The methods ICE is using currently to detain people for deportation look a lot like secret police tactics for disappearing folks and resemble kidnapping, when a van full of armed men with face masks jump out and remove you from your vehicle, zip-tie you, and transport you to a secret facility.
There have also been reported situations of ICE officers breaking windows of cars and pulling folks out, when all they had was an administrative warrant.
And that doesn’t include the recently reported and videoed situation of an ICE agent firing at a vehicle that was stopped by ICE agents.
All of these tactics increase fear among the populace, and that fear is what drives apps like these. Whether you’re here legally or not, no one deserves the secret police tactics that fly in the face of the principles of limited government and freedom of movement.
You are defending playground rules "why are you making me punch you" with people's lives.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5440311/ice-raids-maske...
Think of it as a cousin to the "he's no angel" style defense of bad acts.
Legal is a moving target. Legal was used to justify interment camps.
Be careful justifying what should and could be done based on "it's technically legal"
They have privileges. Provisional privileges derived from the people (or at least that is what some very drunk men in wigs seemed to imply). I don't like it when my government uses dressed-up faux authority (DHS just issues itself administrative "warrants") as the basis for assaulting people. Seems pretty cut-and-dry wrong. And as responses go, really lopsided.
So here I am... making a fuss about it.
They only get to do this crap if they follow the rule of law, which they aren’t.
That'll surely make things work out great. right?
Yep. I'm not sure why we're even bothering with deportations. Just shoot 'em in the head and grind them up for fertilizer and pig/chicken feed.
And if a few hundred thousand citizens get caught up in that, it's no big deal. They wouldn't have been involved if they didn't look like illegals, right?
Besides, folks like me (with the map of Ireland all over my face) won't get caught up in that. So why should I care?
Yeah, why bother deporting them. Shooting them is quicker and cheaper. We could save even more money by converting warehouses to gas folks and then we can cremate them and/or use them as agricultural inputs.
Easy peasy. I mean, it's not like they're human or anything. My god! They're criminals, every last one of them! Rapists, killers, gang bangers. If they weren't subhuman, we wouldn't need to treat them like this.
But they're not like us decent, hard working people. They're evil, twisted murderers, just like the pedophile demonrats who murdered all the ICE folks during the Obama and Biden administrations.
Both Biden and Obama just sent the Marines in to ICE offices and killed them all dead!
So it's perfectly fine to do that to all the brown^W illegal people too, right? I certainly won't have to worry about it, nor will the other white^W real Americans.
USA! USA! USA!
Also in Argentina you can arrive, on day 1 file court case for citizenship, which bars deportation. Then stall case for 2 years until you meet criteria. I personally have seen court case documents that did this successfully for criminal who arrived with fake passport.
Would be nice if that were the reality. But we have a POTUS with 34 counts giving out a presidential medal of freedom to a crooked guy with melting hair goo and releasing all J6ers with a pardon.
Impartiality isn't real.
Meanwhile the so called people enforcing the "rule of law" are bagging people up all masked up, no visible credentials, shifting them around in jurisdictions faster than their lawyer can keep up, then sending them in 3rd world shithole prisons even if there is an active order barring that from happening.
If you want to show me rule of law, first of all show me a government that even vaguely follows the very constitution that authorized its existence in the first place. I would rather have anarchy than rule of law enforced by bandits.
This indicates to me that you have no idea how desperate people become in a failed state, in the absence of law and order.
In the failed state I joined a militia, and we actually were able to fight off the people trying to brutalize us. In the USA if you tried this they would just insta Waco you.
Just telling people "You should run away" because the country is run by people grossly violating the constitution isn't the flex you think it is, and in fact I think it is attitudes like the one you've just presented that help get us into these kinds of situations.
I'm sorry what was that? You want rules after all?
Even if we do suppose for the sake of argument, that anarchy is better than rule of law by bandits, and those are literally the only two options -- even then I don't see merely moving away and letting my children deal with it as a clear superior option. It's merely possibly more convenient for me.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
Personally I'm not sure I have a huge problem with this, yes it's a mess, but I'm not at all convinced we need more consolidation of power just because of that. I'm DEFINITELY not convinced that one side or the other has what it takes to permanently govern everything and always get their way.
The same general principles are at work when it comes to the legalization of weed, with lots of little details being different of course.
Are we talking about a different country than the USA? There's ~174 million potential voters in the US, 77 million voted republican vs 75 million voted democrat at the last presidential election (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1139763/number-votes-cas...)
So there's an about even population split that is in theory in support of those policies, versus the same amount of people against. Surely it's not "one state against what the rest of the country voted for" like you're suggesting...
No. That's not it at all. While Federal law is the supreme law of the land, it is enforced by the Federal government.
The several states and any municipalities within them are under no obligation to enforce Federal laws, just as the Federal government is under no obligation to enforce state and local laws.
Which is why the Federal government often ties funding to legislation, using the carrot of funding (and the stick of pulling such funding if states do not) to compel states to cooperate with the Federal government.
What's more, the Federal courts (including SCOTUS) have repeatedly ruled that the states are not required to enforce Federal law for the Federal government.
And no one is "unilaterally deciding to override the immigration policies of the federal government." In fact, state and local law enforcement have repeatedly been used to back up Federal agents executing those immigration policies.
No Federal law requires a state to enforce Federal immigration policies. And not enforcing a law outside of a law enforcement agency's jurisdiction (again Federal law is the jurisdiction of Federal government not state/local governments) isn't "overriding" anything.
You appear to be confused about the law and how it works in the US and the several states. Here are a few links to help straighten you out:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/yes-states-can-nullify-some-...
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/521/898/
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/505/144/
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/can-the-u.s.-government...
Be careful with this argument. Cops also don't have any "obligation" to stop crime, so if we take this argument to its logical conclusion, then it's fine (or at least, it's "not unilaterally overriding laws") for a cop to stand by while someone gets lynched.
You're just figuring that out now? You're 50 years late[0] for Warren v. District of Columbia (rape, assault and burglary) and 20 years late[1] for Castle Rock v. Gonzales (triple murder).
Maybe you should start paying attention?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...
The responder chose not to give me the benefit of the doubt, and to interpret my statement literally so as to own me. Guess we know what he thinks about ICE. It was not really in the spirit of Hacker News which encourages people to respond in good faith. Haters gon' hate.
This is the thing that disappoints me: I was pointing out for the sake of information that this is a separation of powers thing, my comment was nonpartisan and intended simply to inform. It was directly relevant and intended to be helpful to the original guy who had a question, because he said he wasn't American, so he probably wouldn't have thought about this angle.
The dickhead guy had to go make this dirty though.
You could argue that this is also a trial run to gauge the American public and governmental tolerance for actual secret police on the streets disappearing people (both depressingly high, it turns out.)
Committing a crime might well result in your movement being curtailed, and addressing crime is definitely within the remit of limited government.
Quoting: "The concept of proportionality is used as a criterion of fairness and justice in statutory interpretation processes, especially in constitutional law, as a logical method intended to assist in discerning the correct balance between the restriction imposed by a corrective measure and the severity of the nature of the prohibited act. Within criminal law, the concept is used to convey the idea that the punishment of an offender should fit the crime. [..]"
And: "the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level"
Apply that to the national guard being rolled out, and apply that to masked police officers destroying the windows of a car. There is no probable cause here. You cannot be like that is a person of color I will detain them because they're illegal. You cannot even pull over a random person like that. Why not? Because the crime of being illegal is not proportional to the violence being used. Now, if they were a murderer, then yes. But then they're a murderer who is also illegal. Not the fact that they're illegal itself is the dangerous factor. Moreover, these illegals actually benefit the economy as they're HR.
