the 3rd world, immigration papers be damned, handed out licenses/residency like candy, then signed them all up for bennies and consequently support for those social programs is waning among the voting public?
It's maddening that you can't seem to grasp that your thinking can trivially be used to justify the kind of behavior w're currently seeing from ICE
I think we should fund assistance programs for folks to use mass transit (that we also need to build more of and fund more of) instead of having people hop the queue because it leads to negative outcomes for public programs, and it's unfair.
You're free to make of that what you will. If that means you think I support ICE and their current behavior or something, then I guess I do. I don't really care.
Entering a room, I could feel the anxiety as some people instinctively grabbed their phones to buy a ticket.
I've never had to prove my ID to a police-person here in the UK - once or twice they've asked me who I was, but they didn't check the answer I gave them and no ID was shown. I never carry photo ID unless I'm flying, so I wouldn't have been able to prove who I was anyway.
Getting into clubs as a teenager was comical - as there is no standard ID most people had 'work ID' that was just a laminated bit of paper. Or would carry a paper drivers license with no photo on it.
Police never stopped me, but when I asked “what should I do?” they were more than understanding of the situation and just said that in the worst case I gotta go home grab it.
Only recently I got a German Personalausweis in the shape of a card.
Also, when I was outside of the city I live I would bring the passport, and now the Personalausweis...
Technically the law says that I'm supposed to carry passport + residence permit (first version was a sticker, then it became a card). However, the hassle of carrying them on a daily basis (and especially losing them!) is too much so I was left them at home. I made a color photocopy of both and put on my wallet instead.
Then later the Swedish tax office started issuing ID cards for non-citizens and I started carrying that (but also the photocopy).
As a foreigner I was not fully complying with letter of the law by doing that but to me the risk of losing my paperwork was far, far higher than being punished for not carrying those. I assumed that in practice if it was something serious they would look me up in the system anyway, or escort me home to produce my paperwork.
Not sure if I that was indeed the reasonable thing to do or if I got lucky, but I never had any problems.
There are zero known exceptions to this principle.
Interacting with cops will never make your day better, so it's only sensible to avoid them if you can.
This is a very nice way to put it. In investing terms, the benefits are limited but the risks are severe. With enough interactions you’re more likely to have experienced the downside.
> the benefits are limited
So, which is it?
I don't think that's a good metric to judge them by (I also don't think it's true if you compare to first world countries).
Sure, third world countries have police forces that are more corrupt. But US cops are corrupt in a wide variety of ways and we should be very clear about how unacceptable that is. It doesn't matter if someone somewhere else in the world is worse.
Also the argument that there are proposals on how to address structural issues in policing that you deem "ridiculous nonsense" is a straw man that does not address my assertion.
Basically, if you give the police way too many guns and armored vans then they might start thinking those are appropriate tools for too many circumstances. Sort of "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" type argument.
I don't know if it'll work, but that's the idea.
Yeah, we know cops in Mexico are corrupt. Our police force has a very different problem set that we need to solve. Pointing out a different problem in a different country contributes nothing.
Paid parental leave creates both deadweight loss and moral hazard. It also tends to reduce labor inversely proportional to labor's cost, with the largest reduction in labor hitting highly skilled, sub middle-aged females. This should be obvious as it lowers the expected productivity of workers, moreso when you extend parental leave to family leave and allow for the care of ailing elders. The argument for it seems to hinge on the dollars allowing greater workforce participation, but I'm not sold that greater participation with lower expected productivity is greater than fewer productive workers.
Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?
Regarding healthcare, it's well known that decreasing prices increase demand. While some healthcare demand is totally inelastic (injuries, cancer, etc.), the front line pcp interactions are elastic. Compound in people's willingness to decrease self care since they don't have to pay for future healthcare, and you've increased the rate of inelastic demand instances in the future, increasing demand. Now consider that prices would no longer be dictated by free markets, and now we have trouble with price discovery, with the power seemingly going to the single consumer, so it's likely treatments will be underpaid, which may lead to fewer practicioners and fewer innovations. Maybe I'm wrong... I haven't thought about heath economics in a long while. My preference would be to see a forced decoupling of healthcare provided as work benefits such that everyone had to purchase it on the open market (even if that loss of negotiating freedom between private parties irks me).
Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you. That's the foundation of socialization, everyone's resources - that they fork over from taxation - is shared for various activities and settlements that give as many individuals (past, present and emerging) as much of an acceptable baseline of living as it can.
To be sure, the goal of socialization is also not usually to make everyone rich or give immense quality of life, it's to make sure everyone has the same "lowest" bar for things that members of society deem as essential, and that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible.
But by definition it is inefficient. Redistribution of money from Person A to Person B necessarily means Person A can't spend that money. If their optimal utility was to give that money to Person B, you wouldn't need such a policy governmentally.
Socialization makes sense for public goods, but healthcare and parental leave are both nonpublic.
As an annecdotal example, my state offers 12 weeks of parental leave. The maximum they are willing to pay is about $550/week. My company provides two weeks of paid leave. So for 10 weeks, I get the $550 from the state. But my w2 income is about 2k/week post tax, post 401k max. So I would forgo about $1400 a week to stay home. Daycare costs $550/week, so it's far better for me to work. But then I don't get the time off. And yet I still pay for others. This is an example of a terrible implementation of the already bad policy.
- Preventative care is far cheaper and more effective than reactive care (e.g. your dentist telling you to floss more in a particular area vs. filling a cavity vs. filling a root canal)
- Insurance is more effective at dispersing costs amongst a larger pool of people
- In a system like the US where insurance companies must negotiate prices with healthcare providers, larger pools have more bargaining power
What happens when the single purchaser of healthcare refuses to pay an amount sufficient to raise supply to meet demand?
I would propose that we legislate the ban of employer provided healthcare benefits instead of making it universal.
You can do what you're describing today, in this world. I think the fact that you don't is instructive.
Moreover, this blinders-on-libertarianism "I should only pay for things directly for me" approach doesn't work if you pick and choose; you have to address it in context of the entire system (ie, you can't silently accept all the benefits and only shout about the individual moments you don't come out on top).
This society, for better or worse, pools money to do things at scale even when some of those things don't have the direct and equal benefit to every individual, instead aiming for a general good for all, stability, and a platform for everyone to have higher potential.
Yes, this gets abused in many ways and yes, it should always be constantly evaluated for effectively spending money.
However, your anecdotes about how the women or the poors get more than you in certain policies aren't impactful without looking at the whole which includes everything from the roads, breathable air, a widespread and capable workforce, a dynamic labor market, powerful financial markets, a justice system, fire departments, and lots of consumer protections so we can focus on growth instead of spending all our time trying to research if your bank is actually a scam or if the restaurant down the street washes their hands enough.
> everything from the roads, breathable air, a widespread and capable workforce, a dynamic labor market, powerful financial markets, a justice system, fire departments, and lots of consumer protections so we can focus on growth instead of spending all our time trying to research if your bank is actually a scam or if the restaurant down the street washes their hands enough.
There is certainly some gain in being able to outsource research, but it is difficult to determine if it is a net good for society or the individual due to the moral hazard it generates. Not worrying about your bank being a scam allows actual banks to take on outsized risk and then not face any repercussions. It skews the appetite for risk that disproportionately benefits risk takers. For a recent example, see the Silicon Valley Bank failure, which the FEDs totally bailed out to prevent a collapse across many more banks, mostly because those banks overleant at low mortgage rates and couldn't sell the low interest notes at face value after the rise in interest rates, leading to a liquidity crisis.
Focusing on growth comes at a cost; lots of inefficies are introduced. Instead, we could focus on being efficient and low waste and allow the growth to come naturally.
The moral hazard of checks notes mothers breastfeeding and attending to their newborn children and husbands asssisting for a few weeks. Yes. What an absolutely upsidedown society we'll have if we allow such a thing to happen. Terrible. Need to ensure that doesn't happen.
And we need to reduce the rate of this happening to ensure checks notes wealthy people continue producing at high rates to profit the even wealthier.
That so many people have such mindsets and continue to wonder why our birthrates are dropping is astounding.
Wake up buddy. Keep drawing these lines. See where they go. I guess we'll both be dead though, so it doesn't matter.
Challenge. Healthcare is very much a public "good". The healthier evereyone is, the less we spend on healthcare overall. And the more we can accomplish overall. It works in everyone's benefit for society to be healthy.
The same way it works in everyone's benefit to have roads. We both want to get to the store/work/etc, and want healthy people to take care of those places. Neither one is a need, both are beneficial to everyone.
For the record, I also suggest roads do not meet the definition of a public good.
It also ignores the societal costs of separating mothers and babies at such extremely young ages, reducing the rates of successful breastfeeding, and more.
It also assumes a considerably above-average income job.
Your username is hellojesus. Which action is more Christlike, providing for children and families or hoarding your wealth? Are we called to build bigger barns?
> It also ignores the societal costs of separating mothers and babies at such extremely young ages, reducing the rates of successful breastfeeding, and more.
I'm not ignoring this cost. I'm stating that this cost should be borne by the individual that elected to have a child; e.g., lowered labor participation for some duration. The current US federal policy recognizes this by allowing unpaid leave for some duration.
> It also assumes a considerably above-average income job.
My point exactly. If above average compensation is actively harmed by this policy through deadweight loss, it means the policy is bad. This ignores the plethora of moral hazard that is introduced too. For example, how to we reconcile those laborers that take 12 weeks of paid taxpayer vacations only to promptly quit their job upon restarting it? These folks were always going to drop out of the labor force; now we've given them 12 weeks of free money redistributed from productive members.
> Your username is hellojesus. Which action is more Christlike, providing for children and families or hoarding your wealth? Are we called to build bigger barns?
Religious inclinations should direct followers how to execute behavior for themselves of a voluntary nature. It should not be used to dictate that everyone in society follow the same moral orders at the behest of a gun, which is what governmental policy does.
I don't think anyone thinks 12 weeks with a newborn is a vacation, and yet most people probably wouldn't trade that 12 weeks with their newborn for anything in the world.
> I'm not ignoring this cost
You literally are ignoring the cost, as its not your given model. And its not a cost that will only be borne by the immediate caregivers, there are knock-on costs throughout society that will be felt by this change.
> Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you.
I'd set the reason as even more basic than that. Children are absolutely essential the future of society. There is literally no way to argue that is not true.
Since they are essential to society, we should be working on ways to support them; as a society. Now, this can be argued against. But I feel pretty strongly that "I do not think it is important for us, as a society, to works towards goals that beneficial to society" is a fairly brain-dead stance. You can argue about the best uses for _available_ money; but to argue that's a matter of priorities, not "is it a valid goal".
To that end, I think it is fully appropriate for the society to collapse if individuals within it determine to forgo children. We shouldn't redistribute from some to others purely to ensure society's continuum. Instead, individuals should maximize their utility, and in doing so create society.
