> Together, these teams would operate as intelligence arms of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. They will receive tips and incoming cases, research individuals online, and package the results into dossiers that could be used by field offices to plan arrests. [...] The scope of information contractors are expected to collect is broad. Draft instructions specify open-source intelligence: public posts, photos, and messages on platforms from Facebook to Reddit to TikTok. [...]
> They would also be armed with powerful commercial databases such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, which knit together property records, phone bills, utilities, vehicle registrations, and other personal details into searchable files.
Nothing here is either surprising or unpredicted. It's just ugly because it's finally happening.
If I were a man given to being suspicious, I'd swear that the whole time using these technologies for "street criminals" and "gang members" was never about "pacifying inner-cities" at all. I'd be inclined to think that maybe it was just the equivalent of the beta test.
But I'm not given to being suspicious. So I know that whole way of thinking is just nutty. right?
All of what we're seeing is built on an electorate that was primed to elect Trump. The Republicans had been using them as a captured base to enable their neoliberal and imperialist policies, but they'd conditioned these folks to want Trumpism, not what they were actually delivering. The shit Trump says is largely the same shit you'd hear from Republican voters since at least the '90s, and what he does is largely shit they want done. They've been asking for e.g. authoritarian federal government crack-downs on cities since then, asking for reductions in law enforcement accountability, asking for no-due-process mass deportations, asking for pulling back from NATO, asking for a wall at the border and/or a militarized border, et c. Their media's been telling them all democratic organizations and the party itself are to-the-core rotten criminal enterprises and they believe that. They will cheer when ICE starts arresting members of congress and major democratic donors on dubious charges.
And if anyone is still under the illusion that this is about "law enforcement" or "immigration", this should be a giant waving red flag that it's about racism and authoritarian control.
It's more like 20/20 and then that apathetic majority who can't be bothered to care enough to even vote is the rest. Given the nature of liberal and conservative policies, we can all probably see why many of them would be apathetic if we're being honest. But I'm sure those people aren't cheering. They're moreso saying, "See. I told ya so." To any friends and family who thought Trump would be any different. Probably gleefully pointing out to friends who are liberal or conservative that now things are worse.
For that "apathetic majority", they probably now feel vindicated in their decision not to vote and their sense of hopelessness.
And that's sad.
You can't lay blame on the people doing this and feel like you're done. Unfortunately they're always going to exist. You have to lay blame on the people defending against them. They failed in their defense and here we are.
The difficulty in stopping it scales with how long you let it fester.
Last time it was a world war which could have threatened extinction.
We're still in the phase where people are hoping doing nothing will make it all better or denying outright the threat.
2025: Get downvoted on HN for comparing Charlie Kirk to Horst Wessel
2026: Get upvoted for it
2027: Get banned for it
2028: No voting allowed, here or anywhere else
Look to see them expand to general "counter-terrorism" enforcement in the near future, with only the barest veneer (if that) of its having anything to do with immigration enforcement. After all, if you can stop practically anyone on baseless suspicion of being in the country illegally (see: recent precedent that apparently "they looked foreign" is enough) then charge them with whatever after-the-fact even if they turned out to be legal residents or citizens, that sure looks like a neat little work-around for due process. Or you can just "accidentally" disappear them to El Salvador....
I think about the minor plot point of the President having dissolved the FBI, in the film Civil War, a lot more this year than I ever thought I would when I watched that movie the first time.
I thought there were like 1 million max.
Basically, we can trivially tap into the human mind's natural inclination for tribalism and use undocumented people as a bargaining chip. We can tell people that THEY cause this problem and that problem, because THEY don't share our values, our skin, our culture, our mindset.
It works extremely effectively because:
1. Everyone likes to hear that they're not the ones causing problems, someone else is.
2. Humans naturally segregate based on commonalities. So people are in one group, and undocumented people in another. Sure seems like us versus them then.
3. The solutions are simple, so people have high confidence in them. Build a wall. So simple and easy, a toddler can understand that! Whether it works is not relevant.
4. Americans already have a strong sense of national identity.
5. The economy and perceived economy/QOL is actually in trouble, so we have legitimate justifications for our populist messaging.
But, had it not been undocumented people, it would've just been something else. We know that because we do see it successfully, time and time and time again, for other groups.
Trans people. That's another one that is in use today, right now, for populist messaging and it's highly effective.