I'm not saying that, whatever "person of color" is. Plenty of legal e.g. hispanics, and plenty of illegal white people in America.
You know. Back when "the rule of law" was a thing.
U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pulled together an all-star federal taskforce comprising agents from five federal law enforcement agencies—including ICE and the FBI—all working out of an office in Los Angeles. When an illegal alien with a prior deportation is inevitably arrested, upon identification and booking into the local jail, the taskforce seeks a federal criminal warrant—signed by a federal judge—for felony re-entry under 8 USC §1326.
By using available criminal databases to find illegal aliens who were arrested and jailed the day before, the team quickly learns of each new offender. Then, a federal warrant is served on local officials, who obviously won’t buck a federal judge’s warrant. That warrant requires local officials to hand over the illegal criminal alien to ICE.
The critical point is that reentry after having already been deported is a felony, and by getting a federal criminal warrant the government can legally force state and local compliance (which they cannot in a civil matter). That is the rule of law as it stands. It also sets up a dynamic of high-profile "heads I win tails you lose" fights with state & local officials who don't want to comply, providing grist for the base.
https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/sanctuar...
But since those who entered without inspection have almost no way to show when they actually entered, full stop, and ICE doesn't actually have a comprehensive and reliable way of tracking the population that wouldn't run afoul of the Constitution, it's basically a violation that is effectively performative. The people this targets are not eligible for any benefits whatsoever on the federal level for themselves anyway (but still have to pay taxes) and cannot naturalize so there's no carrot and no viable stick. It's a rump piece of legislation.
b) A chart does not trump law, and that chart appears to be for people older than 26, who don't need evidence they signed up for the draft. Or people who entered before 26 and have a reason why they'd be excluded. That chart isn't for evidence needed to submit to the draft, it's a way to show you didn't have to sign up.
I'm not talking about all undocumented immigrants (for instance, instances of foreign born perhaps female or otherwise draft exempt children that are born US citizens but never documented as such and enter the US without documentation), that's why I used illegal rather than undocumented which could be legal presence.
If you don't have a judge's order to kidnap the person, then it's illegal by default.
But the common language of 'illegal immigrants" is exceedingly vague because it contradicts how the law its drawn up. One is not considered an immigrant legally until one has some sort of status that allows them to adjust their status to permanent residency. Before 1970 this was basically almost everybody. Today it's virtually nobody when they first enter the country. To be an immigrant is by definition to be legally present. The moral panic is actually based on a conflation between two distinct categories of people: those who entered the country without inspection (EWI) and those who are out of status and have yet to cure their status issue. Inspection doesn't literally mean what it means in the dictionary, by the way, it's a legal fiction. A wave-through is considered inspection even though one doesn't get their passport stamped. Parole can in some cases be considered the predicate that leads to inspection (advance parole establishes the inspection element that turns someone with no status into someone eligible for a green card) or it doesn't in other cases, although in those cases one is not legally considered to have been admitted into the country. Confused yet? Don't worry, DHS lawyers get confused over this as well, and even federal judges are frequently confused. Texas v. US was mooted but if it wasn't mooted, the petition actually reversed the terms of art which makes the petition gibberish if it reaches the merit stage.
Either way, whether someone is out of status or have status is not something that can be determined outside of a court and frequently, both administrative appeals and adjudication in actual Article III courts. ICE agents are not lawyers, they're not even technically cops, and they sure as hell can't tell the minutiae of immigration law where every word you think you know the definition of, you actually likely don't. One collateral attack that was commonly seen was that the person was actually a US citizen who never knew they were since depending on when you were born the criteria through which you acquire citizenship even while born overseas can differ dramatically. And by that I mean in the 1970s the criteria went under several changes that requires a whole new inquiry that requires some serious genealogical research to determine. This is a huge pain in the ass even if you know about the law, and ICE agents aren't lawyers and certainly aren't legal historians, but either way as a matter of statutory interpretation and application ICE agents making the determination would go far beyond what they're legally allowed to do. You and me and everyone else who aren't speaking for the government can use shorthands, but ICE agents can't while they're on the job. Who's "illegal" as a matter of law is not something ICE can actually decide, but they operate under presumptions that can't be rebutted since once they ship you out of the country, that's it. You can't get a visa to respond to a lawsuit. It used to be something that one can get parole for, but not anymore. Most no-shows in immigration court happen because of unavailability or because of lack of proper notice given. DHS OIG audits turn up this kind of problem all the time. I can believe that Trump and Miller having no clue about any of this, but the lawyers working for DHS? If they don't know, they're not competent for the position.
Interestingly native born Americans actually don't have a definitive and mandatorily accepted way to prove their citizenship. ICE routinely without evidence treat real documents as fake. You are not required to even have a state ID or driver's license, and neither is dispositive of status, and neither is a social security card. God forbid you were born at home with a midwife since many don't have birth certificates that conform to the more standardized forms of today. Most Americans don't have a passport. If you naturalize, at least the same agency will give you a certificate of citizenship that attest to your status. A green card likewise attests to your legal permanent residency status. But DHS doesn't issue such documents to native-born citizens, and routinely rejects documents issued by other agencies. ICE deports US citizens every year and we only have a limited set of data on how many. If you manage to make it back, you can't even sue ICE. You'd have to sue the municipality that held you for ICE based on what amounts to a hunch, which is not evidence. Voluntarily cooperating with ICE almost inevitably will lead to lawsuits, settlements, and once in a while, the bankruptcy of the city. Thanks to indemnity clauses, local cops are the last to get hit.
And all that is really unnecessary. The country was founded with open borders and while we had a lot of problems, immigration was not viewed as a problem serious enough for the federal government to specifically intervene in in the harshest and most racist way possible for 100 years. If you want both the economic benefits of immigration and also want immigrants to truly be seasonal workers voluntarily, get rid of the system and that will happen. Militarizing the border forced people into choosing which side they want to be on. I'm old enough to remember driving from Vermont to Montreal to hang out with my cousin at McGill for weekend brunches and smoked meats with just a driver's license - not even one issued in Vermont, but California - and the border checkpoint in New Hampshire - the only one in the state - being unstaffed most of the time. The southern border was like that until the 70s. Most Americans and Europeans don't have to contend with visas since visa waiver programs cover the so-called "First world nations" and some well-to-do ex-colonies and so the problem is an abstraction to them. In reality, it's a reality based on abstractions. Either way, since "illegal immigrants" are not a thing as a legally meaningful descriptor, there's no actual answer. Feel free to read this pretty good summation of the specific problems that involve the constitution though, it essentially covers up to Kerry v. Din (2015). https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=19...
What does this mean? If you're a citizen you're legally present. If you're a tourist you're legally present.
Civil matter doesn't mean asking politely (only). Try not paying your mortgage for a while, and see what your bank is doing.
improper entry is a felony if its a repeat offense.
(Also, the purposeful-availment test for personal jurisdiction in copyright cases is built on top of a set of facts that is established by geolocating Cloudflare IPs, and in turn, what was once a vague but at least potentially applicable law now has been turned into something that if merits of a contested case actually gets reached, basically no foreign defendant would be under the court's jurisdiction, because of how CDNs work. Since there's no visa for "responding to lawsuits" and in fact, it doesn't even look like proper service was conducted, meaning that the law is made ultimately on top of default judgments to foreign John Does. I have no idea whether this is a result of incompetence or short-term thinking, but that's where we are. The moment the law is applied correctly it becomes self-nullifying thanks to the facts. Same idea here.)