These redistributions are not pareto optimal and have major deadweight losses and introduce moral hazard.
We have an entire system of laws we put in place to force people to increase their utility within society.
What your statement is effectively arguing is... to go with anarchy; that we should not have rules that change human behavior, because human behavior _should_ be to maximize utility.
I think it's pretty well accepted that "just let everyone do whatever they want" isn't a viable system for a society.
But I absolutely agree that the government shouldn't do much, if anything, more than that. Incentives to shape behavior should be extremely limited, because the government is the only entity that is allowed to force involuntarily transactions.
Voluntary transactions ensure that the transacting parties have a pareto optimal outcome. This is what should be maximized, even at the detriment of the longevity of society itself.
I'm not deep enough in the theory to know whether "voluntary transactions create a Pareto-optimal outcome" is a true statement. I suspect not, because of information asymmetry and so on.
Pareto-optimal is also kind of an arbitrary stopping point - you chose it because it supports your argument, not because it's actually a good one. If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?
I want the government to provide the things that benefit Debbie and me equally, and only those things that benefit us equally.
> If it was possible to make everyone 1000 times richer (in physical resources) but at the cost of making Elon Musk just another average person, that wouldn't be a Pareto move because it would decrease Elon's status, but it would still be extremely good. Why shouldn't we aim for that?
How are you defining good? The same resources may be more equitably distributed, but ultimately the same fixed resources exist, and now poor Elon is far worse off. My point of search for pareto optimality is exactly that we should avoid this outcome because it's not better. Following it to it's logical conclusion, redistributing all wealth until it was exactly equally divided amongst the population would produce the most good outcome.
Communism is Pareto-optimal (both the utopian kind and the USSR kind). Authoritarian dictatorship is Pareto-optimal. Hitler's Germany was Pareto-optimal. Democracy is Pareto-optimal. Whatever America's doing right now is Pareto-optimal. Pretty much everything that ever arises in practice is Pareto-optimal.
Imagine a society with only two people - me and you - where I am constantly stomping my boot on your face and enjoying it. This would be Pareto-optimal, because in order for you to stop having your face stomped on, you'd have to make me stop enjoying it and that wouldn't be a Pareto improvement. Would you really argue that in this situation, it's immoral for you to stop me from stomping on your face, because it's not a Pareto improvement?
> I want the government to provide the things that benefit Debbie and me equally, and only those things that benefit us equally.
So literally nothing. You want no government. Please acknowledge that. Property rights don't benefit you and Debbie equally, so you don't want those either.
> How are you defining good? The same resources may be more equitably distributed, but ultimately the same fixed resources exist
No, I'm talking about everyone having 1000 times more resources except for Elon. The total amount of resources would increase about 999.999 times or so, since everyone would have 1000 times more except for Elon who would have the same amount as everyone else (less than he does now). With regards to Pareto-optimality, this would be very much a "stop stomping your boot on my face" scenario.
My comments were with regards to a system that enforces private property. To that end, having one's face stomped on involuntarily would be a violation of private property.
We could consider a system whereby one person has 100% of the fixed resources while the other has 0%. It's pareto optimal and maximally inequitable. My point is that it is wrong to take from the person with 100% to redistribute it to the person with 0%. But it would be pareto optimal if a voluntary trade occurs, and I also accept trades of duress to be voluntary (e.g., the person with 0% sells their body for a meal).
> You want no government. Please acknowledge that. Property rights don't benefit you and Debbie equally, so you don't want those either.
Public goods are defined as nonrivalous and nonexcludable. I want these (national defense). Enforcement of private property does violate the nonrivalous condition, but that service is still necessary to provide a system whereby private property exists.
> The total amount of resources would increase about 999.999 times or so, since everyone would have 1000 times more except for Elon who would have the same amount as everyone else (less than he does now).
The move to redistribute Elon's wealth breaks pareto optimality. All this does is move the gini coefficient to 0, but the total resources in the system are constant.
Everybody drives the same roads ("Why would I pay to maintain Smith Street? I've never driven on it?"), some people REALLY need a firefighter in an emergency.
To the extent these impact public buildings, I think this is a good thing. Just like I think public employers should not be allowed to discriminate based on age, race, etc.
But in both cases I would argue that private companies should not be held to the same standards.
Firefighters could arguably be a public good in that they are (approximately) nonrivalous and are definitely nonexcludable. In addition, fire fighting as a public good prevents the free rider problem that would likely exist with this service in the private market.
It's a net benefit to society encourage people to have kids and keep the number of births closer to replacement rate.
>To that end, this policy creates deadweight loss for those from whom the redistributive policy takes more than it returns.
First, clearly such people don't donate to families, making that a pointless argument, and second, even if they gave new parents money directly, they might still not have a baby if they don't have time to take care of the baby without parental leave. Long work hours for couples decreasing the national birth rate is a negative externality. If all companies acted hostile to parents and no one became a parent, that might boost each individual company's productivity levels, but they would be killing off the workforce in the long term. That, like overfishing, would be an example of the tragedy of the commons.
Yes. That is my point. Theft is required to execute this policy, which defines the deadweight loss.
I argue that companies may offer better leave benefits in order to attract workers. My company provides six weeks for primary and two for secondary caretakers.
Amazon gives a month or something like that. Clearly I would have incentive to work there if I could, and by that I mean others better skilled than me fill those vacancies. The policy is effective.
I have a lot of libertarian tendencies but shouting that you're being robbed (from the safety of your stable, productive, society that protects even your right to complain like that) feels childish to me - the actual first step if you're going to act this way seems to be trying to get out from under this government that you never agreed to so you can start doing things your own way. The irony of people who say "if you don't like it, leave" is that they rarely take their own advice.
As a side note, I'm always curious when I see someone say that taxes are theft -- what is "theft" and "property" in your world view without the other systems underpinning it? It seems to always boil down to "stuff in your possession that you can keep someone else from taking away" which always boils down to violence at the end. Does " theft" even make sense in this context and, if so, did you "steal" everything first? It always seems like such a "rules for thee but not for me" kind of claim so I'm (genuinely) curious if you have a more substantial platform for your libertarianism.
It also exists to provide public goods, which are defined as nonrivalous and nonexcludable, such as national defense (where I would only suggest it be provided insofar as the workforce be entirely voluntary).
Redistributibe policies such as PFML or universal healthcare, are indeed theft. You take from Person A to give to Person B when Person A would otherwise not do so. Please help me understand how that is not theft?
I don't think it's helpful for me to try to take a position about what is and isn't theft by governments you were born into but wish you weren't. I don't even know how to start untangling that one and I think perspective overwhelms any reason there anyway.
I do appreciate your response about my question - very helpful!
I want to be more progressive. I really do! It feels good because typically you get to provide for the less fortunate. But my atomic unit is the individual, and I can't seem to make my belief system reconcile individual liberty and government-enforced charity. That's why I come here sometimes. It helps me talk through things and try to find counterexamples to my ideology.
I appreciate everyone's time and discussions.
It happens that most advanced societies consider the widespread availability of medical care to be a similar force multiplier, something that enables every individual in the society to produce more and earn more and reach their full economic potential.
Free-market solutions to health care are problematic because there's nothing free about a market that everyone is forced to participate in by virtue of being alive. Likewise, private insurance models make little sense when every insured customer is virtually guaranteed to file expensive claims at one point or another.
Consequently health care is widely considered a valid area for governmental involvement and taxation. Yes, the money for public health care is "stolen" from you, but again, there is a widespread consensus that the economy that you participate in is healthier as a whole because of that. Just like public subsidies for many other things that many/most people agree are important but that fall outside what conventional markets do well at providing. In a society that didn't attend to such needs, you might have more money from a numeric standpoint, but it would be worth less.
Obviously there are weak points in this argument from a libertarian perspective, but it's very hard to convince people that it's without any merit at all.
Look at what is happening to South Korea.
I too hate the top-down prescriptivism of narrow "benefit" policies administered by employers. But until we fix the economy so most people have the market power to tell their employer they're taking 3-6+ months off for $whatever, have the savings to pay for it, and be confident that that either their employer will want them back at the end or that they will be able to find a different employer, then it's what we're stuck with. So if you really want to reform this, then work towards fixing wealth inequality.
(The healthcare thing is a politically radioactive topic. It would be fantastic to prevent employers anticompetitively bundling healthcare with employment, but it would take a lot of political capital to rise above fearmongering to people with "good" employer plans and the desire of politicians to lean on the current system out of expedience)
If you focus on smaller instances of redistributive policies without addressing that, you've done the equivalent of admitting a logical contradiction to your axioms and thus are able to come to some decidedly anti-individual-freedom conclusions. In this case, further turning the financial screws on the edges.
Those two are also not current or longstanding federal policy, which should making their prevention far easier than their repeal.
The point is that without actually doing the former, your point on the latter comes across as completely out of touch in isolation. Currently, the vast majority of people simply do not have the kind of wealth required to make a decision like you're advocating. As it stands, the financial treadmill is a fixed quantity - so in that context, what you're actually saying here is just that you don't want people to have the time to have kids, period.
> Those two are also not current or longstanding federal policy, which should making their prevention far easier than their repeal.
Yes, that is exactly the problem! When you push everywhere with a justification of individual freedom, the places you tend to make progress are where you're actually serving an agenda of entrenched centralized power. For example, look at this individual-liberty-appealing "fiscal responsibility" refrain of the past 30 years - it ended up facilitating all that newly-printed money to be given away to banks / asset holders, rather than say purposefully spent making sure our industrial base wasn't getting completely hollowed out. It was basically a kayfabe for looting, and not supporting individual freedom at all.
In a perfect world I would have preferred if that new money hadn't been printed in the first place, and that wealth had remained distributed throughout society rather than centrally collected and then centrally assigned. But that wasn't what was happening. So we have to be real about the actual results of the specific policies we're advocating for, lest we become patsies helping to destroy individual liberty.
Sensible government programs aren't deadweight loss - they are net gains - although a lot of what governments do, especially what the US government does, is not sensible. For example, you pay taxes to have property rights, and I don't think you think that is deadweight loss.
Meanwhile your concern about "why should I pay for someone else?" is literally just insurance but I bet you have insurance, and you only hate insurance when the government does it.
Yes. This is exactly right. And that is because private insurance allows people to voluntarily consume it. Not everyone has the same appetite for risk. Allow people to maximize their individual utility!
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/canada-police-mistakes-novia...
[2] https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Jane-Doe-Book-About/dp/067931275...
> I actually kinda agree,
It is my long and consistent experience (MI spouse) that the quality of police officers depends on the quality of the police chief.
We had good, experienced officers here a generation ago. A funding-addicted sheriff was elected. He fired cops w/ decades of exp and replaced them with just-graduated kids. The remaining cops were subject to some kind of dept environment that left them half-unhinged.
