The actual title of the acticle is "Brad Lander Detained by Masked Federal Agents Inside Immigration Court".
Contrary to the current title here on HN, Lander was not arrested for asking to see a warrant; TFA states the opposite, "It wasn’t immediately clear what charges, if any, the mayoral candidate will face. A spokesperson for ICE didn’t immediately return a request for comment."
If an event is so important to know about, why fabricate such an important aspect of the event in this way?
If we want to stick to the facts: we don't actually have any proof that these were federal agents because they refuse to identify themselves. All we actually know is that Lander was kidnapped.
This.. What is been happening lately is absolutely batshit crazy. Now anyone could mask up and arrest some key witness right from the courthouse posing as ICE agents, regardless of their status and nobody could bat an eye because ICE seem to have some kind of supreme auhority and no law applies to them, they don't need to identify themselves, even show their faces.
He was, in fact, arrested for asking to see a warrant, that is clearly documented.
The claims of assault that DHS fabricated and published on social media and via other channels after the fact to justify it, of which there is no evidence, before Lander was released without any charges are interesting in terms of understanding the current regime's propaganda propensity, but have nothing to do with explaining the events clearly captured on video.
I don't think that's what they were referring to. From watching the video, I assume it was when he grabbed onto the fellow they were detaining and refused to let go.
If you witness police misconduct, you do not have the right to impede the police. Regardless, there was no way for him to form an accurate belief about whether misconduct was occurring. The agents have no duty to provide a warrant to a bystander, even if he is a government official.
The other commenter mentioned "narrative", which is very relevant, because that is an important part of simulation (and your username)
Baudrilliard was careful to point out that simulation isn't a matter of fabrication; to simulate is to obscure the absence of facts, not to create false facts. A simulacrum is a symbol that obscures the fact that it refers to nothing; whereas a symbol, in centuries past, invariably referred to something, real or imagined. The resulting reality (or maybe "mindspace"?) is a construct on top of the real world -- a hyper-reality -- in which every symbol is a simulacrum; the only thing real in hyper-reality is that the symbols hide the absence of facts. This is why, again as the other commenter mentions, we appear to live in a post-truth society; we are fully living in hyper-reality.
>Bad Journalism
The guy who created the Pullitzer prize also co-invented Yellow Journalism.[0][1] There is neither good journalism or bad journalism; it's all simulation.
> the only thing real in hyper-reality is that the symbols hide the absence of facts
What's a fact? Concepts like justice and fairness are fundamentally cultural constructs, and yet they've always been a core concern of human society. Setting up "facts" in opposition to "simulation" is no less a rhetorical narrative than what the article is pushing.
My takeaway from post-structuralism generally isn't that we live in a "fake" reality, but that the human experience--individually, collectively--is deeply complicated.
Baudrilliard didn't assert that reality/facts never existed; he in fact asserted that prior to the 20th century, there was plenty of correlation between symbols and facts/reality. His vision of the hyper-real is that it is detached from reality and it's facts; this is why I included "mindspace" parenthetically as an alternative word for "hyper-reality"; those operating in hyper-reality are physically in reality, but their actions appear to be based on another world, which they share through things like news media.
> post-structuralism
I don't think Baudrilliard can be categorized as post-structuralist or post-modernist, because "Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism."[0]
Camus didn't consider his views existentialist, but I consider them as such. Likewise, for me authors like Baudrillard and Benedict Anderson (political scientist) have written works that I think well capture the substantive gist of post-structuralism, even if neither saw themselves as part of that intellectual movement (and few if anyone else would relate Anderson to post-structuralism).
Plus, AFAIU Baudrillard turned into an angry, cynical, conspiratorial old man, kinda like a teenager who discovers the world is far more complex than the simplified versions he was taught, and then becomes angry at the world for being hoodwinked, as well as at everybody's complicity. IOW, some of Baudrillard insights are powerful, but I don't care all that much about how he chose to make use of them. (That said, the radical and exaggerated way he conceives of and presents things lends much of that power.)
I've never read any of Baudrillard's books, though, just several of his essays.
I read all Baudrillard's books, back when he was relevant in the day. You've not missed much. In fact you seem more insightful than those who do have them all to set.
The whole story of telling ICE agents to just go out and find people on their own seems like a setup to empower the executive branch to have their own group of thugs. Without guidance they do what want outside the judicial system and sensible oversight / rules.
This seems to be a pattern in most non democratic countries...
Another thing that is troubling is that immigration law is sort of a parallel system to normal criminal law. The rights for the accused are lesser and obligations for officers are more lax. The burden of proof is lower. It's easier to get warrants and the rules of evidence are more relaxed.
There is a parallel authoritarian system being built up, starting with the creation of DHS in 2001 and ending god knows where. The massive expansion of ICE should ring alarm bells for everyone. This power grab does not end. It will expand and continue.
Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
Agreed, ICE seems like a natural org to begin extra legal actions with, fewer limits, you just claim you're doing immigration things and put the accused on a more oppressive track.
>Like it's seriously Nazi shit. This is police with extreme powers. All they have to say is "We thought they were illegal" and nothing will happen.
This is barely any different from "we thought we smelled weed".
The problem isn't ICE. They are just todays's live action remake of the same story we've seen before.
The problem is that there is no punishment, no consequences for all those people who, regardless of if through malice or ignorance, let these precedents be made and stand.
Arguably the current situation is worse than the abuses of years past because unlike drug prosecution to which a cross section of society is subjected ICE's prosecution targets (mostly) non citizens who will simply be deported to little effect upon the citizens whereas the citizens had to live with the fallout from drug prosecutions.
It's very different. When a cop "thought he smelled weed," he still has to:
- detain you and tell you why he detained you
- get a prosecutor to press charges promptly, charges which have to be articulated in terms of specific statutes that your elected representatives wrote
- give you defense counsel to argue your case in court
- set a prompt court date to argue your case
- tell the public that you were put in jail, why, and the circumstances
- release those court docs to the public
- follow rules of evidence when presenting their case
There are abuses, but there are also a robust set of protections in place. If the cops thought they smelled weed in your car, and there was no weed in your car, you argue that in court, and it's really very likely that you will walk free. That outcome, for the most part, is why cops don't immediately put everyone with tattoos in jail.