Whether someone committed a crime or not is for a judge to decide.
Citizens certainly do.
It's already quite settled civil rights aren't universal because immigrants aren't people, and those rights were ascribed almost entirely to citizens, people, or the various government entities.
If the right to a fair trial is restricted from any person, it may also be restricted from every person, by claiming that that person is part of a group not afforded a fair trial.
If you were arrested, how would you prove your citizenship without a trial?
That's blatantly false: even when civil cases are involved (which is where immigration law lives, not criminal law), non-citizens have recourse to habeas corpus petitions, etc.
What about when you don't commit crimes?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-teen-detained-ice-after-mi...
I do love how you felt the need to comment about something that very obviously isn't in contention as if it somehow defends the actions of this current administration.
Nobody is saying "You can't deport criminals". Literally nobody.
Is this reasonably and sensibly established before applying the secret police tactics on the respective person or the ones around them?
I expect televised footage of perp walks for the business owners and CEOs who hire "illegal immigrants" then. Otherwise, the point is cruelty rather than law and order.
They still have rights. Do you know what we call countries where criminals don't have rights? Authoritarian.
Wake. Up.
One the one hand, you have maybe-semi-reasonable arguments about law and social problems. On the other, you have extremely violent enforcement, carried out in discriminatory ways, which will also end up affecting the entirely innocent. While producing a huge prison population for private profit.
The war on drugs brought all sorts of search and seizure, including forfeiture (effectively a war on cash allowing the police to steal people's money). The war on terror brought mass surveillance and much more intrusive searches at airports. The war on immigration will bring "papers please" to American citizens, as well as the ability to disappear inconvenient public speakers.
ICE has been going after low hanging fruit, ie arresting people when they go to their immigration court dates(aka following the rules).
> (1) can't they be taken to court?
Once arrested, ICE will ship people off to many states away(if you're european, imagine being arrested in the north of France and sent to a camp in southern Spain).
Once you are arrested by ICE, it's very difficult to be found. There is no arrest announcement or ability to call family. Basically you disappear into this system and if you have someone hire a lawyer, the lawyer essentially has to search for you in various prisons.
Sure they can be taken to court, but the arrestee wont see any restitution for the terrible conditions they were illegally forced into. If you do win in court( Kilmar Abrego), they'll send you somewhere even worse out of spite.
There are more efficient ways to deal with people like this that can't result in future complaints from them. I think this is a nice compromise.
As far as I understand (correct me if I am wrong), if you have no valid status in the US then going to court does not mean that you are following the rules, no? I mean, why would anyone with a valid status have to go to immigration court?
One reason is legal check-ins, folks can be in the US on many different types of entry.
Some require regular check ins with ICE or an immigration judge to continue being here.
ICE told immigration judges to dismiss cases (based on a new memo being challenged) and enable immediate arrests. Additionally some folks who had continuing cases were getting arrested before the case concluded (e.g. asylum cases))
https://missouriindependent.com/2025/08/13/ice-has-a-new-cou...
What are legal check ins? Did you mean immigration court hearings?
Also, what kind of entry necessitates check in with ICE?
> Some require regular check ins with ICE or an immigration judge to continue being here.
As far as I know check-ins with ICE mean that the individual has a court order to be deported, but for various reasons is not deported yet. I am not sure about the check ins mandated by the immigration judge, so cannot comment on that, but I would like to learn more.
> ICE told immigration judges to dismiss cases (based on a new memo being challenged) and enable immediate arrests.
How does it work? Does ICE have the authority over immigration judge? Like, what is the chain of command here?
> Additionally some folks who had continuing cases were getting arrested before the case concluded (e.g. asylum cases))
I think it happens because they were not admitted via the port of entry but rather crossed the border without inspection. Waiting for the asylum hearing by itself doesn’t mean you have the right to be in the country.
https://portal.ice.gov/immigration-guide/check-ins
>If you are released, you may have to go to regular check-in appointments as part of your immigration case. These are not the same as court appearances.
> Also, what kind of entry necessitates check in with ICE?
Asylum cases are one such type, there are more.
> > Some require regular check ins with ICE or an immigration judge to continue being here. > > As far as I know check-ins with ICE mean that the individual has a court order to be deported, but for various reasons is not deported yet.
Not necessarily.
> I am not sure about the check ins mandated by the immigration judge, so cannot comment on that, but I would like to learn more. >
Google it.
> > ICE told immigration judges to dismiss cases (based on a new memo being challenged) and enable immediate arrests. > > How does it work? Does ICE have the authority over immigration judge? Like, what is the chain of command here?
Google the long series of events for the most up to date and accurate info.
> > Additionally some folks who had continuing cases were getting arrested before the case concluded (e.g. asylum cases)) > > I think it happens because they were not admitted via the port of entry but rather crossed the border without inspection.
Based on what?
> Waiting for the asylum hearing by itself doesn’t mean you have the right to be in the country.
The folks already here have the right to due process.
So, one can check in with ICE because they are already supposed to be deported, and were released before the actual deportation had happened.
In this case it is safe to assume that is very likely that they were in the country illegally, or their status is no longer valid.
> Google it.
> Google the long series of events for the most up to date and accurate info.
Very informative.
> The folks already here have the right to due process.
They do have due process: immigration hearings are part of said process.
Expedited removals are part of the due process, too. I mean it's how the law is written.
Note here, since some in this discussion seem to have a magical view of the neutrality and protective value of anything called a "court", that immigration courts are administrative courts within the executive branch, not actual independent courts.
ICE officers have no badges. They wear masks. Sometimes they have no uniforms. They grab people off the streets, and stuff them into white vans. They may send those people to foreign prisons, even if a judge tells them not to. Some of the people they take are natural-born citizens.
Taking them to court works sometimes. But ICE will often attempt to move people out of state quickly, and they won't always say where those people went. And as I mentioned above, the administration has just straight-up ignored multiple court orders.
Courts are a cute legal fiction that only works if the people with guns agree to listen to them.
Where I live, which is the suburbs in Ohio and only mildly gun happy by US standards, I’d estimate that if you went house to house busting in doors with masks and no ID you’d make it less than ten houses before you’d get a face full of buck shot.
Some of the border states where they’re doing this like Texas and Arizona I’d say no more than three houses.
(I'm excluding mass shootings as "non-targeted but often political violence")
https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/us/christopher-dorner-manhunt...
Wow
https://www.khou.com/article/news/crime/men-impersonating-po...
A big part of the problem here is foundational - that Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and even Joe Biden deny that the asylum process is a human right or a legitimate mandatory administrative process. These people are often somewhere in the legal, well-documented asylum process after entering from Mexico and walking into an immigration office immediately, they're checking in with a parole process on a regular basis, and Miller/ICE terms them "Undocumented" or "Illegal" and deports them to South Sudan.
The courts have not deigned to stop them.
The whole point of this was to show the consequences of not complying with the brownshirts. Shoot one of them down, you might well discover they have the budget to buy F35s now.
>Some of the border states where they’re doing this like Texas and Arizona I’d say no more than three houses.
Great news: they've been doing this to thousands of houses in the very states you mention. Just not the white ones.
Of course I would guess that undocumented immigrants are less likely to have guns since they tend to avoid anything that could get them in trouble. I lived in SoCal for a while and had several neighbors who I suspect were but of course never asked.
BTW they were the nicest people. One of their daughters taught our oldest daughter to ride a bike.