Addicted sheriff quit after a few terms and his replacement was pretty good for a while. Now he's average, so kind of crappy.
That being said, America is unique in officially allowing cops to kill people just because of how they feel, with no objective reason for it.
Why did they do that?
Its wild to read cops in the US are not corrupt, did people just not read modern US history? Prohibition? Civil rights? Union busting? The Pinkertons?
[1] https://www.securitas.com/en/newsroom/press-releases_list/se...
I worked as a security guard through college. Never chased a skateboarder, but I did ask them nicely to leave at least once a week.
What you're describing is bad but also pretty mild by international standards.
In many states the FOP stickers and cards are almost like "registration". You get the sticker to put on your card and just like vehicle registration, a year to show you're current. The FOP will say that's just to "show your ongoing support", but it's rather hard not to see it as "are you paid up? you don't get to get a sticker ten years ago...".
Various FOPs have also sued or done eBay take downs of people selling the "year sticker".
People play fast and loose with the word "corrupt" the same way they do with "conspiracy".
They will literally grab a cop that was prosecuted and found guilty, hide the records and have them hired in some other police force in a nearby town. There's a whole mafia setup going on, organized by their unions, we're not far from having "police controlled neighborhoods" like in many LATAM countries.
Yeah they'll bend the law for their buddies but we cannot just shove money in their face to make them be reasonable when they bother us like you can in Mexico. Instead we have to shove 10x as much into all manner of rent seeking systems to maintain an air of legitimacy (this last part is a gripe I have with most government stuff here, not just law enforcement related).
https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
As I said to another commenter, "some of the least corrupt" != "not corrupt". I'm sure some countries are better, but there are not that many.
Are you saying that the cops in Northern Idaho are out for bribes?
> You can get pulled over for no reason in the US and have drugs planted on you by a cop simply having a bad day.
The next reply in this thread:
> lol you watch too much tv.
No I'm not asserting they are "asking". They won't bother to ask. They'll either plant something and take your stuff that way, or "smell drugs" and seize your assets under "civil forfeiture".
And there definitely aren't any departments funding themselves by seizing assets from people never even accused of a crime https://www.nlg-npap.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Civil-As...
Many people have WAY worse concerns. There's a sheltered view here, but it's not the one you're thinking of.
With FOP stickers, "courtesy cards", placard abuse, and violent impunity, there's lots of corruption going around.
https://apnews.com/article/nypd-courtesy-card-police-miscond...
But I'd prefer not to interact in their official capacity with them if possible because there is a non-zero chance that the specific officer I'm talking to is not one of the good ones.
I recently had a run in where I was photographing a duck on the roof of a house. A cop literally ran up to me and asked what I was doing with his hand on his gun, holster released. I was fortunate that he realized how nuts his behavior was when I pointed out that I was taking a picture of a crazy duck sitting on a chimney. I also realized that I probably would have been shot had I not been calm and polite.
I suspect many Black people would prefer paying a bribe to being killed by police at an outsize ratio, or paying a bribe to being charged more aggressively and sentenced more harshly.
Police brutality and incarceration is worse than bribes, my dude.
Disproven already: "Interacting with cops will never make your day better"
Second, I doubt many victims feel like their days are better after talking with the police. Just look at the abysmal solve rates.
Good luck petitioning the dictionary! :)
I have, multiple times. They don't give a shit. In my case, the only reason to reach out to them is to get documentation for insurance or to start the legal process for obtaining restraining orders through courts.
But that does not justify supporting unaccountability as if its some kind of team sport! In fact, if you respect the role of the police then you must support accountability - a cop breaking the law is just a criminal acting under the color of state authority.
He promised he’d do this before the election. He did it on day 1. No amount of cleansing will get that stank off, it’s only that some people love that particular odor.
On Jan 6, 2021, Donald Trump sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States, because Mike Pence refused Trump’s illegal order to overturn an election that Trump had lost.
(This is not a comment on your politics. The moderation call here would be the same if you had the opposite politics, or any others.)
Edit: This has been a problem for a long time. I don't believe it's your intention to abuse HN, so I don't want to ban you, but if you don't fix this, we'll end up doing so.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121542 (Feb 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22436733 (Feb 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19972399 (May 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19715736 (April 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16758558 (April 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16749749 (April 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457684 (Feb 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234007 (Jan 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15849007 (Dec 2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15773271 (Nov 2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15484503 (Oct 2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672661 (June 2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233383 (April 2017)
The police as they are now in North America are not a good option, they're just the least worst option. You call them and they show up and you hope that they cause more problems for the offender than the victim, but that's never guaranteed.
I have. Several times. In the latter two cases (burglaries at my home and my brother's home -- one in NYC and the other in the Bay Area), the police were spectacularly inept and completely useless.
In the first case, the police arrested the perpetrators more by happenstance than design, despite the fact that these kids (all except the 22 year-old ringleader were 16 or younger) had been committing similar crimes for months.
As the old saw goes, "I don't hate the police, I just feel better when they're not around."
Cops are not your friends, even as a victim; neither are lawyers or judges. Treat the whole justice system more like a Linux server with an SQL injection: amoral, and can be made to do anything you want, if you're evil and happen to know how which levers to pull and how to not get caught.
Since it's relevant here, I am a white man.
No matter if you are a law-abiding citizen, the cops have too many rights to annoy people. At least in Western nations, anyone should have the right to not answer the police or any other agent of the state about what one is doing or has done without repercussions. Always remember "three felonies a day"!
In practice, we all know that if you do not do what the cop wants (or, frankly, if you have the wrong skin color), the cop finds a way to make your life difficult - from submitting one to the litany of shit they can legally do (like a full roadworthiness check of your vehicle or, if near a border, a full inspection for contraband) down to stuff that should be outright illegal (like civil forfeiture) or is actually illegal (like a lot of the current actions of ICE).
Why are we accepting this even at airport?
Locking the doors of the cockpit made another 9/11 close to impossible.
It takes an exceptional person to act before their fate is sealed and the majority of passengers, if not all of them, will be in a state of denial or shock at the situation they are in preventing them from action. Others who might want to act, but not having been in the situation before, will think about what to do or when the right moment to act is, and the right moment will never come, especially if the hijackers can guarantee the first person who acts dies.
Since 9/11 there have been attempts to disrupt planes and no shortage of people willing to tackle the person responsible.
Don't try to overpower the hijackers? You die. Try to overpower the hijackers and fail? You die. Try to overpower the hijackers and succeed? You live. It only takes one person to do the math and realize they are basically in a no-loss scenario.
People on death marches, in concentration camps, or other similar scenarios have the same math, and yet they get gassed or forced to dig their own graves after which they are shot and buried in them.
So yes, rationally that all makes sense and we should celebrate anyone putting themselves at risk to fight for the benefit of a larger group, but reality is different, especially if the hijackers can guarantee at least one death.
To say a hijack could never happen again is wrong. The doors are a much more reasonable explanation than the courage of men.
History also gets forgotten, such as the history of secret police or mass deportation efforts as is quite clear in this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_West_Flight_612
Here is an example where a man got a gun on a plane in 2007, which directly disproves the 'equality' if passengers.
At first I misread this and thought you must be a vigilante
The mere existence of the app shows resistance to the government's attempts at establishing something approaching a police state. They are against the app for that reason. They don't really care about what it does or does not do. It could be an app where you press a button and the phone says "boo ICE" and they'd still happily claim it endangers officers lives.
(the fact that they're also able to attack independent media at the same time just makes it all the more alluring target)
Waze is another example of an app where users can share information about police presence or roadblocks, while useful to some, could also be seen as having negative implications depending on the context.
If you see the police are gathered around your local 7-Eleven, you're absolutely free to post it.
If you know in advance that the police are going to be performing a raid on a meth house and you got that information by virtue of a security clearance (I assume they do have something of this sort like federal employees have, though I'm not sure the precise mechanisms) then you'd be violating the policies around that access. This could be illegal (just like a fed leaking secret or top secret information).
If you know in advance because the police have loose lips, but you are not personally under any kind of confidentiality policy, you're free to post it. So the loose lipped cops at the bars I used to frequent could have caused real problems for themselves.
It’s not about legality. It’s about compliance.
If you become a target, they will arrest you and drop charges later. They will make you miss work and lose your job. They will set up surveillance on you to catch you doing anything else they want to continue harassment.
You don’t have to look hard to see reporting of officers using official databases to settle personal scores. 404 media just did a big expose on ALPR Flock DB abuses
Beyond that, Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of sending "homegrowns" to overseas concentration camps, so it won't be long now before you don't have to do anything wrong to be targetted and you don't have any recourse regardless.
https://www.justice.gov/civil/media/1404046/dl
with some discussion at: DOJ Opens Door To Stripping Citizenship Over Politics - https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/doj-opens-door-to-strippi...
"We can't let those (accused) commies take over New York (even if elected)"
If you post to local social media groups about DUI checkpoints or mobile speed cameras you’ll be scolded by about 30% of people.
People are willing to put a couple of weekends into making a middle school or high school competition happen. They're a lot less willing to do it if they have to go to an FBI station to get fingerprinted or produce a state and federal background check first. And I'm not talking about people with something to hide; I'm talking about people with a completely clean background who just don't want to be bothered.
Few years back got chased by a cop and ticketed (and scolded) for not restraining kiddo (small town and my clever 2yo somehow learned how to unbuckle themselves (even that houdini clip didn't help)). Warned I could get prosecuted for child neglect if I continue. I suspect the daycare has tipped him off.
2. Supposing I did believe it and did say it, I would be well within my rights to say it. The First Ammendment assures the right to say things like that, no matter how dumb and misguided those things are.
But for many DUI checkpoints safety is not the goal. It's simply a pretext to check everyone's papers.
Or is perhaps the chance of a random test at any moment more of a deterrent?
Instead, evaluate yourself on the basis of your standing with the regime. If they dislike you for any reason including your skin color, they will find some sort of national security threat in your actions. Or they may punish you first and then claim the inability to correct it. On the other hand if they need you, they will completely ignore your actions, including even leaking of extremely sensitive information to unauthorized individuals.
Most countries aren’t America.
Can you back that up with evidence? Just because someone claims that they were denied entry / detained / deported due to skin color doesn't mean that was the case. Many such cases where media has jumped on to claims that turned out to be false.
> This is why no one from the rest of the world wants to vacation, work, or live in America anymore.
Absolutely false, only those who let them be manipulated by scare media think there is actually a measurable risk for coming to the US legally.
I'm not them, but there have been reports of tourists locked up for weeks.
https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-d...
America shouldn’t be sending masked goons into courthouses to disappear people.
I was actually supportive of Trump’s illegal immigrant pitch at the get go. But then he totally ignored the gangs, going after tax-paying migrants because Miller found them easier to round up. And then he started deporting Americans.