This is very very different from the alternative, which is where a cop says he thinks your tattoo might look like MS-13, so you go to an offshore prison forever, with no visitation rights and no trial.
Those two outcomes are VERY different! For that reason, yes, the problem is ICE.
> Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now
It has been entertaining listening to the people at Reason Magazine lately. They have convinced themselves thoroughly that they're not actually racist authoritarians, so now that they're getting what they really want, but it's so diametrically opposed to what they say they believe, they have to contort themselves endlessly.
Do not expect any kind of help from those kinds of people. Their anti-authoritarianism is largely performative or reserved to their in-group. When it's not performative, it's just rich kids complaining they're not allowed do to whatever they want.
I’ve checked in on Reason from time to time and it’s scary. They’ll have an article accurately recognizing the threat and incompatibility with even remotely libertarian principles, and the comments are like “this boot tastes great!” or “not a problem as long as it happens to brown people”.
>Another thing that is troubling is that immigration law is sort of a parallel system to normal criminal law. The rights for the accused are lesser and obligations for officers are more lax. The burden of proof is lower. It's easier to get warrants and the rules of evidence are more relaxed.
I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
>Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
It's fantastic that right libertarians have the opportunity to own me, a lib. The silver lining to all of this is all of the epic lib-owning that can be done as a result of the destruction of the rule of law. But, by my reading, traffic court and HOA fees were not cause of all of this. Right libertarians rightfully complained in 2001 when the DHS was formed; they again rightfully complained in the 2010's when Snowden blew the lid open on global surveillance. I would like to see them resist in a meaningful way here and now. Unfortunately it seems they are busy going to cryptocurrency conferences at Mar-a-Lago.
> I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
I think we saw what giving power to the "right guy" in the executive branch lead us. The thing that will stop us going down this road is, at this point, active resistance from local and state governments, private businesses and government contractors, and large multi-national corporations.
You need a lot of ICE, an absolutely staggering number of cops and jails, to deport twenty million people. It should be crystal clear by now that they will attempt to follow through with this promise, by whatever means necessary.
What people don’t seem to ask is, what will all of those enforcement officers do once they have deported a sufficient number of people such that the task becomes more difficult?
> "For more than three years I worked for the U.S. military back in my home country," Naser said in the video as the masked officers took him into custody. "I came here to make a better life. I didn't know this was going to happen like this for me."
> Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
Can you point me to some examples of people a decade ago running afoul of traffic or code enforcement, and being sent to an extrajudicial concentration camp for it?
But seriously, stop trying to be edgy with needlessly contrarian points. Stop gloating because us libertarians were talking about the trend of unaccountable government processes before it was popular. The dam breaking is not something to be celebrated, you're just adding fuel to the fire.
It's time to circle the wagons and defend our country together. True libertarians are not "keeping our mouths shut", but rather speaking out against the rapidly increasing government power. One cause, which we have to be mature and acknowledge, is the destruction of bureaucracy (which we've always disliked, but at least it moderated) in favor of unrestrained autocracy.
Out of the hundreds initially deported to El Salvador, "only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations." [1]
I think you misread my sentence out of the context of the overall argument? I edited it to add "a decade ago" to be clearer.
If I'm correctly interpreting what you said - yes, I agree that presently some people end up running afoul of traffic enforcement, which causes them to run afoul of immigration, which causes them to end up in the concentration camp.
But the larger argument is contrasting the longer-existing authoritarian/autocratic dynamics of code/traffic enforcers versus the more recent development of autocratic immigration enforcers.
Thanks, I read it as saying that people weren't being deported to concentration camps over minor crimes or traffic offenses. I'm certainly not disagreeing with you about our descent into fascism.
I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
The mechanism that is not working right now is not the presidency - it's congress. You could have Trump still in charge, but if congress were opposed to his actions - even to the extent of just repulsing his usurpation of powers he's not supposed to have - he would be a lame duck. And in fact a president on their own can't revert all this, they need congress to pass laws.
What this means is that it could end as soon as 2026. But this possibility will not last forever; if Trump succeeds in putting in place commanders in the army and police who are personally loyal to him in spite of the laws, then restoring the Republic will take many years.
> Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now?
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
I mean all ICE would really have to do is get people to agree to a TOS and in the USA that's good enough for you to now be forced into a parallel (quasi)legal system. The government already has this TOS in the form of plea deals which include giving up your constitutional rights.
Trump wants to declare martial law, he is trying to incite a reasonable enough response, the courts won't challenge him, he wants riots to be bad enough that upon his issuing the Exec Order, everyone just accepts/abides by his new king powers and obeys him like one.
Most democratic countries don't have decades of regular law enforcement refusing to enforce democratically agreed immigration law, which is what has made this defensible.
If it can happen to a brown person, it can happen to you - maybe have a little self interest, or perhaps consider how boring America would be without immigrants and black people - that's kinda where all our culture comes from, in our melting pot everything blends together.
So, what are your thoughts about ICE going after immigrants who think they're legal but didn't dot all the i's and cross all the t's on their paperwork? Because that is in the news as well.
I think that, much like those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable, those who make decent, reasonable immigration enforcement impossible make vicious immigration enforcement inevitable. No doubt the pendulum will swing too hard and too far, and ordinary decent people will pay the price. But when one side is even now still taking the position that you can't deport people who just walked across the border with no intention of ever following the legitimate process, I can't blame the other side for sending in the goon squad to crack heads.
> No doubt the pendulum will swing too hard and too far, and ordinary decent people will pay the price.
It has swung, and they are *already paying* the price. That's the question.
> I can't blame the other side for sending in the goon squad to crack heads.
Even when it's your own head? Given the complexity of the system, it's implausible that any immigrant, including you (or I in Germany) have done everything perfectly. But it's worse than that, as people in the USA are currently facing removal for writing things on the internet which are theoretically constitutionally protected free speech.