The scapegoating and persecution of these people is gross. If we don’t want them here we should go after the employers who create the incentive for them to come, but that would mean going after white people.
I think the reality is when ICE knock on your door (i) you're probably not holding your gun if you have one and (ii) as bad as being in a cage detained by masked thugs and deported (possibly even if you're a citizen) is, being shot dead by them isn't necessarily a better fate, particularly not if you suspect they would take great pleasure in "defending themselves" against your unarmed wife and children if given a half a reason
"Tren de Aragua? MS-13? What are you talking about? I work for ICE. No, you can't see my badge."
even if they don't get sent to a foreign prison, they are sending them to prisons in other states, making it extremely difficult for their families to help them get due process
What we have instead is a regulation that almost prohibits immigration, but which has a whole bunch of grey areas, exceptions to the rule that qualify you for some special status, and courts that are overloaded by a factor of ~100 relative to what they would need to do their job, or overloaded by a factor of ~10 relative to what they would need to do a terrible pro forma job. While waiting for a court date (let's say you walk in and claim asylum) you are granted a special status by administrative custom which says that nobody is coming after you until after your status is adjudicated. Deportation is "deferred", and can be rescinded after the fact based on adjudication. Previous administrations have "prioritized violent crimes" for deportation, leaving about 20 million people at a time outside the system of legal permanent residency, and another 40 million of their family members who rely on them with legal status but precarious. Being custom rather than law, when Stephen Miller and his white supremacist posse comes in they can suspend that, and work at odds with the court and the process. They literally wait until these people check in with the courts and black bag them on their way out of the courtroom.
The US agricultural, construction, and food service sectors have come to almost completely rely on this system permitting either nominally illegal cash-under-the-table work, or "I can't actually prove he's illegal" work, or work performed under a green card sought after the delays and deferred prosecutions in that court date permit the immigrant to start a family and see their kids through college.
It's broken by because of that, but also because American society has always had a somewhat racist, xenophobia character, it's broken because right-wing oligarchical power sees exploiting this character as their path to lower tax rates and a regulation-free corpo state, and it's broken because the system for proposing and passing laws has been fundamentally dysfunctional and irrational for a long time.
Sure, everything ultimately exist for some reason, but that doesn't mean everyone agrees with the reasoning :)
I don't know what the answer is (also an outsider), but I think there is a third possibility of people just disagreeing with the move of "Lets forcible check every single potentially illegal immigrant, so we can get rid of the illegal ones" from a purely humanitarian perspective, regardless if ICE might be abusing their power or if they're only removing illegal immigrants.
Edit: I'm wondering if positing two options like that is actually engagement bait of sorts, already we have two confident commentators saying "It's N of course" where N is both 1 and 2, and I myself fell into the trap of thinking of the third missing one :)
Okay, so bear with me, what does "forcibly" entail here? I'm an immigrant too, I also get "forcibly" (as in: I can't refuse) checked whether I'm legal or not based on how I look, which essentially boils down to spending a minute of my time taking my immigrant card (which shows that I'm legal) out of my wallet, showing it to the police officer (or whatever other government official is asking), and then going my way. This is totally not a problem. Doesn't the US have a way for immigrants to easily and unambiguously identify themselves as legal immigrants?
Does that officer have a badge number? Do they wear a uniform? Are they accountable to the law and the courts in some fashion? Do they actually look at and honor your paperwork? Are there any consequences if they abuse their power, or ignore regulations? Can they send you to a foreign prison without holding any kind of trial, and in direct disobedience to a court order?
There's a key difference between "police", who are identifiable and answerable to the law, and "secret police" with masks and unmarked vans and a tendancy to ignore the courts.
Re: ways to easily identify yourself with documents on you: this isn't always true, especially if you're stuck waiting for the American immigration bureaucracy to get you to nice and neat documents (e.g. the immigration agency, which is between months and years [0], and immigration courts, which is years if you're waiting on an asylum case [1]).
For example, green cards are (mostly) eligible for renewal 90 days before their expiry – but renewals take longer than that; so you get a paper letter that extends your expired green card for 3 extra years. [2] Does carrying around a paper letter count as easy, especially if you're stopped at a dragnet, or you're detained and get separated from your belongings while things are "verified"? I don't think so.
[0] https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt
[1] https://tracreports.org/whatsnew/email.250320.html#:~:text=(...
[2] https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/LPR%20Extent...
Second, it doesn't matter if you show valid right to live in the US. They'll still lock you up and attempt to send you to an overseas prison camp and then argue they or the courts have no jurisdiction to return or release you.
Source?
Also, the supreme court has ruled that asking for ID at stops is constitutional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiibel_v._Sixth_Judicial_Distr...
>asking for ID
The same supreme court ruling you named stated the reason why they could even demand ID was because there was no expectation it would implicate them in a crime. Demanding immigration papers in an immigration investigation would reasonably be asking someone to incriminate themselves if not having them is an element of that crime (for the same reason, if a minor is stopped for say having booze, generally they are not required to give DOB even if the stop-and-ID statute requires it).
The bit you are interested in googling is "general warrants" as one of the things colonists were quite angry about.
Sounds like you have a mild case of Stockholm syndrome, if you happily accept that you get more attention from law enforcement due to your physical traits.
ICE does not behave like a well mannered cop that will check your papers and let you go. They're an unregulated fascist militia that will blow up your door while your children are sleeping because you stopped their car two days ago, and will take you away simply because you're being too brown for their liking today.
Yes, they can be and are being but it's not much comfort to know that the courts will decide a deportation was unlawful after you've already spent 6 months being tortured in an El Salvadoran prison.
They are also targeting other people with visas for violations both significant and trivial. Trivial meaning misspellings or typos on one of the dozens or hundreds of forms filled out at some point in the past.
Rule of law is being undermined, basically under the guise of whatever state of emergency is in place, they look to act quickly where any ambiguity exists and before courts get to weigh in.
– There is evidence that there is a quota on arrests, [1], rather than deportations, although the administration has inconsistently denied that quotas exist (because it would help legal cases against their strategies.) [2]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ices-tactics-draw-criticism...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/trump-admini...
– Therefore, there have been incidents, especially in targeted cities like LA, where citizens [1] and lawful permanent residents have arrested before being released after multiple days of detention [2], although this data is not systematically gathered, e.g.:
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-08/how-many...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/jemmy-jimenez-rosa-immigration-deta...
– Recourse to the courts in a meaningful, practical way is ineffective. The administration has ignored lawsuits where judges have issued injunctions against ICE dragnets due to plausible evidence that ICE dragnets target individuals who look Latin American, e.g.:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/ice-border-p...
The suspicion (although I need to look up a legal source) is that the administration intends to drag on legal cases as long as possible through appeals, perhaps even up to the Supreme Court, which will take months.
Many of them have lived here for decades, work peacefully, and have built lives. Many of them have married citizen spouses, and also have children who are citizens.
They are friends, neighbors, and colleagues. They are often the best and most ambitious among us.
It would be an ethical, moral, and humanitarian catastrophe to suddenly expel all of them.
It would also be an economic disaster, as this population forms a disproportionate fraction of the labor force.
The price of goods and services would skyrocket if not outright be lost from the market forever. Inflation would obliterate savings.
The US immigration system is wildly irrational and violates the rights of American citizens. It must be radically reformed.
I agree it's probably not a right, but we've made it so obtusely difficult to do. Even people doing the process legally have stints where they'll probably quietly overstay visas because the gaps in processing things messes up their status.