This isn’t even a problem of evil. It’s one of incompetence. We have a bunch of nutwads in masks wearing camo doing whatever they can to hit numbers. This is bureaucratic failure on steroids.
> I'd support their right to do so
Honestly, I’m fine with this. I am also fine with someone publishing this app. (We frankly need a database of ICE agents who have broken the law so they can be dealt with down the road.)
Lots of evidence showing the hard police work of pursuing gangs is being substituted for the easier task of deporting tax-paying migrants. I don’t have any particular issue with the latter. But it’s incorrect to claim this administration is pursuing gangs; its deals with Bukele have essentially freed multiple members of MS13’s leadership.
> Three young children who are US citizens - including one with cancer - were deported to Honduras alongside their mothers last week, according to advocacy groups and the families' lawyers.
> One of the children is a four-year-old with Stage 4 cancer who was sent without medication, a lawyer for the child's family said. [0]
[1] https://www.constitucionpolitica.mx/titulo-1-garantias-indiv...
[2] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-12.html under article 2(c)
Free speech is (was?) an American interest. Further, the country contains multitudes of different, opposing interests, not just those of the current regime.
For all its grandstanding over “cancel culture” this regime’s unusually thin skin when it comes to opposing views would be laughable, were it not so dangerous and abusive.
If a legal immigrant in the US starts recruiting for ISIS (entirely legal behavior), don’t you want the ability to remove them? Generally countries don’t want immigrants who support people who want that countries destruction.
Recruiting for a terrorist organisation is textbook lending of material support. Very illegal.
Providing material support is, which is a gray area when it comes to recruitment as recruitment doesn't have to be explicit.
What if I post information that indirectly support terrorist groups such as justifying their actions? What if I post information that supports groups indirectly connected with terrorist groups (say a fund raising arm the US government hasn't listed as a terrorist group)?
None of those things are illegal.
Shouldn't the US government, well any government for that matter, be able to deny such people entry?
As they say "the Constitution isn't a suicide pact". It wasn't intended to be a mechanism by which foreigners can destroy the country itself.
It’s absolutely not a grey area, what source do you have that’s claiming this?
> What if I post information that indirectly support terrorist groups such as justifying their actions?
That’s fine. That’s speech. Terrorist or freedom fighter is like mandatory freshman dorm banter.
> What if I post information that supports groups indirectly connected with terrorist groups (say a fund raising arm the US government hasn't listed as a terrorist group)?
If it links to a listed group you’re fucked. Even if you didn’t know about the connection.
Grey areas resolve differently depending on context. When it comes to terrorism, we tend to be fine being more brutal. Debating Hamas is fine. Waving their flag is questionable, potentially fair grounds to deny visa entry (or at least do a very deep dive into whether actual support occurred). Encouraging folks to join Hamas, directly or indirectly, should result in immediate detention and incapacitation.
US legal code? You made the claim recruiting is illegal, find me the law that says so.
> That’s fine. That’s speech.
So you’d be fine with a neo-Nazi being admitted to the US? Or someone actively supporting ISIS in their speech?
And you never really responded to my point - the Constitution doesn’t require the US admit people actively working to destroy the US.
You can change the Constitution if you don't like it!
Yes, even Western democracies sometimes fail at this - through mistakes, bad laws, or moments of fear. That's precisely why we need to call it out when it happens, not shrug and normalize it.
Rights are inherent to all people. When any government - Western or otherwise - punishes peaceful political expression, they're violating fundamental human rights.
'That's just how it is' is how rights erode. We should aspire to strengthen protections for everyone, not excuse their violation by pointing to other failures.
The court system cannot possibly fulfill these tens of millions of cases in any reasonable time frame. These people will be in court for the rest of our lives and in the meantime they will have children and ultimately be allowed to stay forever by some future administration. Which is basically the same as just making them citizens.
Do you have a proposed solution other than decades worth of court dates? It doesn’t really seem like the other side has a good faith solution to the problem other than just letting them all stay here forever.
Or maybe I’m missing something and haven’t heard the other side’s arguments.
I think we are at a point where we should accept that there will be decades of court dates. The real alternative is that anyone can be taken away because there would be no process for even a multi-generation born citizen to challenge the arrest. The real deterrent for it happening to such a citizen is reporting and publicity, which is increasingly seeming like it can be thwarted by a population that is primed to strip the humanity of those they disagree with.
The way this is being handled, the timeline where we just let those 10 million stay in the country and avoid similar things in the future seems very appealing indeed. Two wrongs don’t make a right, as the saying goes.
But this is what I’m getting at, this is not the first time this has happened, it’s been happening with millions of people for generations now. Heck Reagan pardoned millions back in the 1980’s. So how long are we supposed to keep saying “okay you guys can stay but let’s do better in the future”? After so many decades it is obvious that nothing is going to change without some kind of drastic political change, which is basically why Trump was elected.
But just looking at the system from a Birds Eye view: it’s easy in, difficult out. All it takes is one president to not enforce the law and the law is basically moot. Just seems disingenuous the people saying deporting people is horrible yet offering no solutions other than to just let them all stay here forever. We are well past the point where saying we’ll do better in the future is an argument that anyone will accept.
Why is there nobody suggesting a law to expedite or fast track the “due process”? That at least seems like a moderate approach.
No, you are not hearing what I am saying. This particular implementation of deportations puts you and I and anyone else at long-term risk of being deported in a similar manner. It puts legal residents at a more immediate risk of being deported in a similar manner. You can’t fast-track due process; that is the point. If you are not afforded due process for allegations that you are an illegal immigrant before you are shipped away then the damage is done and it doesn’t matter that you can prove you were born here to parents who were born here.
> You can’t fast-track due process
We can make laws and change systems, a serious good faith solution would be to propose changes to the due process to account for this case we keep finding ourselves in where we have 20 million people who need to be processed and a system with no hope of handling them all.
We thought you were kidding, this isn't a fact, it's the complete opposite of a fact, in otherwords, a lie. Very famously the number of arrests of people cross the border went up while biden was president.
Aside from that ludicrous lie, we have to evaluate the situation where we actually live. If there was a literal magic genie who could cause 10 million people to instantly teleport then maybe we could talk about it, but there isn't, so we don't.
In actual reality land, spending 100 billion dollars in order to arrest and deport millions of people who work and pay taxes and in general support the economy of this country is hilariously stupid. Also evil, lets not forget that.
Every axis you want to try to evaluate this on fails at the most cursory examination. Obviously it's a waste of money because you're spending money to remove tax payers and consumers, so that's a double negative. It's also immoral due to the sheer amount of crimes and human rights violations that have already taken place and will continue to take place.
It's not even particularly effective as some kind of macho statement, deporting your own citizens isn't going to impress anyone.
You are free to offer something yourself. I was answering your question:
> Do you have a proposed solution other than decades worth of court dates?
No, I don’t. At least, not one that doesn’t degrade rule of law. I’m all ears for better solutions but this shit I’m seeing ain’t it.
Anyway, here’s a better solution: let them stay. I can’t see how that would be nearly as bad as this. For me personally, for my neighbors, for the rust belt, indeed for anybody except those wanting to abuse power.
Let's reset.
They are asking for a solution that is realistic. Something that is happening right now is, by definition, a realistic outcome. "Let everyone stay" is not a realistic solution for obvious reasons.
Indeed, they asked for “a good faith solution to the problem other than just letting them all stay here forever” and I explicitly said I did not have this. I also see them and you saying “someone” should come up with a solution and, failing to find one yourselves, say deportation without any court hearing is acceptable. I’ve outlined my reasons for why that is dangerous and unacceptable and you just throw up your hands and say it must happen because it’s happening.
(Did you notice how you went from “solution” to “outcome” and then back to “solution”? People are decrying the “outcome” because it’s a shit “solution”. Yes, it seems we are talking past each other.)
Thats perhaps a bad habit of mine, finding synonyms as I dont like to repeat the same word in the next sentence.
> Indeed, they asked for “a good faith solution to the problem other than just letting them all stay here forever” and I explicitly said I did not have this. I also see them and you saying “someone” should come up with a solution and, failing to find one yourselves, say deportation without any court hearing is acceptable.
So on the other side "just letting them all stay here forever" is also an unacceptable solution.
So what then? There's no acceptable solution we are just screwed?
This is a false dichotomy and a false equivalence. I’ll let you figure out what that means.
Wait just a minute... that's not a valid solution under our laws at all!
Haha! Gotcha! You don't recognize your own words?!
Oh no I do, but my words made sense in the context I wrote them. They don't make sense here.
It turns out words have meanings, and you can't generally copy/paste little substrings from one conversation into another haphazardly.
Feel free to connect the dots between what I said and your response, if you'd like.
It's truly amazing how all the "curious" "just asking questions" types cannot get literally 3 exchanges into a conversation without short circuiting.
The point of "deport people I disagree with" was to highlight it as an illegal solution, much like the "don't give due process" solution.
If we are to take your solution seriously (of simply ignoring our Constitution), then we have all sorts of "solutions" on the table, including ones like "deport people I disagree with." That is to imply that neither of these are actual solutions because both of them would require violating our Constitution.
I suppose I made an error expecting I was speaking to someone with the cognitive firepower required to understand analogies and implicature, so I hope this helps.
lol funny how that doesnt apply to an obvious bad faith argument like "deport people I disagree with".
Are you sure you want to talk about the topic? Clearly explaining what you meant there [0] would be a good start if so. Why not just say what you mean, and we can all have a civil discussion? Everybody wins then, right? Not that I'm forcing you to discuss anything civilly if you're not into it.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466687
1: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/2/can-trump-strip-musk...
* "It's your job to come up with an alternative" (not helpful)
* "Just let them all stay" (not realistic)
* "Actually Republican want illegal immigration, not Democrats, so they can rile up their base" (retarded)
* Lots and lots and lots of ad hominem: "check your carbon monoxide monitor"
The responses overall has just been completely lacking in any thought and lacking in any civility. It's a collective tantrum full stop.
> Clearly explaining what you meant there [0] would be a good start if so.
Don't gaslight.
I reiterate that it was a direct response to a bad faith comment. There is nothing unclear about it. He suggested an unrealistic course of action which while he would be personally happy with, goes against what the vast majority of people would consider reasonable and hence fails the request for a "realistic alternative".
> We simply deport anyone who makes the argument he's making
The response is clear: that's unrealistic and not up to him. He understood exactly what it meant but didnt like his very own words used against him.
The problem people are raising is not "mass deportation." The problem is violation of due process rights.
This is not a viable solution because it is 1) blatantly illegal under the American Constitution and 2) undermines the very premise of the rule of law.
One reason it is clearly not a viable solution is because if it were, then it would also be a viable solution simply to deport aydyn and people who think like him/her. Doing so would only entail the same convenience-driven Constitutional violations that the current administration is undertaking. Neither is a viable solution.
