No, I cannot. One of the undercover journalists was in their group for days.

> Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.

None of that matters _today_, because _today_ the law is different.

What the law is, is a question for lawyers. What the law should be is a question for the people.

For example, a lot of people thought it was wrong that federal agents could cover their faces. Sacramento agreed. Now there is a law preventing it.

That law enforcement is permitted to hide their faces, drive unmarked vehicles, not display name tags, badges, or uniforms is concerning. Anyone can buy a gun, a vest, and a velcro “police” patch. There is very little that marks these agents as official law enforcement. I’m somewhat surprised that none of these agents have been shot entering a home under the mistaken perception by the homeowner that it’s a criminal home invasion.

Or alternatively, that criminals haven’t simply claimed to be ICE as an excuse to break into someone’s house.

Where was the outrage when Obama deported 3.1 million people? Why was there no media coverage? Trump has deported 300k and the MSM is turning upside down. Doesn’t make any sense to me.

No one is upset about the number of deportations. No one is complaining about the number of deportations. If you don't listen to what the complaints are about to start with, you can't argue that they are hypocritical.

Ok. What are people upset about, and why are they only upset in one city?

> What are people upset about,

A wide array of policy issues related to the targeting and manner of execution of Trump’s mass deportation program, not the number of deportations.

Also, a number of specific instances of violence by the federal government during what is (at least notionally) the execution of immigration enforcement.

> why are they only upset in one city?

People are very clearly not “only upset in one city”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_mass_deportat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good_protes...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/24/protests-ale...

And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?

> And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?

There was significant criticism of them, but both the policy and the manner of execution were different, a fact which Trump presaged in BOTH of his successful campaigns, explicitly stating plans for a different manner of execution (in the 2024 campaign explicitly referencing the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback” as a model), and which Trump officials have crowed about throughout the execution of the campaign. Pretending the differences that provoke different responses don’t exists when their architects have been as proud of them as critics have been angry at them is just some intense bad faith denial of facts.

There were contemporary criticism of Obama's deportation policy on both the right and the left. I have no idea why you think that is some sort of gotcha that somehow makes the equivalency between Obama and Trump's immigration enforcement valid.

No. The outrage now versus back then is day and night. There were pretty much no protests during Obama’s term, even though the scale of deportations was much larger. That contrast is highly suspicious.

Dragonwriter has already laid out some of the differences for you to research further beyond the single data point of number of deportations. You've asked the same question multiple times but seem to not want to actually engage with the answers so I'll leave it there.

People keep telling you that it has nothing to do with the number of deportations, and you keep insisting that it does. Why do you believe the number of deportations is the most important factor?

Copying my other response here:

The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.

I don't believe this.

Ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wish I had screenshots or anything, but I don’t.

When talking to someone at-risk of deportation earlier in the year, they asked me, "Why should I do anything differently? Obama and Biden did the same exact shit."

And there's a lot of truth to that which a lot of people need to reconcile with.

The fact that we don't have DACA solidified into a path towards citizenship by now is just sad.

And I agree with you, but that's not what I'm questioning. Given the 10x larger scale of deportations during the Obama's term, why were there no protests?

During Obama's term the practice of warrentless entry into actual citizens homes wasn't widespread.

During Obama's term the leaders of DHS / ICE were not blatently lying about events captured on film and evading legitmate investigations into deaths at the hands of officers.

During Obamas term people with no criminal record were not being offshored to hell-hole prison camps with serious abuses of human rights.

Give me a break - https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/border-patrol-wa...

Can you link to the tweet in which Obama defended the agents right to threaten a child with rape?

From your linked article:

  If the abuses were this bad under Obama when the Border Patrol described itself as constrained, imagine how it must be now under Trump, who vowed to unleash the agents to do their jobs.

There's your difference. Thank you for playing.

The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.

As many others have pointed out, the deeper issue is the size of the boot, the disregard for citizens rights, the extremes of the offshore gulags, the fevor with which the upper levels embrace the brutality.

I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.

You are still missing the point. You were intentionally underinformed during the Obama's term.

Not to add fuel to the fire, but a lot of what you're saying is hard to take seriously when Obama himself's been known to brag about how good at killing he is.

You're right that things are significantly worse now, but it's important to recognize that what came before was still bad and in many ways is the foundation for where we are.

https://slate.com/business/2013/11/double-down-obama-said-he...

Thanks for the response, I'm happy to engage, although I almost missed this as you're well over the fold in my comment history and I have no mechanism for alerting me to replies (nor, I might add, am I looking for one).

With the preamble that I'm not a US citizen, have never thought to apply to be one, have been in and out of the US and many other countries a number of times, and don't play favourites with POTUS(n) on the basis of their asserted party ticket; ...

The upstream question and context here concerns differences between administrations wrt home soil immigration policy, to which I've been focused.

As points of note:

* Allegations of POTUS(X) boasting behind doors are a difference of behaviour from that of POTUS(Y) coming right out and stating they can freely kill in Times Square and get away with while glorifying the deaths of citizens in public and promising perpertrators they'll get away with it and have immunity.

* I'm no fan of remote double tap kills. Full stop. That said;

* POTUS(X) authorising kills in an "inherited" known and ongoing "war zone" known to all is distinct from POTUS(Y) authorising double tap kills from unmarked airframes of civilians in international waters prior to any declaration of war (via Congress or not).

* Regardless, the offshore behaviour of any POTUS is distinct from their behaviour toward their own citizens within their country.

In the arc of all the shitty behaviour by post WW POTUS(n) candidates, the current incumbent has significantly levelled up to achieve Kissinger level disregard for human life on home soil for purely political gain .. and played that hand badly.

That aside, I'm not a Communist - but I do admire Ash Sarkar's shut down of idiotic Obama / Trump faux dichotomy posings by a pompous right wing media pundit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7Ol0gz11k

I equally admire our PM's "off the cuff" (approximately 15 mins rough note prep time) strip down of an opposition one time PM attempting to pin a third parties bad behaviour on the sitting government on the basis of them making no comment until after a Court case had completed (as per the law here) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNuPcf8L00

It's not relevant to immigration policy, but it is a good example of off the cuff professional level political debate in sitting government.