And that's without any discussion about why nobody in power did anything about what Biden's admin said was about 11 million undocumented migrants:
The reason being the US economy, and of main importance the food supply, actually depends on their labour — depending on how fast they get removed, the USA would be looking a 50% supply cut in perishable hand-picked crops and dairy (if done instantly) to a mere 20% price inflation (if done over a few years). Similar for construction industry, but that's less critical than, you know, eating.
> It has swung, and they are already paying the price. That's the question.
Yes and no. It's polarised, far too polarised. I hope we can deescalate and reach some reasonable middle ground. But that's going to require a lot of concessions from the left that I don't see any hint of willingness to make.
> it's worse than that, as people in the USA are currently facing removal for writing things on the internet which are theoretically constitutionally protected free speech.
Meh, that's a big nothingburger. Noncitizens have never had constitutional rights or at least not for decades. I don't like it but let's not pretend this is some radical change.
> Meh, that's a big nothingburger. Noncitizens have never had constitutional rights or at least not for decades. I don't like it but let's not pretend this is some radical change.
That's the first I've heard of it. Everyone else is saying it covers everyone in the USA, including the courts who ruled that kicking people out for blogging was unconstitutional and ordering the release of the people the US government had arrested: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.564...
But again, as you've not answered the "Even when it's your own head?" part, I remind you that you earlier wrote:
> I'm an immigrant and a minority myself, not that people like you ever actually care about supporting people like me.
I had assumed you were living in the USA, until checking your github account, so now I assume you're in Japan.
Please, imagine it is your own head that is the target of, in your own words, "the goon squad to crack heads".
What's happening today in the USA can happen anywhere, including where you live. (And where I live, but around here you can trip and fall over Stolperstein to be reminded of that latter part).
> That's the first I've heard of it. Everyone else is saying it covers everyone in the USA, including the courts who ruled that kicking people out for blogging was unconstitutional and ordering the release of the people the US government had arrested
People care about constitutional rights when it suits their politics, but unreasonable searches at the border have been standard for decades, under multiple administrations from both parties.
> Please, imagine it is your own head that is the target of, in your own words, "the goon squad to crack heads".
> What's happening today in the USA can happen anywhere, including where you live.
As an immigrant I don't have any rights, I can't even vote. Like it or not, that's part of the tradeoff.
But being realistic, I feel a lot safer, in part because Japan has quite strict immigration enforcement. It doesn't (yet, touch wood) have the US' dramatic polarisation and two-party split; rather there is a strong social consensus and a strong rule of law. And having seen how much crime and antisocial behaviour many of my fellow immigrants are responsible for, I'd far rather have that than the alternative. Yes, I don't want to be on the end of the riot squad getting sent in. But I think the best way to avoid that is to not get to the state of affairs where it makes sense to send in the riot squad.
You appear to be arguing that law enforcement focusing on dangers to their communities and not doing someone else’s job instead is bad. It’s exactly hard to find examples of cops who investigated real crimes and pulled ICE in when they realized the perp wasn’t here legally.
> You appear to be arguing that law enforcement focusing on dangers to their communities and not doing someone else’s job instead is bad.
Deprioritising lawlessness against the will of the electorate is bad enough, but I'm talking about deliberate noncooperation policies, e.g. the California sanctuary laws. That's going much further than "focusing on" other things.
> Deprioritising lawlessness against the will of the electorate is bad enough
You’re arguing that your personal opinion is “the will of the electorate”. The policies directing local police to focus on crime affecting their communities instead of shadowing federal immigration enforcement weren’t imposed by an aliens, they were enacted by democratically elected representatives.
California’s sanctuary laws are the subject of considerable mythology but they had no effect on crime rates according to actual studies because they don’t prohibit cops from working with law enforcement for cases involving people who pose a risk to their communities. They can’t hold people without cause or use a parking ticket to get someone deported but there’s no problem cooperating with federal law enforcement to get rid of a robber, killer, rapist, etc. – the kind of people most of the electorate want enforcement focused on, not gardeners and farm workers.
> weren’t imposed by an aliens, they were enacted by democratically elected representatives
Elected at the state level, sure. But it was against the will of the national electorate and they knew it. Democracy means going along with popular decisions even if you disagree, not finding tricks to undermine what was nationally agreed because your corner of the country doesn't like it.
> the kind of people most of the electorate want enforcement focused on, not gardeners and farm workers.
Most of the electorate wants all illegal immigrants deported, not just the ones caught committing violent crimes.
> Elected at the state level, sure. But it was against the will of the national electorate and they knew it.
Surveys have shown for many years that most people nationwide want a legal path to immigration for law-abiding workers. Sanctuary laws exist solely because a minority of the population has been able to game the Congressional structure to prevent immigration reform while also shielding the businesses which depend on cheap, exploitable workers from punishment.
I suspect that you would complain strenuously if the United States changed from a republic to the direct democracy you are arguing for in this case, or many others where unpopular policies are maintained due to the odd structure of our government.
> Surveys have shown for many years that most people nationwide want a legal path to immigration for law-abiding workers.
A path, perhaps. Not carte blanche.
> Sanctuary laws exist solely because a minority of the population has been able to game the Congressional structure to prevent immigration reform while also shielding the businesses which depend on cheap, exploitable workers from punishment.
Nah. That's at most a convenient fig-leaf for their motivations.
> I suspect that you would complain strenuously if the United States changed from a republic to the direct democracy you are arguing for in this case, or many others where unpopular policies are maintained due to the odd structure of our government.
You suspect wrong. And I'm not saying there's no case where the government should decide they know better than the people, but when they oppose the will of the people they should do it openly and directly, not with procedural rules-lawyering and disingenuous "tee-hee we're not actually opposing the law we're just prioritising other laws" arguments.
There are plenty of things that are rightly decided at state level. That doesn't mean it's OK for states to undermine the rules the populace (via their duly elected federal representatives) have chosen to make law at federal level. (And in any case it would be practically impossible to set immigration policy at state level, given that we don't have any intranational border control).