Having such a messed up system only leads to more people being undocumented and our society in a worse place. Make it easier to be documented and obvious that not having documentation means you're probably doing something really bad, and we'll be in a far better place. Add in some carrots to encourage cyclical migration while we're at it.
Make it really illegal (read: executives/owners in prison) for hiring undocumented workers. This will do a lot to prevent undocumented workers.
Doesn't sound very humanistic to me, especially if you think who benefits the most from their unregulated labour.
While having secret police running around and forcing their way without any discretion is quite bad and ill omen for the future, it doesn't eliminate all the problems that are brought with illegal immigration (and even legal one as well). One could argue, that this ICE showdown is a reaction to almost pathological leniency before, when people in need were used as economical benefits for the rich, as it was mostly them that benefited from employing illegally all those workers, while unloading all nasty side effect on the common folk.
I'm not arguing they should be breaking the law. Hence the whole "Make it easier to be documented" line. I'm saying we should change the law to document these people. This would be the first step towards making their labor regulated. I'm absolutely in agreement the current policies just lead to lots of abuse in many ways.
Yeah, we should. The problem is, there are powers, and people behind them, that benefits from undocumentness of immigrants. To make matter even worse, they typically have funds to lobby for no changes, or changes for worse.
Isn't it similar case as in tax refunds and what not? Very purposeful obfuscation to make TurboTax required.
They are doing this. And, as other have noted, taking them to court is almost impossible. In at least one case, the government has shipped people off to another country after being told clearly by the courts that they are absolutely not allowed to do so. The current government is ignoring the laws, and the checks and balances that are supposed to prevent that are proving completely inadequate; mostly because the people that would enforce that have chosen to support these illegal activities.
> 2) ICE is deporting illegal immigrants which don't have permission to be in the country... aren't immigration laws there for a reason
Yes, but it's more complicated than that. Specifically, the immigration laws are not up to the task. The US relies on undocumented/illegal workers for a significant portion of it's economy (farming being of particular note). Running rampant and arresting everyone that's here illegally has a huge negative impact.
> surely we don't want to normalize selective application of law
We do, unfortunately. The laws in the US are very frequently written to be of the variety that give broad (unnecessary) powers, and then say "well, they won't use them in a bad way". It's bad, and it should be pushed back against, but it is what it is. And the enforcement of those laws needs to be balanced against the well being of both individuals and society as a whole.
If it helps, consider that every US citizen breaks many laws every day. There's a writeup somewhere of how US citizens commit an average of 3 felonies per day. The sheer number of laws in the US, and the absolute ridiculousness of many of them, make it almost impossible _not_ to break laws.
Plus, undocumented immigrants are far less likely to break _other_ laws than the average US citizen. So "we must enforce the law" sounds good, but you'd need to arrest literally _everyone_ if you wanted to use it as a valid argument.
Not so much these days...
- a general sense of authoritarian policy degrading American democracy
- inhumane treatment of detainees
- illegal deportations happening with no due process (see option 1)
- humanitarian concerns over people being deported to states they’re seeking asylum from for valid and good reasons
- hyperbolic claims of every immigrant being a “rapist criminal” degrading public discourse leading to further profiling of anyone who looks like they might be an immigrant
I could come up with more but you get the point - the pushback is about _far more_ than whatever you’re toeing the line about here.
Most illegal/undocumented immigrants in the US are otherwise productive and law-abiding. They have a job, they pay taxes. When they have kids here, their kids are citizens. What happens to that family when ICE deports a parent?
I live in DC. ICE has detained people in my neighborhood every day this week. Kids at my child’s school are now missing their parents. It seems to be the case that ICE is mostly pulling over drivers of work trucks and vans, and detaining anyone who’s brown-skinned and doesn’t have immigration papers on them (I’m white and was born here; I do not walk around with my birth certificate).
So, yes, both #1 and #2 are in play, but I would encourage you to question the underlying assumption that deporting illegal immigrants constitutes an unalloyed good. As a citizen, I don’t think it does and oppose these actions. I would happily provide a path to citizenship for any immigrant that had a good track record of living here peacefully and contributing.
I don't necessarily think it's a good thing, especially when the illegal immigrant is otherwise law abiding, pays their taxes and positively contributes to the society, but the whole point of rule of law is that, well, laws are applied consistently and equally to everyone (or at least that's the unattainable ideal we strive for). We can't be like "hey, let's not enforce the law here in this case" just because we don't like the law, because then the next guy in charge might not enforce whatever he thinks is a bad law, or worse - only enforce it on his enemies (like we see in so many totalitarian countries, and apparently what's starting to happen in the US if I am to believe the news/some of the comments here?).
And at the same time, the US has a long history of bad laws that its citizens have rightfully opposed and acted in opposition to. Maybe John Brown took things too far (and maybe he didn’t when you consider slavery), but did Rosa Parks?
The reason people want to avoid ICE is the same reason you have a smoke detector: Even if you do everything right, a fire can still happen and when it does you're happy you had it.
The US constitution guarantees certain rights to any person on their soil, without them having to be citizens. These rights are currently being violated with approval of at least two branches of government.
Didn’t you see what has been done against Abrego Garcia, and how intent the administration is to ship him off to random other countries (and how they succeeded once!) even though the courts insist he should stay?
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The facts are that for many decades past, it was possible for hopeful economic immigrants to abuse asylum laws, or the back then less protected border, to gain entry to the US. Neither red nor blue administrations handled this properly and lots of people benefited from the status quo, and your focus on, "the left" is quite conspicuous, because one does not tend to think of farm owners, meat processing plants and construction contracting businesses as "the left".
And rightfully past administrations should shoulder the blame for not dealing with immigration in a lawful manner back then. If there was a need for immigrant labor they should have handed temporary VISAs or whatever, instead of ignoring illegal immigration.
Trump 1.0 tried to build his Big Beautiful Wall and implement many other policies to get a grip on abuse of the immigration rules.
Obama ran a relatively normal immigration policy with "deportations" (incl border turnarounds) increasing until wokeness emerged in 2012, after which number of deportations went into sharp decline.
George W Bush more than doubled border spending, ended catch and release, created the Secure Border Initiative, sent 6000 National Guard members to the southern border, and called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration enforcement upgrades: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/stateoftheunion/...
Bill Clinton did a crackdown against illegal immigration, passing the 1996 IIRAIRA act that made it easier to deport illegals and increased border security.
This has been a live issue for a long time and was a bipartisan issue up until 2012, when wokeness took off (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vVtE!,f_auto,q_auto:...). After that the Republicans stuck to the prior position and the Democrats moved FAR to the left. Bill Clinton would be a "fascist" to them. The fact that Bill Clinton had nothing in common with Hitler or Mussolini doesn't register with them at all.
> can't they be taken to court?
It costs money, and the low hanging fruits of deportation are low-income families/individuals.
> In case of (1) can't they be taken to court? In case of (2) aren't immigration laws there for a reason
Police, courts and administration work until they don't. There have been cases of people arrested just because of racial profiling, which fits into Trump's racial vision.
The emblematic case IMO, has been the high-profile instance of an American citized deported because of an administrative mistake (!!); Trump has openly refused to apologize or take corrective action (!!!).
The real problem, if one accepts Oliver’s criticisms, is that this is not about law, it's about racial cleansing.
I see all the signs of Portuguese dictorship that ended in 1974, and I as first generation being raised in freedom got to hear and learn plenty of stories on how everything used to be.
Sadly also back home people have forgotten what it meant to live under authoritarian regime.