Let's just get to the meat of the matter so you can pick between hypocrisy or ignorance.
Please answer these yes/no questions:
1. Under the US Constitution, does someone suspected of being an illegal immigrant have a right to due process?
2. Is it acceptable to violate the US Constitution when convenient?
> Check your carbon monoxide detector.
It’s a recipe anyone can follow:
1. Find MAGA pseudo-intellectualization
2. Ask basic factual question
3. Observe theatrical short-circuiting as brain fails to find footing in reality
It's been kind of a weird (non-sequitur perhaps?) request, for a couple of reasons:
First because the dismissive nature of some of your responses frames you as the judge of what is acceptable/realistic, which I think we can all agree here without any offense, you're not;
Second, because mass deportation of millions of citizens and noncitizens to gulags, conflict zones, etc, is itself not an acceptable solution. Indeed, "do nothing" is both more acceptable (viewed more acceptably by others) and more realistic (doing nothing is easier than doing something). Thus, it is unhelpful to rule that out as an option while preserving the even-less-acceptable option of maintaining the status quo.
And let's be clear here: the relevant question is of acceptable solutions, not simply realistic ones. As we've unfortunately seen in human history, even killing millions is realistic, but obviously not acceptable.
> [Doing nothing] goes against what the vast majority of people would consider reasonable
"The vast majority of people" find mass deportation of millions of citizens and noncitizens to gulags, conflict zones, etc, to be even more unreasonable. Why, then, must the response be more reasonable than the initial suggestion?
Maybe that's why all the replies expressed confusion at the quoting: it is missing that context, and the full context makes the quote cut against the position of pro-mass deportation of millions of citizens and noncitizens to gulags, conflict zones, etc.
> Don't gaslight
Your personal judgement that people who don't understand your out of context quotes are gaslighting, is rude. The more likely explanation, based on the evidence, is that a given message failed to provide sufficient context and/or explanation.
> The responses overall has just been completely lacking in any thought
This is even meaner. I am confident that you are capable of civil discussion focused on ideas, not on other HN posters. If you want to call your fellow posters thoughtless, you might seek greener pastures.
The majority of Americans agree with mass deportation even if they don't agree with exactly how ICE is proceeding.
There's lots of room for discussion which obviously isn't happening here.
> Your personal judgement that people who don't understand your out of context quotes are gaslighting, is rude.
Given the context and aggressive sarcasm of the post, the vastly more likely explanation is the poster didn't agree with the point rather than not understanding it at all.
You understand now that it is simple direct response. Thus, if you want to call for intellectual honesty and civility, you can lead.
> This is even meaner. I am confident that you are capable of civil discussion focused on ideas, not on other HN posters.
I'm happy to have a civil conversation. I'm also happy to have an uncivil conversation. I'd ask you to be consistent when and with who that incivility started.
> Given the context and aggressive sarcasm of the post, the vastly more likely explanation is the poster didn't agree with the point rather than not understanding it at all.
Given that every person who responded in that thread expressed confusion at your quote (myself included), the more likely explanation, based on the evidence, is that a given message failed to provide sufficient context and/or explanation.
Now that we have the context explained in my previous post, we see why the quote was confusing: because it does not support the position you have been espousing. That is to say: to whatever extent that other poster 'doesn't get to decide what constitutes American interests', neither do you.
> if you want to call for intellectual honesty and civility, you can lead
I think I have been civil. If I've insulted you personally, I am sorry, and wouldn't mind you pointing it out.
> I'd ask you to be consistent when and with who that incivility started
That other poster isn't being nice either, but I don't like to comment purely to criticize tone. I prefer redirecting to substance when I can. That said, the incivility started when you cited an out of context quote, were asked what you meant, and refused to explain.
Now that you have civilly explained what you meant (thank you), we can focus on substance, which is that if you don't provide an acceptable solution, then it's probably not reasonable to expect others to.
It is not critical context, the root post asked for realistic alternatives.
> Given that every person who responded in that thread expressed confusion at your quote (myself included)
All two of you?
> That said, the incivility started when you cited an out of context[sic] quote,
Flatly untrue.
Yes, reasonable alternatives to mass deportation of millions of citizens and noncitizens to gulags, conflict zones, etc.
The response included options even more reasonable than that one, so no problem there.
> All two of you?
As opposed to all one of you? Why would your own comprehension of your own words somehow nullify other people saying they were incomprehensible? Of course your words weren't confusing to you, they came from your brain!
> Flatly untrue
Of course! It stands to reason that 2 people who tell you the same thing, one a 3rd-party observer, must both be wrong if you disagree with them, obviously.
I noticed you totally excluded the substantive part of my reply where it's explained why everyone found your quoting confusing. I'm sure it's much easier to just ignore it and say 'nope'. Makes for a better conversation, right? Like this one? Anyways, here is the substance again, if you want to focus on it:
The quote, as used by you, does not support the position you have been espousing. That is to say: to whatever extent that other poster 'doesn't get to decide what constitutes American interests', neither do you
Thats not the adjective I used.
> 2 people who tell you the same thing
An appeal to the authority of two people with the same ideology and biases is not a convincing argument.
> That said, the incivility started when you cited an out of context[sic] quote,
>> Flatly untrue
>>> Of course! It stands to reason that 2 people who tell you the same thing, one a 3rd-party observer, must both be wrong if you disagree with them, obviously.
For clarification (since you seem to need it a lot) I am responding to your claim that incivility started with me. That is flatly untrue, obviously.
> Thats not the adjective I used.
Maybe, but that's what you meant when you said "realistic", right?
The holocaust and the holodomor were both, unfortunately "realistic". Surely you're interested in reasonable, acceptable, realistic options, not simply "realistic" ones, however unreasonable and unacceptable? Otherwise, you'll have to share why you're not interested in realistic, reasonable, acceptable options, which as we've seen, are superior to options which are simply "realistic".
> An appeal to the authority of two people with the same ideology and biases is not a convincing argument.
An appeal to the authority of one person with even stronger ideology and biases is even less of a convincing argument.
Since we're on the topic of soliciting alternatives from others: You might suggest a realistic, reasonable, acceptable alternative to what that other poster suggested. This time, I'll play judge, instead of you.
No, apparently I must clarify that I meant "realistic" when I said "realistic".
> even stronger ideology and biases is even less of a convincing argument.
I have not even given my perspective so this just reveals your own ideological biases; the mere act of challenging your perspectives means that, to you, that person is biased.
You must, yet you still have not! Instead, you omitted everything of substance from my response and just focused on snideness here. Maybe reply to the part of the post that followed that sentence?
> I have not even given my perspective so this just reveals your own ideological biases; the mere act of challenging your perspectives means that, to you, that person is biased.
This goes even moreso when I say it:
Myself and other-poster have not even given our perspectives, so this just reveals your own ideological biases; the mere act of challenging your perspectives means that, to you, those people are biased.
Not sure why you took that hard left into accusing others of being biased, but we don't have to have a conversation like that. We can rise above it.
Unfortunately, your post contained nothing about the actual topic: you're just arguing. If you're interesting in having an interesting discussion, focus on substance in your response, rather than attacking me. For guidance there, check the parts of my previous reply which you omitted.
I am not the topic here, and I'm not interested in you making me it.
Check your carbon monoxide detector.
Then come back and try to connect the dots between your non-sequiturs.
No, a serious good faith solution would be to establish an actual working immigration/citizenship system with clear rules and then enforce them, because the current situation endangers everyone.
I'm from a different country. We have ID cards. You strictly need an ID card (or a different proof of citizenship or right to residence) from the age of 18 (or even sooner if you are attending schools, using the health system etc) to do basically anything. It's not possible to live here your whole life as a full member of the society without that. When I read how someone lives 60 years in the US without actual legal basis to do that I just shudder. People should be forced to resolve their legal situation one way or another much sooner. And I am pro-immigration, but also there should be order in that.
Once you have a clear, fast proof of right to reside in a country, you don't need to touch due process because it can go fast.
That's essentially how it is in the states, we have the U.S. passport and individual State's drivers licenses as the primary forms of ID. And government bureaucracy is actually notorious for requiring tons of information (two forms of government ID, and proof of residence, sometimes the literal SS card or birth certificate itself) that everyone inevitability ends up running into an issue with forgetting some document at least once in their lives.
> It's not possible to live here your whole life as a full member of the society without that.
It's not really possible here either, even private companies usually require it in some way or another (such as LinkedIn[0]). The issue is illegal immigrants simply forego these things, or work for companies and live in blue states that don't check any form of ID in the majority of places, on purpose (such as when citizens vote in the presidential election, which is still insane to me)
> Once you have a clear, fast proof of right to reside in a country, you don't need to touch due process because it can go fast.
Well, once you have the undocumented migrants inside your borders, how are you supposed to get rid of them other than how the current administration has been attempting to (utilizing private intelligence and beefing up ICE)?
That means it's actually not like in country. Once you have an ID card, you don't need anything else (only very rarely the birth certificate).
> The issue is illegal immigrants simply forego these things
That would in our country mean no phone, no driver's license, no electricity, no bank account, you can't be employed, etc., so really not something anyone could do for a longer time and lead a normal life.
> how are you supposed to get rid of them
Offer them a clear path to legalize their status. Create a system where it's not possible to live a nearly whole life this way. This is clearly a systemic problem and needs a systemic solution, not one that can be created or cancelled on the whim of a president.
We could just increase the amount of places that need a Passport for verification, then.
> That would in our country mean no phone, no driver's license, no electricity, no bank account, you can't be employed, etc., so really not something anyone could do for a longer time and lead a normal life.
I don't know about phone plans or electricity, but you can't get a driver's license without being a citizen in most states (a few blue ones are the exception), and without a social security number you can't open a bank account or get legally employed (employers need your SSN to pay you), but the issue is some employers knowingly hire illegal immigrants and pay them under the table, oftentimes in cash and without reporting it to the IRS, because they like the cheaper labor. This is illegal, but oftentimes unenforced.
> Offer them a clear path to legalize their status.
Why should we have to legalize them? We have a path to legal immigration in this country, and they decided not to go through it. Reagan legalized all illegal immigrants in the past, and that turned out horribly, and set an awful precedent.
> Create a system where it's not possible to live a nearly whole life this way.
Why should we have to? We've been around for ~250 years, this hasn't been a big problem the entire time. Clearly, it's possible to fix this without it.
> This is clearly a systemic problem and needs a systemic solution, not one that can be created or cancelled on the whim of a president.
It's not just the Executive, the BBB passed the Senate and House too, and deporting illegal immigrants has large bipartisan support [0] (though not to the extent the current administration is doing it, unfortunately)
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/03/26/am...
You don't have to, of course. But once someone has strong ties to only one country, lives most of their life there, in some cases even is not a citizen of another country, it's the only humane thing to do - in these cases they are de facto citizens already.