What does that have to do with anything? If you believed some ICE officers were making illegal arrests (presumably you know their arrests are perfectly legal, since I can't see why else you'd bring up "black letter law"), the remedy for that would be to bring charges for wrongful imprisonment, not to take it as an excuse to obstruct or attack other ICE officers.
You do realize that this entire discussion is about an American citizen and an elected official no less (and not the first one) arrested by "ICE" (we don't really know who those folks are because they won't identify themselves), right?
Are you that removed from reality that you can't parse the title of the discussion in which you are participating?
Why do you think the “national electorate” should have any say in California state laws? Is it just a basic lack of understanding civics, or do you think states, cities and local communities should be abolished because people in Alabama should actually be in charge of people in Sacramento?
I’m so tired of absolute nonsense like this being said by people who clearly know absolutely nothing about how this country works. Is this just barely disguised foreign agitation?
> Why do you think the “national electorate” should have any say in California state laws? Is it just a basic lack of understanding civics, or do you think states, cities and local communities should be abolished because people in Alabama should actually be in charge of people in Sacramento?
Immigration law isn't California state law, it's federal law, duly passed (and frankly any other approach would be crazy, unless you're proposing to introduce border checks between states). If the duly elected federal government felt it appropriate to leave the matter to the states, they would! If it was constitutionally inappropriate, the legislature would strike it down. States set their own laws on a lot of matters, but they don't get to opt out of federal laws they don't like.
As the other comment stated- You're saying that _your opinion_ was "what was nationally agreed" to. Trump has at many points stated illegals (daca recipients) should have a path to citizenship, do you think some trump voters might have believed trump when he said that and voted for that position?
> refusing to enforce democratically agreed immigration law
the main reason why immigration law has not been enforced is because a large number of US businesses (farms, factories, etc.) depend on those illegal immigrants as their workforce
if you really wanted to enforce immigration law you would shut down businesses who employ illegals -- which would also stem the tide of people coming into the US -- but that hasn't been done because immigrants -- regardless of their official status -- are a net positive for the US economy
> if you really wanted to enforce immigration law you would shut down businesses who employ illegals
I'm all for that (although California seemingly isn't, given that they make it illegal for those businesses to use e-Verify in most cases). I don't see any contradiction between doing that and continuing regular immigration enforcement. I certainly don't see how you can argue that we should stop regular immigration enforcement until we've done this new thing.
I don't care if these "officers" (in quotes as we don't know who they are) are doing God's work, if they are 1) refusing to show proof that they are indeed officers and 2) have legal warrants for an arrest, and 3) provide those they arrest with due process, then they are acting outside the law
When traditional law enforcement fails to the point that the rule of law completely breaks down, vigilantism becomes defensible.
> I don't care if these "officers" (in quotes as we don't know who they are) are doing God's work, if they are 1) refusing to show proof that they are indeed officers and 2) have legal warrants for an arrest, and 3) provide those they arrest with due process, then they are acting outside the law
ICE has the legal authority to arrest without warrants in many cases. I don't like it, but this is the flipsides of decades of insisting that illegal immigration isn't a crime and illegal immigrants aren't criminals.
pretty hard to argue that the rule of law as completely broken down in the US
> ICE has the legal authority to arrest without warrants in many cases
yeah, you're probably right about that though I think it's more "some" cases than "many" (they can't enter your house to search for someone without a warrant); due process still holds though
Poltical stories that show "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" are not against the guidelines. A few years back someone said nearly half the YC batch was non-US. I think stories about city comptrollers and mayoral candidates getting arrested at immigration court would have some bearing on whether someone would want to base a company in the US.
A user who has enough karma to flag stories has flagged it for whatever reason, maybe they think the story is flamebait or without merit, who knows. It is not possible for a user with equal or higher karma to unflag it I believe. Only a moderator can unflag it, and if you want them to do that you have to email them (address in guidelines, no guarentee of success).
> Poltical stories that show "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" are not against the guidelines.
Call me evil and obtuse, but this is neither interesting, nor new. The only thing new here is that (it seems) a huge swath of people are learning how the law works for the first time.
Brad Lander had nothing to do with the situation. He's a politician, and he was there "observing". It's the equivalent if I walked down to the Manhattan courthouse, ran up to the first defendant in shackles I saw in the hallway, and started interfering with their movement. I'd be arrested.
The fact that you, as a random bystander, aren't shown ID and briefed on the situation isn't relevant. If you aren't involved, you aren't involved.
The ununiformed, masked men that refuse to identify themselves and won't show any legal documents have unilateral authority and cannot be questioned. Do not resist.
You will not receive a trial. You will be sent to a black site. Your family or lawyer will not be informed.
> The ununiformed, masked men that refuse to identify themselves and won't show any legal documents have unilateral authority and cannot be questioned. Do not resist.
Again, Brad Lander was not being detained. He had nothing to do with anything. That's not "resistance", it's just interference.
Brad Lander saw unidentified, masked, ununiformed men who refused to speak, had no legal documentation, and would not identify themselves to anyone carrying a man against his will.
I hope it's not against the rules to swear, but this cannot be stated clearly enough: That's called a fucking kidnapping.
Did you not hear that someone pretending to be LEO attempted (and succeed in one case) the political assassination of two legislators and their spouses this weekend? More than ever, every single LEO should be under scrutiny for identification! He has every right to prevent a man from being disappeared by God knows who!
You may be a boot-stepping authoritarian who fully condones a US gestapo who can disappear anyone without question. The rest of us have higher standards and common sense.
> Brad Lantern saw unidentified, masked, ununiformed men who refused to speak, had no legal documentation, and would not identify themselves to anyone carrying a man against his will.
Brad Lander was at the man's trial for illegal immigration, which was in a federal court building. So, you know...context matters. Also you can clearly see uniforms in the video [1], but I digress.
There is exactly zero chance that Lander was under the illusion that this hypothetical, rogue, pirate kidnapping operation smuggled themselves into a federal immigration court, Boondock Saints-style, in order to abduct the one guy Lander happened to be watching in the immigration trial just moments before.
No problem. I also acknowledge that some people find the expectation that they should read rules offensive and worthy of downvotes as my previous comment was downvoted by someone else (and I'm okay with this comment also being downvoted because talking ("complaining") about such is against the rules lol).