So many, many thousands of illegal immigrants (renamed 1984-style to "undocumented" by the media outlets who operate in lockstep with the Democrat party) have been allowed in, and have been sheltered by businesses who like below-minimum wage labour, and by democrat cities in general.
This means there's not much left to do when left-wing activists violently defend illegal immigrants from ICE removal other than escalating ICE activities to compensate.
I don't think that was ever the case?
The South Park "they took our jobs!" episode was 2004. The right has been against immigration since the Chinese Exclusion Act.
they still like illegal immigration, because it's good for businesses (the primary concern of the right)
its Trump/MAGA's xenophobic popularism that is reflected in ICE's thuggery (which is clearly designed to instill fear; the same way that S.Miller's plans to separate children from parents at the border was overtly designed to instill fear). It is not reflective of the traditional GOP. In fact, GOP senators have pressed Trump into making "exceptions" -- you'll notice how ICE is primarily operating in "blue" cities, and not raiding farms and chicken processing plants in the Midwest or the CA central valley -- this is not a coincidence.
However, the greater evil isn’t that ICE is enforcing the law. It’s that they’re doing it in a reckless way that reeks of violating any sort of due process.
The real fear in my mind is not what this circus of an administration does for the next three - four years but that the next administrations will continue these practices just by sheer inertia (same with tariffs).
that while they are there illegally, they can also vote illegally for one particular party (the same party that doesn't like voter ID laws).
Fixed it for you.
>>It’s that they’re doing it in a reckless way that reeks of violating any sort of due process.
Due to the massive volume of uncontrolled immigration under Biden, "due process" as envisaged by activists would take 10's of years to complete which is obviously not practical.
The first is weak because it is driven by fear, not facts. Does that actually happen in any meaningful volume at all, or would any answer just be a link in a "it's a big conspiracy chain!"
The second is weak because it exposes an ignorance, to one's own peril, of a system fundamentally designed to protect them. It's embarrassingly un-American to believe that due process is optional when it's too inconvenient. It begs the question, who gets to judge when that is? The Executive branch? That betrays one's lack of basic understanding of their own governmental system. But I think that's why this kind of thinking appears to be so sticky. It's not something one can be reasoned out of because it's not founded in rational thought. If someone possessed the capacity to be disabused of this idea, without having to first experience the leopards eating their face, they would have been by now.
The courts can then decide if legal or not.
Actually, it was ~22% of the electorate that voted for Trump/Vance. So about 1/5 of the electorate.
- Private militia getting paid per head taken off streets (check, already)
- Said militia will start taking protection money
- Everyone will realize ANYONE, citizen or not, can be taken repeatedly
Non-zero? yes. A few thousand cases of voter fraud over the past 40+ years.
During that time more than 1.5 billion votes were cast.
See the above link which is run by the party other than the one you falsely maligned.
First of all, the immigration laws aren't rational. The states aren't "legal" and "illegal", but "documented" and "undocumented". It's often the case that The Official Way To Do Things can cause you to transition from a "documented" state to an "undocumented" state and back again while in the country. Part of what people like the author are trying to do is to help people who made the documented -> undocumented transition to complete their undocumented -> documented transition before ICE an export them somewhere.
Secondly, ICE has basically been given a target of 500k people to expel. They've always had a reputation for being more on the "bully / asshole" side than normal, and now those people have been given a blank check to crank it up to 11.
Finally, there are clear, documented cases of ICE breaking the law and then trying to play games to get around it. Go look up the Abrego-Garcia case:
1. He came in legally, and was documented -- he had a court order forbidding him from being extradited to El Salvador, and was checking in regularly.
2. They swept him up, erroneously identified him as a gang member, and shipped him out to El Salvador before anyone had a chance to do anything to protest
3. They admitted in court that extraditing him was a mistake; but then said, "Well, he's out of our jurisdiction now, we can't do anything to get him back."
4. When, after months of wrangling, they finally did bring him back, they decided to charge him with a crime for something he did years ago (even though they didn't decide to charge him with anything back then, and had plenty of opportunities to do so earlier).
So basically, 1) The immigration laws are broken: not just and not really follow-able 2) ICE often don't follow the law unless browbeaten by the courts to do so 3) they often try to entirely avoid the courts by playing jurisdictional games.
There's a good reason that large numbers of intelligent, dedicated patriots are organizing to oppose ICE.
The court said not to send him back to El Salvador because he applied for asylum, and was granted asylum because he faced dangers in El Salvador. Not because he's a gang member, which are allegations that have never been proven.
Journalists ? Judges ? What's that ? Real americans get their news from random propaganda accounts on X.
Your list of "usual suspects" cite actual experts and not random Twitter nonsense.
> Although he was denied asylum, the immigration judge did issue an order shielding Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he faced credible threats of violence from a gang there that had terrorized him and his family.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/kilmar-abrego-garci...
Where did you read, "rival gang"? Under what circumstances are you ok with forcibly removing people to other countries without a trial? What scenarios is it ok to do so and also ignore judge's orders?
So here we have what I think is some of the nonsense of the current laws. My understanding is that how you generally apply for asylum is:
1. Show up in the country one way or another
2. Apply for asylum
So, is #1 "illegal", since he didn't have an official reason to be here long-term when he came into the country? Or is #1 "legal", since the laws for step 2 seem to be written in a way that step 1 is necessary?
If you know more about how asylum actually works, feel free to enlighten me.
Can you provide an example of such transition (for the context of the discussion)?
This is true of a lot of workflows in USCIS.
What status do they loose? Right to work (i.e., having a valid EAD card) and immigration status are two different things.
> This is true of a lot of workflows in USCIS.
Their workloads increased significantly over the past 3-4 years due to various factors, unfortunately.
They're extremely intertwined and often practically the same thing. They become an "illegal migrant" for continuing to work to pay for groceries and rent while not having a lawful status allowing such activity. A deportable offense, correct?
> Their workloads increased significantly over the past 3-4 years due to various factors, unfortunately.
Good job showing your true colors. Issues like this have existed for decades. I know of people that struggled in this exact scenario in the 90s and 2000s, and I was only a child at the time. Maybe we should have passed that bipartisan immigration bill the orange man said no to which would have actually funded processing the workload. In the end though this administration doesn't want these people, they want to send them to prison camps. You can tell by watching what they do, raiding people showing up to their court proceedings, sending them to hellhole detention facilities without any due process, and ignoring court decisions.
Well, no? You can have a valid status but without right to work. For example, B1/2 or F-2 visas.
> They become an "illegal migrant" for continuing to work to pay for groceries and rent while not having a lawful status allowing such activity.
This is not true. Working without authorization is simply that: unauthorized employment. By itself it does not lead to become an illegal immigrant. However, it can jeopardize future changes in status, etc.
> Good job showing your true colors.
What?
> I know of people that struggled in this exact scenario in the 90s and 2000s, and I was only a child at the time.
Which are what?
> Maybe we should have passed that immigration bill the orange man said no to which would have actually funded processing the workload.
Biden could have done it during his term in 2020-22: he had both the senate and the house. Yet, he didn’t. It’s extremely naive to think that lack of reform is due to Trump. No party is interested in changing the status quo. Especially, if you consider how anti illegal immigration the Democratic Party was pre 2021 or so (enough to watch Bernie’s interviews pre 2020).
You're showing your true colors suggesting this issue happened during Biden's term, and now you're both sides-ing the issue. One side's solution was passing an immigration reform bill and hiring more judges and administration to handle the influx in applications. The others is to send people to CECOT and other prison camps with no due process (even those with legal status) and ignore the courts. They're not the same.