> It's not just the Executive
But before the BBB it was, and it was Biden doing one thing and Trump doing another without any laws changing and this is not a stable environment to be in. And it is reasonable to expect some stability from the State.
This bill did not do that.
In other words: this is bullshit. Try again?
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/05/812474279/court-blocks-trumps...
A decent percentage of these immigrants are seasonal. A very, very small percentage of the total of undocumented immigrants have criminal histories. Focusing efforts on violent criminals is reasonable, but that doesn't meet the propaganda numbers from the current administration. Deporting tens of thousands of people just doesn't rally hate the same way.
Rather than spending time and money building concentration camps, building out secret police (ICE), and deporting people without due process, we could be fixing our immigration system.
Let's make work visas that allow migrant workers to work seasonally. Let's add paths to citizenship to migrant workers. Let's prioritize fast paths to citizenship for students, especially those with masters and PHDs. Let's introduce a point system to encourage immigration of the best and brightest from high demand countries, allowing them prioritized visas, PRs and naturalization. Let's fix the DREAMER situation by providing those folks clear paths to citizenship.
The reason the immigration situation doesn't get better is because republicans need it to be broken. They use undocumented immigrants as a group to target hate against, which rallies their base.
I try to keep an open mind but its very hard to take the debate seriously when you end with disingenuous points like this.
We could end all illegal immigration in an instant. But this doesn't let the GOP stoke racial hatred and enact its vision of a police state.
wdym
Most undocumented immigrants are here for work. If we change the immigration system to give them work visas, the problem mostly goes away. Some of them don't want to stay here permanently, and not even for the entire year. They come seasonally. Others would like to stay permanently, and offering them a legal path to citizenship is likely a good idea.
I think it's not possible to end all illegal immigration instantly, but the vast majority is easily within our reach.
It's worth noting that asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants, and the way the current administration handles the situation itself it what's illegal.
If immigration issues are mostly solved, then republicans lose one of their rallying points.
As someone else pointed out, this is exactly why republicans killed a bill that had support across the aisle. Trump was going to run on mass deportations, and it's hard to do that, when a bill was just passed, co-sponsored by your own party.
All rights for criminal defendants make the state's job harder.
They just increased the budget for ice prisons form 3 billion to 40 billion, and did not increase the budget for the legal infrastructure needed to adequately process everyone.
Why they need to do is increase funding for judges, and make the process faster. Aka, like what the Larkin bill did, but the GOP killed that, because solving the immigration issues would be bad for them electorally.
Is seems like the plan is to just lock people up... And then nothing, except maybe deport them to random countries and let them sort them out.
Keep in mind that this has not been a 'biden' issue. The illegal immigrants already have in many cases been in the US for decades, due to ag/construction/hospitality wanting labor at rates Americans were unwilling to work.
Instead, of actually addressing the issue (why are people allowed to hire illegal immigrants in the first place, seems like cutting off the job supply would work as well).
But the question becomes, why are they increasing the infrastructure for locking people up, but not the infrastructure for due process, seems like they want to throw out due process.
Keep in mind, the people they grab off the streets have not all been illegal immigrants, many are legal on work/student/refugee visas.
And maybe you disagree that these people should have been allowed visas in the first place, but there are ways to change those laws.
1. What to do with people apprehended entering the country illegally and who then claim asylum.
2. What to do with people already inside the country who are suspected of being here illegally.
The first thing is complicated and badly in need of a rethink because clearly our asylum laws are being gamed. I don't have any ready answers but I'm sure that there are a zillion proposals for reform.
For the second thing, yes I believe that if you are suspected of being in the US illegally then you should absolutely have the right to challenge deportation in court. Otherwise literally anyone can be scooped up off the street and deported with no recourse whether they are an American citizen or not. And honestly it is a bit maddening to see people continuously fail to grasp (or pretend to fail to grasp) this basic point.
Are you willing to pay for these things? It'd be much more efficient for a cop to simply murder anybody suspected of a crime. Efficiency should not be the goal when it comes to people's rights.
Oh? What about people who are permanent residents and are arbitrarily deemed "threat to national security" because of their opposition to Israel? What about the recent denaturalization DOJ unit that was just set up? Are those people "illegally" here too and that is constitutionally valid?
The tunnel vision here is astounding. Do you really not realize that this administration isn't stopping at "just the illegals?" They have deported US citizens, children at that.
The new one they're building is clearly going to have all this bullshit so they can cherry pick at lightning speed reasons to exile, rendition or punish people.
But just so we're clear, the SS doesn't really care if you're a citizen. All it's tracking is who pays into it and who receives the benefits from the payments.
What about sending people who are here legally to a foreign torture camp (not "deporting", by the way) without due process? Is that in line with the Constitution?
No. No it is not.
Stop playing stupid.
https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of%...
forget it Jake, it's HNTown.
you're absolutely right btw but it will fall on deaf ears here.
Don't worry about the mass revocations of legal status of previously legal residents. The deprivation of due process. The sending of people to a foreign prison where they endure all kinds of human rights abuses based on flimsy evidence, no due proceas and no expectations of ever getting out alive.
Fascist fucks
US citizens were deported because of their skin color?
I think this is disinformation.
>Eventually, the officers reviewed the identification in his wallet and released him
I thought you said they were deported based on their skin color? Both of these articles seem to say the opposite of that.
> Gavidia was released, but Javier Ramirez, another US citizen who is Gadivia’s friend and coworker, was detained by two agents, forced facedown on the ground and taken to federal detention, where he has remained in custody, the New York Times reported.
Arrested and eventually released is guilty until proven innocent.
You’re correct. But in a somewhat irrelevant way. The problem for most Americans aren’t the deportations. It’s the lack of due process, extrajudicial torture, and expansion of these police privileges to now encompassing all naturalised Americans.
Because that's basically what's unfolding under fascism means.
Flashing your headlights to warn others of cops or anything else is generally considered free speech. IIRC, this has been ruled on several times in pretty high courts.
So double check with a lawyer, but I'm like 99% confident there's nothing illegal about these types of Apps. I mean Waze has been doing it for years and even Google maps notifies you about speed traps.
If some new ruling makes it not free speech, we're in danger
Hasn’t the light flasher helped someone who was breaking the law avoid detection?
And isn’t the intent of the flasher to ensure that people who were breaking the law have enough time to stop doing that long enough to avoid detection?
> However if you help someone avoid being lawfully detained
Obligatory “I am not a lawyer” disclaimer, but the people who make posts on this app have no contact with the people the app ostensibly benefits. If the app helped targets of ice find willing drivers in the area to help them escape to somewhere else, that’d be one thing since there is now a direct relationship with a person and the accused and direct action on the part of the app user. But I don’t see how this app is materially different from posting speed traps or DUI checkpoints on Waze, an action that has absolutely helped people avoid lawful intervention by police.
An analogy might be to have a sign in a shop warning thieves of CCTV - the purpose is to prevent theft and is not considered to be helping someone avoid detection, although it does also do that.
This looks much the same to me as people warning those around them of ICE activity.
It is literally telling someone to obey the law, because the law is watching.
Police notifications on GPS don't really give you much notification to turn off onto a different road or to avoid them, at least on freeways, which is the only time I've seen them.
Times sure are changing
Here is a list (but I can't say how accurate it is): https://lizhiguos.com/driving-aids-and-speed-camera-warnings...
You can have a reasonable system one way or another. I would take Swiss regulation over US one any day personally.
If a driver is forbidden from using an app to identify where a speed camera is, I would suspect they are equally forbidden from using an app that identify a roadblock, but I guess it would depend if the law specify it.
You aren’t realistically going to overpower them, so any violent resistance just helps them DARVO harder and excuse escalating their brutality. That’s why they’re always so eager to find or create violent one-offs within non-violent mass protests.
50% of Border Patrol agents are Latino. Believing the delusion that they're racist White rednecks is buying into propaganda.
Leftist have suggested and stated that only White people can be racist.
>Whiteness has repeatedly expanded over time.
Unscientific term.
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/where_did_we_get_the_idea_...
> 50% of Border Patrol agents are Latino.
Even if that was true, and relevant to their capacity to be racist thugs, Border Patrol is a unit of Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—and CBP is a different entity from ICE, at the same organizational level within the Department of Homeland Security—so it would still be a non-sequitur.
It is true.
>and relevant to their capacity to be racist thugs
Only White people can be racist remember?
>Border Patrol is a unit of Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—and CBP is a different entity from ICE, at the same organizational level within the Department of Homeland Security—so it would still be a non-sequitur.
Not at all, 30% of ICE agents are Latino, and we were told Border Patrol and ICE are White redneck neo-Nazi racist thugs. Surprise, that delusion is objectively false given these figures. QED.
It is true.
>Border Patrol is a unit of Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—and CBP is a different entity from ICE, at the same organizational level within the Department of Homeland Security—so it would still be a non-sequitur.
Not at all, 30% of ICE agents are Latino, and we were told Border Patrol and ICE are White redneck neo-Nazi racist thugs. Surprise, that delusion is objectively false given these figures. QED.
The idea that only "white rednecks" can be racist certainly is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Amer...
Yes it is. Thanks to delusional beliefs: https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/where_did_we_get_the_idea_...
All it would take is one bad day for anybody in ICE to be afraid to show up to work.
A bad day at work is just more contact with the “enemy” and is desired by some to separate the weekend warriors from the true believers. The fog of war is obscuring the reality of the outbreak of conflict which has been brewing under the surface for many years.
The revolution will not be televised because it won’t look like a revolution. It’ll look like C-SPAN. Whatever ICE is doing isn’t a revolution, it’s administrative. People voted for this, and they got it. If people want change, make it happen the way that other changes happen that stick. The lesson of Arab Spring is that even with the military on your side, revolution breaks the status quo, and once broken, norms change because the power structure has changed. Most folks don’t want revolution, they just want a vacation from reality. No one wants to put in the work to make revolutions happen because it’s a lot of paperwork, rehearsals, and standing around. It feels like work because it is. All that effort makes it look natural and inevitable, but that’s the magic of make believe.
A bad day at work as you suggest would be a magic act, but who’s gonna put in the work to pull that rabbit out of that hat? And who benefits from such an obvious misdirection?
I was at Occupy San Francisco, so I am not just asking questions, but asking you to re-examine what you believe is possible, and why you think a mock pitched battle with tin soldiers has tactical value, so I don’t know what your motive is, but I doubt you would be honest about your motives given the circumstances.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK
Violence does solve things, but also can make for an immediate 'Very Bad Time'.
Police use violence. Military uses violence. Difference is state-monopoly or not. To say violence doesn't work would be to say the police and military don't work - and they do.
Anybody calling on violent means should absolutely call upon peaceful means first, secondly, and more. Violence should only be after all peaceful means have been tried.
Its better to win by peaceful means, than by exertion of violence. And, violence is no guarantee of winning. And even if you do win, can still be pyrric, in which everyone loses.