You won't have a hackernews anymore if the country goes to shit though and we don't do anything about it, so it does matter. If you don't do politics, politics will do you.
US internal politics are also US external politics and all of this shit has been cheerled by the biggest names in Silicon Valley.
Hey remember when Peter Theil said we should get rid of democracy and Paul Graham said "we aren't going to like, stop giving money to people because of their opinions"? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Remember when the A in A16Z ran the futurist manifesto through a thesaurus?
Remember when Musk spent a quarter billion dollars to ensure this exact outcome?
It's also insane that state governors haven't deployed their national guards to keep the peace against these lawless masked kidnap gangs [0]. Arrest them with guns drawn like any other violent criminals in the act, and keep them in jail until state judges can review the details of their situation.
This applies more to other kidnappings and less here, because this happened in a fascist-controlled building. But the point is we need to start drawing these types of hard dividing lines based on state authority following the law in good faith, rather than deferring to an autocratic federal executive that increasingly interprets it in bad faith.
[0] sorry fascism-cheerleaders - without uniforms, legal documentation of their authority, accountability to bystanders, and duly-issued arrest warrants, this is what they are.
The speed with which other Americans went from 'we need guns to protect ourselves from the feds trampling over our rights' to 'federal agents bagging someone with zero identification or justification is OK actually' really does go to show how much of that was bluster. It's obvious to me that if federal agents weren't concerned with backlash for obviously illegal actions they would properly present themselves.
The true reason for this is that there are two (basically) groups of people in the US. The group that is pro gun might be opposed to this, but are not going to directly use weapons to defend themselves unless targeted. And they are not being targeted in this situation, so we don't see that coming into play.
Any agent of the state. If I were King(TM) it wouldn't even be possible to call in an anonymous tip to the most mundane of local government offices. Sure a few people would get some retribution initially but eventually it'd result in better alignment between the interests of the state and people. Anything not worth doing fully above the table isn't worth doing.
They need probable cause to arrest just like any other law enforcement. If they just arrest you because you're annoying or fake charges. You can sue them for deprivation of rights.
They are, it could be that the vast majority are acting in good faith, but the videos show a very different story. There is also no statement from ICE renouncing bad behavior from their agents.
Also, you are going to have a hard time suing if you are an El Salvadorian prison.
Of course, all that assumes the detainee is given due process.
If they're just going to kidnap people and take them away to El Salvadorian prisons, things like probable cause, miranda rights, and evidence are moot.
Except that is not what is happening. Usually, if you're arrested in the process of them trying to simply make space to carry out their official business, you just get removed and released. That is what is happening here. Contrary to various claims that citizens are being 'deported' en masse. Fewer than 70 out of millions of deportations last year were US citizens. These were either mistakes or had good reasons (such as minor citizen children).
Does asking for confirmation that you're a federal agent with the power to detain/arrest constitute impeding? Because I hope you see how that's a bad path to go down.
Yes, you're required to comply with law enforcement. But if you're required to comply with unidentified law enforcement, we're gonna have problems.
Just as in many jurisdictions you can be arrested for Resisting Arrest as the sole charge. "We weren't going to or had no grounds to arrest you, but since you resisted[1], we're now arresting you for that."
In the video I saw, Lander wasn’t asking the agents to prove that they were law enforcement. He was asking if they had a judicial warrant to detain the person he was holding onto. He did seem to believe they were law enforcement.
The problem is, ICE doesn’t need a judicial warrant to detain someone suspected of immigration offenses in a public space. Lander didn’t seem to know this, or at least feigned ignorance.
What do you do with someone who doesn’t know the law, and is actively interfering with a planned arrest? Briefly detaining them seems like a reasonable path to get the job done.
US citizens have already been arrested and ICE has tried to deport them.
Multiple US citizens in Los Angeles were recently arrested on the street. Whole thing was caught on camera. Dudes are literally yelling, "I'm a US citizen, I was born here" and the ICE folks didn't give a crap.
In fact, I agree with you that illegal immigrants abuse the system and unfairly consume resources. I also agree with the parent comment that people acting as a police force (i.e., ICE) should carry and present ID.
As a legal immigrant who waited years to get my citizenship lets point out that most of those immigrants actually pay for the same programs too, though not always "in their name". Undocumented immigrants still pay tax and deductions on their paychecks, too.
Go forth and arrest 3000 people a day, says Trump.. I assume performance is tied to that 40k bonus they're supposed to be getting under the big beautiful bullshit bill? Are they being paid a performance bonus? An incentive to put anyone in cuffs if they don't care about how its done. History will not be kind to those amoebas.
If someone unidentified, masked, showing no warrant, no legal justification of anything, kidnaps/attempts to kidnap someone, how are (organised) citizens not in their legitimate right to retaliate, according to what their local state allows them to?
Similarly, why/how are the law enforcement units not taking side against those kidnapping?
I mean, in my country, this would obviously call for immediate intervention of the police, but maybe that's because I'm still in a country where administrative enforcement is still ultimately under the control of the judiciary branch.
The cops personally agree with them, and so wouldn't intervene in any case.
I do think there's precedent that it's self defense to fire on an unidentified stranger who knocks on your door or tries to arrest you without showing ID, but you need to make it to court to press that defense and I can't say it's a great strategy for that reason
In theory, they are within their rights to retaliate. If an unknown person tried to kidnap you and doesn't present any form of ID, you have a very very strong case of self defense and genuine threat, and that would likely (IANAL) hold up in court if you ended up shooting them. It ended up holding up for Randy Weaver! You would want to surrender immediately upon being shown some ID, of course, but you could get away with it.
As for why law enforcement isn't taking sides, it's because doing so would basically be the start of a state succession attempt, and would bring federal agents in to take over the state. Some states have claimed they are willing to do that in certain situations (Alaska has said in the past it will use state troopers against government if they try to enact certain gun control laws), but no one is willing to go there yet. The best they can do now is categorically refuse to assist the feds.
I mean, if masked, unidentified people are kidnapping other people, what prevents _other_ masked, unidentified people to attack the kidnappers?