No. Illegal immigrant is someone who entered without inspection, or someone who overstayed their visa (e.g., B1 tourist admitted for 90 days, and who failed to leave the US). See here, for example, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/illegal_immigrant
In contrast to that, the same individual on B1 visa admitted for 90 days who decided to work without authorization, and caught, will not be considered illegal immigrant, because they are in the country legally even though they violate some terms of their visa. Of course, when caught they probably will be deported, which again won't make them illegal immigrants.
I do not know why can accept that these are two different definitions. I personally know F-2 visa holders who had to not work between EADs. It did not make them illegal immigrants, because they had a valid status.
> You're showing your true colors suggesting this issue happened during Biden's term, and now you're both sides-ing the issue. One side's solution was passing an immigration reform bill and hiring more judges and administration to handle the influx in applications. The others is to send people to CECOT and other prison camps with no due process (even those with legal status) and ignore the courts. They're not the same.
I am sorry, but I do not plan to engage in emotions and hypotheticals as it is not constructive and leads nowhere.
Like, say, continuing to work the job even after their work visa expired?
> I personally know F-2 visa holders who had to not work between EADs. It did not make them illegal immigrants
I'm not talking about those people who lawfully stop working during that window, I'm talking about those who do not have that luxury to coast for 90+ some odd days. I do not know why you can't seem to understand it.
Actually, I do. Because you're the kind of person who acts like our immigration woes happened 3-4 years ago.
> will not be considered illegal immigrant
You're narrowly defining "illegal immigrant" as someone without any visa status. Most others would include violating the terms of their lawful admission, aka working when they're on a tourist visa. There isn't an official government definition to "illegal immigrant" under the law.
> engage in emotions and hypotheticals
These statements are not hypotheticals. They are detaining those with lawful status. They are sending people to CECOT without due process. They are ignoring court opinions. The Republican party did vote down a bipartisan bill in the end because Trump didn't want it. You appear to not engage with reality.
Yes? I've literally wrote it in my comment.
> I'm not talking about those people who lawfully stop working during that window, I'm talking about those who do not have that luxury to coast for 90+ some odd days.
I do not understand what does it have to do with anything? Definitions are definitions, and reasons for violating the terms of the visa are reasons for violating the terms. Do you want to call anyone one who is not the citizen illegal immigrant? Be my guest.
> Because you're the kind of person who acts like our immigration woes happened 3-4 years ago.
I have no idea what are you talking about. If you can, please form a coherent argument.
> These statements are not hypotheticals. They are detaining those with lawful status. They are sending people to CECOT without due process. They are ignoring court opinions. The Republican party did vote down a bipartisan bill in the end because Trump didn't want it. You appear to not engage with reality.
What reality? How old are you?
I am old enough to remember that in the beginning of Obama's administration Democrats controlled both the senate and the House, as well as the presidency. Was it Trump that prevented them from fixing the immigration system?
This is hacker news, not reddit. Try to engage like an adult.
Must be outside of your context window. You were clearly drawing in the idea this backlog of cases and immigration state we're in is the result largely from Biden's term. I see no other real reason to include such a statement. It's been true for decades.
> Do you want to call anyone one who is not the citizen illegal immigrant? Be my guest.
Not what I'm suggesting in the slightest. Reread my statements to find out more.
> What reality?
Denying obvious facts. Incredible. Please inform yourself to the reality of today before engaging. I'm not going to continue engaging with people who can't see what's happening around them and denying clear facts.
> in the beginning of Obama's administration Democrats controlled both the senate and the House, as well as the presidency. Was it Trump that prevented them from fixing the immigration system?
Ah yes, the democrats had four years of control of the government since Obama was elected, they didn't completely solve immigration, therefore they're at fault for sending people to CECOT without due process. Makes total rational sense.
I do blame most of the Democrats for not adequately solving things and running campaigns they seem like they're trying to lose (Beto telling Texans he's going to take away their guns, wtf?), but acting like they're doing the same things is denying reality. It's probably true most of both sides don't really want to fix the problem, but one is building prison camps and sending people to places like CECOT and one is making deferred actions. Quite different wouldn't you say?
The Republicans have been in charge of Congress for most of the last 20+ years. Why haven't they passed meaningful immigration reform? It's not like Biden and Obama vetoed that many immigration bills.
Once again, reconnect with reality again before you reply. Learn what the Trump administration is actually doing before you both-sidesing it more.
Sure. However, areas I am interested in, become significantly worse the past 3-4 years, e.g., EB2-NIW, and similar categories. I have no idea why you think I mentioned it as a "Biden's fault" comment. But, whatever lol
> Not what I'm suggesting in the slightest.
Then why are you arguing that anyone on a valid visa but engaging in unauthorized work becomes an illegal immigrant?
> Denying obvious facts. Incredible.
Where?
> Once again, reconnect with reality again before you reply.
I am.
> Learn what the Trump administration is actually doing before you both-sidesing it more.
I am not interested, tbh. I have a life. Our convo began with me asking you for an example of a documented-> undocumented->documented transition, and you failed to provide it. Instead, you tried to argue that someone who is on a valid status but engages in unauthorized employment is illegal immigrant, which I disputed. Then, you backtracked, and went on a tangent about Biden, Trump, camps, etc.
> I am sorry, but I do not plan to engage in emotions and hypothetical
> Learn what the Trump administration is actually doing before you both-sidesing it more.
>I am not interested
So just willfully ignorant. Strange how you seem to be so well versed on the topic but choose to bury your head in the sand on anything current.
> Then, you backtracked
I have not changed my stance on anything I've claimed in this entire thread.
> someone who is on a valid status but engages in unauthorized employment is illegal immigrant
I mean, they are. They're overstaying their work visa and are fraudulently applying and staying under a different visa under false pretenses. What do we call people who overstay visas (continuing employment under a temporary work visa) and apply for other visas under false pretenses?
I guess I did fail to show a documented->undocumented->documented, only a legal->illegal->legal change. Sorry, my bad. They're still involved in illegal, undocumented labor. But even then, that's under the assumption they bothered applying for some other visa in the in-between time, not everyone does.
You do not have to overstay to engage in unauthorized employment. Did you even read what I’ve wrote?
The why was he
> checking in regularly.
I think this already means that he was in deportation proceedings, no?
My understanding (perhaps not complete, and I would like to learn more) is that he was in deportation process and the only place he could not get deported to was El Salvador.
How do you argue that the behavior of your predecessors is acceptable (and your presumed right to reside in what's currently known as United States) while those who now attempt to enter the territory suddenly become dangerous criminals?
Would your argument be more understandable to the reader than “might is right” or “if it is against me, it is unfair and abuse, if I do it to others, it is a sacred law”?
I guess I'm generally in favor of an open-border policy (or at least immigration based on promises of work, verifiable by a work contract).
Benefits are usually tax-based, and immigrants pay taxes (or, it's always possible to set it up that taxes are paid).
> but no person that is alive today had anything to do with it
They do. They're using land and resources taken from their former hosts which is a deep moral grey zone. Leaving home would be an option. If it's deemed too invasive, perhaps not penalizing people who want to do the same (minus stealing the land forcibly) would be a good first step.
- A country they know is not on the same continent they came from.
- Directly into the death camp prison of a dictatorship.
- Unaccompanied minors without any coordination to have them picked up by any government officials on the other side. Woken up at 2AM and performed intentionally without the knowledge of the judicial system. No, I'm serious, this happened this morning in what they called "Operation Silent Harvest"
The gestapo here is whisking away people into black vans wearing ski masks without presenting warrants to anybody, taking them to secret camps and refusing them access to lawyers or the ability to inform family before just... sending them wherever before legal proceedings can confirm their status.