Tl; dr. Be wary of people casually calling for violence. They're either a state actor, dumb, or both.
FWIW, I don't even remotely agree with what he's saying.
For example, "People should [bad thing] ICE agents" would be protected speech as it isn't imminent, specific or actionable.
This is not a new force, they have no new powers. They didn't need to hire new people willing to perform these actions nor train them how to do so.
If you haven't considered this before it should hit you like a hammer to the forehead: where are the resignations? Where are the "good cops" we keep hearing about, what are they doing?
The other federal, state, and local law enforcement officers that are assisting in these actions, where is their principled refusal to violate their oath to uphold the constitution? What statements are their powerful and normally very vocal unions making about all this?
There is no effective system of checks and balances, or this entire discussion would be moot. Civilian solutions(like ICEBlock and friends) are a whimper of a response compared to the lethal and aggressive actions of these LEOs. Typically entrenched groups(like LEOs) can not be talked or reasoned with into changing their position. Those changes in position come from leverage (ie, your supervisor is replaced or leveraged with the threat of replacement), or direct aggression.
As an example, certain villains took issue with these systems and mounted their own lethal response. We are /still/ talking about these individuals because of how riotously effective their actions were at illuminating and mitigating the perceived problems. Whether your talking about Ted K, or Timmy M....they are examples of people who took action to correct a perceived problem. Right or wrong, every reader of this post knows who they are, what they did, and why they did it. Until something of equal magnitude opposes the authoritarian problem of the day(ie ICE), the status quo will continue.
edit: typo
This is not the US I knew.
Sounds like fake news. Link?
Clearly.
>just a response to someone saying something "sounds like" something.
It was a response asking for sources, sources you still don't have. You're projecting about being triggered and still don't have sources to bring. Sad.
I don't need to enable anyone's laziness.
Sounds like you're failing at basic reading comprehension, which isn't surprising. I am not the one who made the claim, I do not have to supply sources.
>It's not hard if you try.
Trying doesn't make a difference: the sources don't exist.
>I don't need to enable anyone's laziness.
You have too much laziness of your own, I get it. You're also insanely triggered by my basic asks (since they are heretical apparently) which similarly doesn't surprise me. Any reply from you is an admission that you're triggered and don't have any sources.
Can I try?
Any reply from you is an admission that you're triggered and don't have any intelligence. Also failing to reply is an admission of the same.
Goalposts haven't moved, you've just missed.
>Can I try?
No you may not, so the rest of your post is disregarded. Bet you're seething over opening yourself up to that.
Any reply from you is an admission that you're triggered and don't have any intelligence. Also failing to reply is an admission of the same.
I won.
Guess we're done now that you've decided you win though. "I'm bleeding, making me the victor!"
Not at all, I have a real life and don't log in every day and furiously click refresh and go through all the comment threads unlike you because you're so triggered.
>and it's also telling that the majority of your comment is just things I wrote.
Modern day Sherlock you are.
>Guess we're done now that you've decided you win though. "I'm bleeding, making me the victor!"
Glad you admit defeat.
Whether you were logged in or not, the decision to reply to this thread after a week was the sad bit. But I'm here for you to let off whatever steam you need.
I can admit defeat more if that will help you? Or should I try to give you an opportunity to say "triggering intensifies"? Or something else? Just let me know what will let you feel better.
Sad and cringe.
>Whether you were logged in or not, the decision to reply to this thread after a week was the sad bit.
Translation: "You're not as terminally online as I am and I think that's sad."
>I can admit defeat more if that will help you? Or should I try to give you an opportunity to say "triggering intensifies"? Or something else?
No need to admit more, it's done. You replyguying is more than enough admission.
>Just let me know what will let you feel better.
You coping and seething is enough. Sad.
https://ground.news/article/us-visa-restrictions-on-ecowas-s...
Note: 565 linked sources in that
You can easily tell when someone isn't asking something in Good Faith just by the first couple of search engine hits. Dead giveaway.
Aside: limiting the argument to things that have already happened is uninteresting to me; you skate where the puck is going. One can easily do this by applying the administrations internal logic, i.e. what they said/did in the past, and what the ultimate goal/result was, and mapping that to what they are doing now to extrapolate future actions.
Lots of links to fake news sites and Russian propaganda outlets. Not sources.
https://www.justice.gov/civil/media/1404046/dl
with some discussion at: DOJ Opens Door To Stripping Citizenship Over Politics - https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/doj-opens-door-to-strippi...
The Department of Justice may institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a).
In an environment like that, legal status doesn't mean shit.
Their argument is that the "plain letter of the United States Constitution" doesn't say that explicitly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_th...
Plenty of examples where birthright citizenship didn't apply in the past (and currently don't apply, such as American Samoa
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No, it says this explicitly:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
They're arguing that the sky is blue, which the sky actually is.
>If they win a court case by arguing the sky is green, that says something about the court, not about the reality.
If they win a court case by arguing the sky is blue, and half of the political establishment rejects that, that says something about that half of the political establishment, not about the reality.
What people care about is reality. Currently the reality is you can be subject to arbitrary detention and deportation with no due process, regardless of you rights.
How this has anything to do with the immigrants in my city trying to live normal lives, perhaps you can explain.
Are there any other civil offenses that you think should be dealt with using masked police and concentration camps?
Overstaying a visa is a civil offense, 'improper entry' e.g. jumping the border is criminal.
But the majority of people getting rounded up right now are for unlawful presence.
And a lot of them have no idea that their presence was marked unlawful until ICE gets them. There's a reason civil offenses are supposed to be handled with proper notification and court summonses instead of this shit.
- Whether unlawful presence is a civil or criminal law, countries should control who enters the country.
- Masked police seem like a reasonable response to doxxing of police officers? It’s not like the identity of these police aren’t know to the legal system and lawyers of the accused.
- Calling immigration detention “concentration camps” makes no sense. It’s just meaningless rhetoric as detention bears no resemblance to actual concentration camps.
- Most importantly, the US enforcing its own immigrations laws does not make it an outlier - it was an outlier when it ignored its own immigration laws. Every other country I’ve visited rather strictly enforces its immigration laws including speedy deportation of any encountered who doesn’t have permission to be in the country. If anything the headlines should be “US joins rest of world in enforcing its own immigration laws”
Yes. And it's disingenuous to call for brutal police tactics with enormous collateral damage for something the letter of the law regards as the equivalent of a parking ticket.
> - Masked police seem like a reasonable response to doxxing of police officers?
Fuck. No.
> Calling immigration detention “concentration camps” makes no sense.
When they are meant for detaining people who are literally not guilty of any crime, and they are deliberately designed to feature inhumane conditions, it makes every sense.
> - - Most importantly, the US enforcing its own immigrations laws does not make it an outlier
I'll ask the same question again: which civil offenses do you think should also be addressed with secret police and concentration camps?
The EU is stricter with immigration than the US. But it does not use secret police and concentration camps.
> The EU is stricter with immigration than the US. But it does not use secret police and concentration camps.
You don't think the police in Europe sometimes hide the identity of their police from onlookers when required? I'm pretty sure they do.
Do you also think Europe doesn't detain people who are in their country illegally? I'm pretty sure they do. They are even creating "return hubs", which are basically detention centers outside their own country which hold immigrants until they can be returned to their home or a third country.
Yes in the UK they do. However this is breaking the law and those who do this have been punished.
If you don't already know that keeping the name & badge number visible is the most important part of proper policing, and established as such by the world's first police force and its founder, Robert Peel, there's no point arguing much of anything with you.
It's literally the difference between a police force and a Geheime Staat Polizei.
But clearly there are exceptions. You can even read about them on European police websites.
https://handbookgermany.de/en/police
"In particular, criminal police officers also work in "civilian" clothing and therefore are visually unrecognisable as the police force. They often have to hide their identity, for example, to observe people or to enforce arrest warrants."
Dude, WTF
You've never seen a takedown of street level drug dealers? Unmarked cars, plainclothes police, grab everyone off the street?
I'm really trying to understand what specifically you find objectionable. Is it the fact that ICE isn't in uniform? Or that they wear masks? Or that they arrest people?
The moment they make an actual arrest (which is rare, since they prefer to maintain their cover), they identify and are held accountable for how they do it.
Something ICE is not doing.
I don’t think you are paying attention to the abject cruelty in the administration’s own discourse about these facilities. The U.S. president describing with barely restrained delight his anticipation that escapees from the new facility in Florida would be eaten by alligators. I suppose if called out on it, he’d claim it’s a joke. I’m sure many regimes in history had their own euphemistic terms for facilities such as this; but purposeful cruelty is a cardinal feature of concentration camps in my view.
Do you have a specific quote you can share? I haven't seen what you're referring to.
And I guess I think back to facilities like Alcatraz. It was created such that anyone trying to escape would likely drown. Is that the same thing you're talking about?
We do have laws. And laws generally should be enforced. The lack of enforcing them prior to now being the same as “ government's attempts at establishing something approaching a police state” is a bit hyperbolic.
Past administrations have cracked down on other areas outside of illegal entry and continued illegal stay in the country, and the next administration likely will choose some other set of laws to focus on enforcement.
what about the law where people get due process, right to an appeal, and adequate legal representation?
Hey, you look kinda brown...I think you're an illegal. Or, you posted a funny picture of a political figure on Facebook. Off to El Salvador with you! No, you don't get a day in court, I don't care if you and your parents and your grandparents were all born in the US, you are being sent to a torture camp in a country you've never been to because I THINK you are illegal.
See how that works? Due process is a RIGHT FOR EVERY FUCKING PERSON BECAUSE THAT IS HOW YOU PROVE YOU ARE INNOCENT, YOU FUCKING FASCIST. You CANNOT bypass THE fundamental part of the justice process because you're making shit up and want to deploy tan people with autism awareness tattoos, or people who think maybe shooting hungry kids in Gaza is bad.
Do you even know what the process is? Or even have a clue how many people deported had a process but it resulted in an outcome they and maybe you did not like?
I don’t have time to investigate everybody, but of the sampling I did all had orders active to be deported.
The part most of you are missing is there was a process. And failure to comply is what results in people showing up at your house and putting you on a plane.
This is no different than if I murder somebody and and escape after the trail before going to jail. 10 years later I am at a coffee shop. Maybe I have a good job a wife a new born and I have been a functional member of society. You better bet that I’ll be arrested and the Jane to go to jail once somebody finds out.
If I steal $100 from the till at my employer, they call the cops and I'm arrested.
If my employer forges timecards to pay me $100 less, its a civil matter. If the state wants to, they might help, but likely not.
Police can kill people by simply saying "I thought I saw them pull a weapon", and the consequence is paid time off with an investigation.
Citizens killing in self-defense have regularly been tried for murder since they didn't do every possible thing before lethal response.