Where this goes, as I understand it from my European heritage, is that you are _already_ in a situation where there's a strong incentive for an active resistance force to appear.
ICE is clearly working as both an oppressive force, and as an incitement to violence. There have been precedents in history. It never ended well for _them_.
If you're asking why the state isn't stopping them, that is part of the power asymmetry between states and the federal government. The federal government can, effectively, do whatever the hell it wants with no punishment because of a number of emergent reasons. States cannot, and if they attempted to would get dog piled by a dozen different checks and balances metrics.
If you're referring to why a civilian milita isn't spinning to to stop them, that's because there are (basically) two groups of people in the US. The type that are strongly pro gun, pro militia, and have knowledge in both are generally actually supportive of this particular case, and furthermore wouldn't act anyway unless they or people they like were directly targeted. This is an unfortunate cultural aspect of the US, and correcting it would have a lag time of many decades. Furthermore, the groups that did attempt to correct it got crushed by the federal government for a few decades (see the MOVE bombings, and the Black Partners history), so are extra behind. However, spinning up a small militia for directly opposing this may happen. It would look similar to the CHAZ, but that requires a large group of dedicated and motivated people to spontaneously group together.
The article does not support the current HN title, not to mention that changing the title is against HN rules. Stick with the article title which is: "Brad Lander Detained by Masked Federal Agents Inside Immigration Court".
The entire framing of this article fact that we don't even know the name of whoever he was trying to protect tells you a lot.
Clearly we're not meant to be upset that fed-cops can behave this way generally, we're meant to be upset that they dared treat another agent of the state, a more equal animal, the way they'd treat a common peasant who got similarly uppity. Caring about these generalities is outside our lane.
> we're meant to be upset that they dared treat another agent of the state,
I'm upset because a US citizen was arrested for asking a reasonable question to some government officials before complying with the government officials.
> I'm upset because a US citizen was arrested for asking a reasonable question to some government officials before complying with the government officials.
Some basic facts are true here:
a) Brad Lander had no official capacity in that situation.
b) As a random person, he had no right to demand to see any documents, whatsoever, from the people doing the arrest.
c) Even if he thought the detention was illegal, and the police were completely fake -- and let's be real, he didn't think that -- the right way to handle it would be to call the police.
You don't just get to throw yourself in the middle of a law-enforcement action without consequence because you're a politician (or upset, or "moral", or...)
---
Edit: folks, read the article and watch the video [1]. A lot of you are just repeating things that plainly aren't true. Lander was in a federal courthouse. Uniformed police officers were present, and participated in his arrest. He had just attended the trial of the person being detained. There's simply no reasonable way that Lander believed that this was a "kidnapping", as many of you are saying. He knew exactly what was going on, and he knew exactly what he was doing. And the fact that cameras were there certainly wasn't a coincidence.
This "let them do it, and try to rectify wrongs later" model is why we end up with innocent gay hairdressers in CECOT.
There are clearly established procedures for US law enforcement (which includes ICE). If they are not following those procedures, then any citizen has the right to raise this as an issue, politician or not. They don't get to just haul people away because you have no "official capacity".
Do you have a legal right to see the documents that MUST be presented to the person they are seeking to detain? Probably not. Do you have a moral duty to insist the US law enforcement HAS that document before leaving the situation? Many people would say yes.
The 2nd amendment crowd are strong on the idea of guns as a means of resisting tyranny. Other people feel similarly about standing up to law enforcement being done illegally.
> Do you have a legal right to see the documents that MUST be presented to the person they are seeking to detain? Probably not. Do you have a moral duty to insist the US law enforcement HAS that document before leaving the situation? Many people would say yes.
Well, you can theorize a "moral duty" to do whatever you want, but that won't stop you from getting actually arrested, under real laws. But you do you.
The thing about being a martyr for your beliefs is that it comes with a downside. This article is trying to stir up controversy that someone doing something illegal (i.e. obstruction) was arrested for a valid reason.
> any citizen has the right to raise this as an issue, politician or not. They don't get to just haul people away because you have no "official capacity".
Yes, you do have a right to raise this as an issue... but not anywhere anyway. In all this discussion about the rule of law, we forget that the rule of the law also dictates how citizen redresses are to be handled... in a court of law, using established procedures.
> The 2nd amendment crowd are strong on the idea of guns as a means of resisting tyranny. Other people feel similarly about standing up to law enforcement being done illegally.
False equivocation... The 2nd amendment crowd has an amendment to our constitution allowing them to do what they do: own weapons. There is no amendment that lets you willy-nilly march into a court and demand papers. If you want that, I would suggest writing your legislator to propose such an amendment.
1. I suggest you check the meaning of equivocation. I think you meant equivalence.
2. I did not equate the two, other than as a means of resisting tyranny. You have no legal right (other than in NH) to seek to overthrow the government, 2nd amendment or otherwise.
It's hilarious to see people talking about rule of law when the President of the United States himself is not bound by it. The President! You can see it very clearly why interwar liberalism failed. As Schmitt points out, they were too caught up in constitutional handwringing to comprehend that they had entered a state of exception, and that normal laws and procedures were not to be followed.
> Even if he thought the detention was illegal, and the police were completely fake -- and let's be real, he didn't think that -- the right way to handle it would be to call the police.
Very, very good point. Not enough people know they can call the police on police.
If a bunch of armed thugs who aren't wearing uniforms or badges show up and abduct someone, citizens don't have the right or obligation to do something about it? Just stand back and watch? That's the world you want to live in, one where kidnappings are normal?
No-one in the banner image of this article has a uniform? Is it too much to ask to be uniformed while acting in this capacity? There doesn't seem to be a need for subterfuge, they just don't want the bad optics.
Perhaps, but the comment I was replying to was claiming "not wearing uniforms" which isn't what was going on. I have no idea if badges were displayed at any point, but this was a federal courthouse, one would hope that they would be asking for identification. It should also be noted that according to the article, NYPD was present at the time.
I don't think, given the facts I currently have, that claiming he didn't know they were real ICE agents is going to hold much water.