We've already seen them not only nab citizens or legal immigrants, but know a few have been attempted to or actually flown out of the country.
> Isn't the rule of law a thing in the US?
No, the "unitary executive" has clearly decided Trump is out king and may do whatever he wants. Including a secret police.
Lookup videos on YouTube of MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Donated in the 1880's, it used to be 35 acre urban park oasis. Now it is a rodent infested drug haven. Between 4 PM and sunrise, the area is taken over by unlicensed street vendors and drug dealers, all of whom are controlled by Mexican cartel gangs using sidewalk landlords. You can purchase fentanyl in bulk, and walk one mile down the street and sell it for three times profit.
The surrounding area is mostly apartments, with no positive tax revenue base, residential or commercial. It has a population density four times Manhattan, New York, 50,000 in one square mile. 67% of residents in the community are unauthorized immigrants. 67% of children don't have a father. Most apartments are shared by two families. Only 20% of residents vote.
90% of fire department calls are overdose and illegal open bonfires set by homeless. 49% of street lights are disabled, the city estimates three years to fix. Building owners have to paint their exterior walls every day to remove gang signs. The Home Depot most profitable product is paint, even though it is id-restricted and locked up. Most of the people in the park long term are repeat criminal offenders. The city has converted the area into a de facto dumping ground for people released from jail.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass lives nearby.
A few weeks ago ICE made a cameo walk through trolling appearance for a few minutes, and everyone freaked out. Of course they didn't really do anything. How could they? It would require at least 500 police to sweep an area that large. Many in the park have weapons.
Bonus fact: The Tijuana River is actually in the US. It exits into the San Diego Bay watershed at Imperial Beach. 70 million gallons per day of untreated sewage, and several hundred million gallons of treated effluent per day. Even with the one water treatment plant in Tijuana Mexico, (population 2.3 million) funded by the US, and a second that the US had agreed to fund, this will not reduce the illegal sewage discharge, which is estimated to increase to 200 million? Oddly, it hasn't affected home prices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Park
How MacArthur Park Became LA's Most Dangerous Spot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0odHsJvSHZE
What Happened to MacArthur Park? The Rise and Fall of LA's Urban Oasis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ssU3tdAAH4
El Tijuana River National Estuarine "Research" Reserve https://maps.app.goo.gl/9gouGc9ge4ikYfgZA
The Democrats are sort of pro-immigration. Though for some reason, they strongly support illegal immigration, and seek to decriminalize it through so-called "sanctuary cities", rather than starting serious efforts at making permanent legal immigration liberal and approachable for most people.
Illegal immigration comes with major problems. It's an avenue for organized crime, and a recipe for a major humanitarian crisis. It's a driving factor in the Opioid Epidemic. Most people are aware of this, which is part of why the Democrats lost.
So now the Republicans are in charge. They are anti-immigration, and want permanent immigration to be unreachable for 99% of people. They are now running mass-deportations of illegal immigrants. The grievance which opponents have with this is that they're actively looking for illegal immigrants who are otherwise doing nothing wrong, using military-style police, in a system which doesn't allow for easy legal immigration.
Most people are somewhere in the middle, but they have to pick between two extremes. A) unsecured borders which get taken advantage of by criminal gangs, or B) your local contractor Juan getting deported by military police.
Same, and I agree with what you said, but would also like to expand on it:
> So now the Republicans are in charge. They are anti-immigration
The republican business owners/investors who employ illegal immigrants cheaply are not anti-immigration in the instances they benefit from directly.
> Most people are somewhere in the middle, but they have to pick between two extremes.
They had an alternative in the 2016 and 2020 elections with Bernie "but he isn't a Democrat" Sanders, as he understood the topic better and more honestly than any other politician, but his presidential runs were sabotaged by corpo Dems and their media outlets.
It's not a coincidence that voters are regularly backed into a corner with "lesser of two evils" to vote for. Evil is evil. Democracy in the US is illusory.
I think the reason for this is that illegal immigration is more beneficial to Democrats' donors than broadening legal immigration. Illegal immigrants are easy for employers to exploit beyond the limits allowed by labor law, because they are unable to turn to the police or courts for protection. The Democrats are fundamentally a business-owners party, despite their usually symbolic gestures to the left, so this is typical for them: implement anti-worker policies with a veneer of human rights.
The Republican policy is actually somewhat worse than your description. Besides using militarized policing to pick up illegal immigrants that are otherwise doing nothing wrong, they are also cutting out many of the systems of due process that would allow illegal immigrants access to the courts to appeal their deportation. As a result, ICE is also sweeping up refugees, asylum seekers, legal immigrants, and even citizens, without any real oversight.
???
Like DACA?
> It's a driving factor in the Opioid Epidemic.
Most opioids coming through the border are happening via ships at ports, not via immigrants. Not saying they don't bring drugs with them - but not remotely at the scale you describe.
ICE must act within the bounds of the legal system. If you are unhappy with their actions, an election is the remedy.
Actions like this app are not the right way to ‘fix’ things and are probably unproductive.
Remember there is a difference between legal and legitimate. You don't have to do something just because it is the law (well, you could define "have to" to mean what the law says, but then it becomes pretty circular).
Historically, often behavior changes before the applicable laws change. Think about the acceptance of gay relationships, or the use of cannabis. If people don't sometimes break the law, society can't evolve. That doesn't mean the rule of law has to break down. I think the rule of law is very important and would uphold it in most cases, but there are certain cases where conscience might order one to break or circumvent a law.
> In case of (1) can't they be taken to court?
Well, no, that’s not something people think is an adequate remedy for the abuse, for a number of reasons, most notably that a high profile aspect of the abuse of power has been the Administration removing people in violation of court orders, publicly mocking the courts while doing so, and then using the fact that the people were no longer within the control of the US government as an excuse to argue that they were immune to further court orders with respect to those people. (Also the fact that people detained have at times been held incommunicado without access to attorneys and without the ability to notify people that and where they are held makes either the detained individual or anyone else challenging their detention in court difficult.)
> and surely we don't want to normalize selective application of law like in so many corrupt countries around the world?
We have that. That’s the problem the app is responding to.
> Isn't the rule of law a thing in the US?
Not particularly, in this area, no.
Right, the problem is you're assuming immigration agents are following the law. You need to alert people of where they are to protect them. People who are actually here legally are being arrested, waiting for them outside courtrooms. There have been several cases of actual American citizens detained illegally based on racial profiling. There's no proper due process. Additionally, the treatment of those who are detained is very inhumane, using tactics to induce fear.
Most of it is (1), but even in the case of (2) the problem is that this is an outlaw organization which is not following any established law or process.
Legally, deporting people who are here out of status is fine. But to do that properly, you'd have to establish proof of who they are and why they are out of status, in front of an immigration court. ICE bypasses all that and just sends masked unidentified thugs to the street to grab people left and right and disappear them into secret detention centers with no access to lawyers. About as illegal behavior as it gets.
As far as I can see there are two possibilities here: 1) ICE is abusing their power and illegally detaining and deporting people who shouldn't be deported, or 2) ICE is deporting illegal immigrants which don't have permission to be in the country so they shouldn't be in the country. In case of (1) can't they be taken to court? In case of (2) aren't immigration laws there for a reason, and surely we don't want to normalize selective application of law like in so many corrupt countries around the world? Isn't the rule of law a thing in the US?