Congress themselves engage in massive amounts of insider trading, all completely 'legal' cause congress refuses to make laws that apply to everyone.
Yet someone in the public gets word of a secret or upcoming announcement, and the SEC comes down on you like a ton of bricks.
Face it - this country's real problem is that we are the 3rd world corrupt shithole we think of those 'other' lesser nations.
You should read about how Mussolini came to power and consolidated control. We’re not building a $49B paramilitary force and database to find typos in 50 year old naturalization documents to deport their descendants for law and order. ICE is something else.
What I have seen of ICE in the media it feels a bit one sided.
They might get a slap on the wrist fine that probably doesn't even negate the profits off the illegal labor.
> However, we also have a system called e-verify
The majority of states do not require e-verify for most jobs. Many states don't have any requirements for e-verify and a few only have limited requirements.
If this were true -- if they were actually punished (eg sent to prison for N years) -- the whole problem would solve itself overnight.
> a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police
Simply enforcing laws is not "becoming a police state", the current administration is doing far worse than this, and is actually blatantly and arbitrarily breaking laws according to multiple courts in various jurisdictions.
This includes ICE which has become a tool of this police state by deporting people (including in a case a US citizen, a two-year-old girl) without due process.
Tried to kill police officers while trying to overturn an election on behalf of the dear leader? We'll pardon you and give you a job on a task force about weaponization of government. [1]
The law will be applied to the harshest extent to those Trump and his ilk see as enemies and will be warped in favor of his current friends.
Or, as a Preuvian facist president put it: "For my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law!"
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/03/ice-iran-don... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/02/january-6-ri...
In the US, even before recent administrations, we’ve long had evidence of uneven application of laws. Police love power. Criminalizing more stuff gives them more power to decide who to target.
Look how the war on drugs and policies like stop and frisk have targeted black folks. Even innocuous sounding things like seatbelt laws give police the ability to criminalize “driving while black.”
Meanwhile we’ve long ignored white collar crimes like wage theft. You know rich families aren’t going to be affected by anti-abortion laws.
My heavily tattooed White friends and I recently ignored no trespassing to swim in a nice river in TX. We agreed that if the cops came, I (non tattooed, White) would do the talking.
Anyway, the police have never been interested in holding the rich and powerful to account.
Chattel slavery- direct, constant, and complete control over one's life and death, and the reduction of the person to mere property, is essentially the most authoritarian institution there can be.
He's similar to Lenin, imo, in that he advocates using the State to prepare to dismantle the State, all while gassing up the things that the State provides (e.g. social protections). There's never anything more than a vague promise to move on from that in the future, which is exactly the same as the single-party-State USSR.
People mistake Capitalism as the driver for authoritarianism, but Capitalism is just the means to gain power/wealth in our current society, with hierarchical government being the framework within which Capitalism operates. Greed is the driver, and greed is intrinsic to humans. But greed without a framework to amass power (like a State) can only operate on an individual level.
> Milne was divorced from the nonimmigrant student she married prior to 1983. She then married a U.S. citizen but we found, in our above-said unpublished opinion, that she had admitted that it was a marriage of convenience. After another divorce, she married her current husband, a marriage that is uncontested as "bona fide." Her request for legal permanent resident status based on this marriage was denied under INA § 204(c) which precludes approval based on even an admittedly good-faith union if the petitioner had previously contracted an improper marriage.
What other civil offenses you think should be enforced with secret police and concentration camps?
oh great, stealing my idea?
If ICE makes us a police state, doesn’t this mean that Trump’s time in office has been _less_ of a police state than any time in the past?
But have any of Trump’s executive orders told ICE to be more violent? I haven’t noticed any that said that, but maybe you could link to it.
Listen to the words of this President, and the people in his administration compared to previous Presidents. Not to mention deploying the national guard and USMC against civilians to assist ICE, because ICE's methods have changed.
Then ask yourself why does ICE need a budget of $75 billion in the bill Trump is pushing, when ICE was apparently more successful with magnitudes less in previous administrations?
> The GOP bill allocates $46.5 billion toward completing Trump's border wall. It also puts $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and $10 billion to be used for border security more broadly. The bill sets aside $4.1 billion to hire and retain more agents and officers, and invests in upgraded technology for screenings and surveillance of U.S. borders.
It doesn’t say anything about ICE specifically, so it’s not very helpful. ICE wouldn't be doing construction, and they wouldn’t be running CBP facilities, but maybe they’ll be getting more agents or officers or both. They also don’t screen travelers or surveil the border. Overall it doesn’t sound like ICE is getting $75 billion.
Anyway, the budget is not very relevant to my question. If removals are down to a third (well, two fifths I guess) of what they were during Biden’s term, how is it that we are suddenly in a police state? If ICE makes us a police state, then weren’t we in a police state then?
Why didn’t anyone care about this last year?
The security worry isn't extra laborers driving down wages, it's terrorists coming across the border and blowing up Mardi Gras (secondarily, serial rapists or murderers or what have you coming here to ply their trade). Prevention of entry is the only defense there, because presumably those bad actors aren't here for the long haul, economic gain, etc.
I haven't seen a budget breakdown so I can't speak to how defensible the budget is, just that it seems clear that removal metrics don't tell a useful story on their own.
Please stop accusing people of peddling the straw man you want to tear down. It's Reddit-tier, not worthy of HN.
HN has reached Reddit levels of partisan nonsense. Sigh.
All that aside, feel free to walk your framing back and I'll change mine accordingly.
Previous administrations followed this thing we call “due process”. This admin is not.
ICE is not “kidnapping” anybody, and is not “trafficking” them. They are federal police officers who arrest criminals and deport them according the legal process defined by Congress in 1996.
Then why are they spending so much effort deporting everyday people? This talking point is tired, it's the equivalent of "for the children!". Something that everyone can get behind but isn't anywhere near the level of problem it's made out to be.
Based on historical examples of secret police, plainclothes and face masks on Federal Agents by default could definitely make people think that we are "approaching a police state".
All the president has to do is to make a few speeches about how tough on illegal immigration his administration is going to be and people’s perceptions will shift enough that they suddenly care. Now that someone cares enough to start making threats against federal officers, the officers start wearing masks and bullet–proof vests. This apparently causes perceptions to shift even more and people start thinking we live in a police state.
But the reality is that they’re doing ⅓rd of the work. They’re literally arresting fewer people. If anything, that makes it _less_ of a police state than before. And the law that ICE is upholding was passed last amended in by Congress in 1996, so it’s not like Trump has suddenly given them a new job to do.
So yea, I would say that it’s a misperception. The perception doesn't appear to agree with the objective facts.
It is? What is your source for this?
According to TRAC's published stats, in May 2024, ICE booked 8,451 people into detention. In May 2025, ICE booked 23,662 people into detention.
https://tracreports.org/immigration/detentionstats/book_in_a...
But then I remember that trump is invoking the ancient "war powers act" to do them. Why didn't obama or biden have to do that if they were able to deport so many people? I also remember when that psycho dog-killing-enjoyer kristi noem tweeted "suck it" when a group of people who were trying to use legal means to not get deported got deported. Fuck her.
You say it's a misperception, but I think we are all perceiving it exactly as they want us to. They are going to do whatever they can get away with by any means necessary and fuck you if you try to get in the way. Some people just think that's bad.
> psycho dog-killing-enjoyer kristi noem
If you want anyone to take you seriously then don’t call people names. State your claim without ad hominem attacks or other obvious fallacies.
Because the Obama and Biden administrations were not going out of their way (which the Trump administration both is and is publicly flaunting that it is) to avoid providing due process under the terms of existing case law, defying "you must not deport person A to country X" orders of courts.
> But then I remember that trump is invoking the ancient "war powers act" to do them.
"Alien Enemies Act", the War Powers Act is much newer and unrelated, but not all of the controversial deportations are attached to that.
> Why didn't obama or biden have to do that if they were able to deport so many people?
The Alien Enemies Act provides a pretext for deportations with less process than traditional deportation process under regular immigration law (in fact, until the courts ruled otherwise, the Trump Administration was claiming, and treating it as if, it allowed no process at all once the act was invoked and the executive branch designated the target as an alien enemy.)
There is virtually no evidence for many of the people targeted that they were members of that or any other gang, and the standarss used for that designation were laughable.
Had the courts not quickly shut down the Administration contention that expulsions under the act were not subject to challenge, it obviously would have been used much more extensively as a way to sweep up anyone the Administration wishes to deport.
> But then I remember that trump is invoking the ancient "war powers act" to do them. Why didn't obama or biden have to do that if they were able to deport so many people?
In other words, this guy thinks that Trump is using this act to boost the number of deportations. But the gang doesn’t have enough members to make a dent in the statistics. 35k illegals are being removed from the country every month and no gang has 35k members, or even 3k. They might have three dozen.
And I’ll reiterate that if lots of people are angry at Trump because they think that he’s using some ancient obscure law against _every_ illegal immigrant then they are suffering a misperception of what has actually been going on. If this is the reason for the sudden protests against ICE then it is a very bad reason indeed.
Note this is even orthogonal to the actual issue of immigration policy.
He admitted to having used cannabis on two occasions — in Germany and in New Mexico.
- It’s legal in both places, so in my mind it was irrelevant, he said." - Nordlys
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/25/norwegian-tourist-jd-... https://www.nordlys.no/denied-entry-to-the-us-admitted-to-le...
Oh we're not going to let tourists into our country because we asked them whether or not they'd ever smoked pot and they said yes.
We have no idea whether that's actually true or not, but if it is, that's the dumbest thing I've ever f*** heard, especially given the marijuana's legal in most states in the United States that anyone outside the US would actually want to visit
With the “narcotic paraphernalia” referring to “a photo of the traveler with a homemade wooden pipe” according to Mikkelson.
The official document for his rejection stated this reason:
> it appears you are attempting to engage in unauthorized employment without authorization and proper documentation
With all these conflicting accounts in mind, perhaps it is plausible that he was denied entry because of his admitted legal cannabis use on two prior occasions. Or perhaps Homeland Security indeed retaliated against a someone for possessing a JD Vance meme, then decided to lie about it.
Doesn’t Real ID solve this problem?
I live in a country with the equivalent of a Real ID and a law requiring you to present it when asked. Officially they are supposed to have a good reason for it, but in practice they'll happily do it just because they can. And they'll continue "just asking questions" if they feel like it. You're not under arrest of course, but they are happy to waste a few hours of your time when you "refuse to cooperate".
After all, as a law-abiding citizen you don't have anything to hide, do you?
Real ID is irrelevant to this. The issue is that now they can demand that people prove their citizenship almost anywhere and anytime beyond the few places it was permitted before.
And that's also ignoring the whole "papers please" of how allegedly Americans aren't required to carry ID if they're just walking around
We don’t get this in NZ. Waze has removed this feature after threats. I don’t like cops either, but it is super fair and logical to me.