> If a bunch of armed thugs who aren't wearing uniforms or badges show up and abduct someone citizens don't have the right or obligation to do something about it?
Sure you do. Call the police. Record it, capture the details for evidence.
> Just stand back and watch?
Again, you're welcome to call the police. But no, you don't just get to rush in and start interfering because your sophisticated understanding of the circumstances as a complete nobody make you feel like Captain America.
> That's the world you want to live in, one where kidnappings are normal?
It's obviously not a "kidnapping". Nobody seriously believes that -- most obviously, Brad Lander, who wouldn't be screaming for a warrant from "kidnappers".
A few days ago someone shot people while pretending to be a police officer. Someone impersonating ICE for kidnapping isn't out of the realm of possibility.
Right. So your logic is: because someone, somewhere, once did something illegal while dressed as a police officer, we should interfere with every arrest, everywhere, because they might be fake police?
Or are you just restricting this logic to plainclothes officers, who aren't wearing uniforms at all?
So until every police officer follows the law, everywhere, in every instance, you believe anyone should be entitled to obstruct arrests if they disagree with the law?
That’s a great example of a straw man argument. I especially like the way you start by acknowledging that the question is official misconduct but by the end of the sentence have flipped it to blame people for expecting law enforcement officers to follow the law.
Yes, and a few days ago some "peacekeepers" in UT tried to shoot someone whom they perceived to be a threat, and ended up shooting and killing a bystander nearby. Situations are complicated, and assuming you know what's going on, and that you can help, is presumptuous.
That argument works better against the position: things which create confusion increase the odds of serious problems. Reducing uncertainty by having clear rules makes it safer for everyone: that “good guy with a gun” is far more likely to be involved in a tragic mistake not because they have any desire to be but because it’s a snap judgement with limited information and bystanders. Armed paramilitaries abducting people in a manner indistinguishable from a cartel kidnapping or police impersonation is dramatically increasing the risk to those officers snd everyone nearby for the same reason, and they’re not doing anything they couldn’t do without following the law with identification, serving legal warrants, etc.
And a few days ago, some guy crossed a border with a young girl he passed off as his daughter when in reality he was a sex trafficker and going to sell the girl into sex slavery.
Since we're all clutching our pearls, we might as well clutch all of them.
There seems to be a clear difference between criminals doing shady things and the government doing shady things. It seems like a false equivalency to compare an incident where a random guy does something terrible to one where law enforcement is rapturing people into the night while wearing masks.
What is law enforcement if not just random guys in uniform?
If the same acts are/were committed (i.e. ditch the sex trafficking example because the .gov doesn't really do that) what makes their misdeeds not equivalent to those of the non-state actor?
The difference is that we have entrusted law enforcement with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and so we expect them to hold themselves to a higher standard to be worthy of the enormous power they exercise on our behalf.
The difference is that nobody is defending that guy, whereas misconduct by these officers is being defended by some people as a political tactic. There is no conflict in saying both things are bad, and indeed we teach kindergarteners that two wrongs don't make a right.
Despite his best efforts to use this situation to make a name for himself, and despite the many shortcomings of his opponents, he will likely not be elected.
"what they were doing" is attempting to illegally abduct someone. The comptroller's "impeding" was a demand to see the one thing that would make their request a legal arrest.
Instead, they arrested the comptroller without even a pretense of the law.
ICE agents are not generally required to present warrants. The agent has all sorts of conditions where they get to say no. If you think you’re above the law and can tell them what to do then you’re going to be arrested.
Police in general don’t need to show warrants to arrest people. In high profile situations it may be done to minimize political blowback, but clearly that is not a primary concern in this situation (except toward individual officers, which is why they are masking).
In many situations, they just need a documentable/articulable (to a judge, later) reasonable belief that a crime was occurring in their presence, or in other situations that a specific crime had occurred and there was a reasonable belief that person had committed that crime.
Resisting arrest, and impeding official business of a police officer are usually arrest-able offenses almost anywhere.
Details vary by jurisdiction and crime, but ‘you need a warrant to arrest someone’ is an edge case, not the common case. In those cases, it’s also often an indictment or bench warrant.
That all makes sense, but these don't look like police officers — these are guys wearing backwards baseball caps and surgical masks. Effectively, our trust that someone holds position of authority in law enforcement is based on their uniform and badge.
If we normalize some dude in a mask and a baseball cap as someone that has the authority to arrest you and put you in an unmarked van, that represents a real and serious breakdown of trust and order in society.
ICE agents should wear a real uniform (ICE with their real name), have uncovered faces, and be required to show badge/authorization upon request -- otherwise members of society have to reason to trust them (or people who look like them).
Yup, and don’t forget DEA getting into full on shoot outs while dressed even worse.
It’s a real problem, just like no knock warrants, asset seizure, lack of body cams, milsurplus equipment grants to police departments, overly aggressive training, parallel construction, arrest quotas, etc.
IMO, in this case the tactics are being done intentionally (and at the leadership level) to terrorize people and stir the pot to incite ‘bad behavior’ that can be spun to justify crackdowns. Individual officers may be true believers, but many are also ‘along for the ride’ and trying to not get too much blowback. Either way, just following orders is no excuse.
>This misunderstanding stemmed from consumers focusing on the numbers "3" and "4," leading them to conclude that one-third (1/3) was smaller than one-fourth (1/4), even though the opposite is true
I wonder if there's a correlation between those consumers and Trump voters?
> More than half the people in the focus groups questioned the price of the third-pounder. They wanted to know why they should have to pay the same price for a third of a pound as they did for a quarter pound at McDonald's. They said A&W was overcharging them.
Government employees have more responsibilities than normal US citizens. If he was hiding someone he was derelict in that responsibility and sending the law after him is completely reasonable.
He wasn't hiding anyone. He was out in a hallway, along with the person he had linked arms with. Watch the video.
He was refusing to unlink his arm from the person ICE wanted to detain until ICE presented documentation establishing the legality of what they were doing. It was a perfectly reasonable request.
I don't think that's the point of the article -- I suspect it's more that the average New Yorker reading this NYC news site already knows who Brad Lander is.
(You can also easily imagine why it wouldn't be ideal to publish the name of someone who is actively being harassed by masked thugs.)
>(You can also easily imagine why it wouldn't be ideal to publish the name of someone who is actively being harassed by masked thugs.)
If I were being mistreated by enforcers I would want my name anywhere and everywhere. Public scrutiny is one's only hope when government seeks to mistreat you.
I think this qualifies as public scrutiny. But also: you're presumably a citizen/national, like me, so you're not coming at this from a "they're going to kidnap my family to punish me for being visible" angle. That's been the recent trend for non-citizens/nationals.
Consider the degree to which we’ve already seen vigilantes attempting what they term immigration enforcement, targeted assassination of political enemies, a president pardoning those who commit violence on behalf of his causes, and federal law enforcement repurposed to harass opponents or hustle inconvenient arrestees out of the country where they can be held incommunicado. It seems pretty reasonable to me to that many people without a huge degree of privilege would want to avoid the risk of drawing fire like that.
not just government enforcers, any kind of criminal enterprise too.
If I was ever blackmailed with "do X or we will kill Y", the first thing I would do is to tell the entire world. This would massively increase the risks associated with actually killing that person, as then the police would immediately know who to suspect.
News is written for lowest common denominator, appealing to emotional narratives. [More] news at 11. Stop trying to point to the media's hypocrisy as if it justifies rejecting the overall message. I don't like that elected officials are of a higher class either, but the plain fact is they are. We need to work with this to point out how out of control this administration is.
Sometimes, criticism is poised to cause reform. Currently, it's poised to support the fascist takeover in progress. Having to circle the wagons sucks as it further empowers the authoritarians on our side, but at this point it is what it is - traditional American governance (with all of its warts and flaws) versus autocratic fascism red in tooth and claw.
Well, read the next paragraph. It's clearly an acknowledgment of privilege and an appeal:
“I know I will get due process and that my rights will be protected,” Lander said to a throng of supporters who gathered spontaneously in Foley Square that evening after his release.
“But Edgardo will sleep in an ICE detention facility God knows where tonight…he has been stripped of his due process rights in a country that is supposed to be founded on equal justice under law,” Lander continued, naming the immigrant detained by federal agents at the same time the comptroller was taken into custody.
So I ask this question in good faith: What are the due process rights that have been taken away? What is this administration doing different from the prior ones in regards to detaining suspected illegal immigrants? While I don't doubt there could be something, I haven't seen a coherent answer to this question.
I am happy to change my mind, but in this situation all I see is a political candidate interfering with federal agents and getting arrested for it. I see lots of really questionable things happening, like these agents wearing masks and dressing in hoodies, but mentioning that does not address the due process question. If someone could address this point directly and without hyperbole, I am eager to be better informed about it.
They're deporting them without trial. They don't even try to confirm they capture the right people. They've arrested several US citizens. Notice where this arrest occurred: at a courthouse. Why? Because this person was complying with the law and going through the immigration process.
What about masked men kidnapping random people, then sending them somewhere like a prison in El Salvador seems just to you? Do you remember this happening previously in your life?
I feel like they're arresting these people at courthouses so that it will instill fear in others of going through the legal process. Then they can deport many more immigrants and say "look, they didn't go to court, they're definitely illegal".
My understanding is that they're doing this under the "expedited removal" provision of the 1996 IIRIRA law. If you've been in the US less than 2 years, arrived without inspection or at a port of entry with invalid documents, or don't have lawful resident status, you're subject to expedited removal. If not, you are entitled to an administrative immigration hearing.
For some context, under Obama in 2013, there were roughly 197,000 expedited removals (45% of ~432,000 total deportations). So this was widely used by DHS during the Obama administration. Nothing has changed except ICE policies about where people are permitted to be detained and where they are targeting people. Unless I'm missing something?
I'll be the first to admit they look like masked goons and entirely unprofessional grabbing people off the street in hoodies. It's horrible optics and is absurdly unprofessional. I completely disagree with the mechanics of how this is being carried out. But it's not unconstitutional or unlawful as far I can tell.
> But it's not unconstitutional or unlawful as far I can tell.
The problem is that you can’t tell: if they follow the law, you can be fairly confident that it is constitutional but when they’re rapidly deporting people without hearings and with officers actively resisting oversight, we have only their word that the people being deported do in fact meet those criteria. Since they’ve been documented as detaining citizens, lying about things like asylum claims or criminal status, etc. in many cases, their word alone is now untrustworthy for any case. They chose to create that distrust and the only way to build trust is for them to stop prioritizing quotas over legality.
What’s happening now is exactly what happens every time some incompetent boss tells everyone to hit a number no matter what, except that the stakes are far higher.
> Since they’ve been documented as detaining citizens
So I've seen this claim a few times and I have personally heard of a few well publicized cases where this occurred. Given the nature of the work, I'd imagine it's almost impossible for this not to happen at some point. From Wikipedia:
- Between FY 2015 and Q2 FY 2020, ICE arrested 674 individuals believed to be U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 (GAO)
- From 2012 to early 2018, ICE wrongfully arrested and detained around 1,480 U.S. citizens
- 2008-2012 saw 834 U.S. citizens and 28,489 permanent residents mistakenly placed on immigration detainers .
So it seems this may have been happening at an even higher rate under other administrations. This is not a defense of the practice... I can't describe how angry I would be if this happened to someone in my family. But I am trying to be objective and react based on numbers, not emotions, and convince others to do the same.
> What’s happening now is exactly what happens every time some incompetent boss tells everyone to hit a number no matter what, except that the stakes are far higher.
My biggest concern is that words being misused are burning the credibility that may eventually be necessary. It would not surprise me if Trump started ordering them to do unconstitional and unlawful things. But if you've been throwing those words around carelessly and inaccurately, you'll have no credibility to use them when the need truly arises.
Elected representatives are going to be intransigent until a point in the very near future, when they realize they're about to be voted out en masse and their voters don't like them as much as they like another guy -- who isn't going to be on the ballot with them. So keep reminding them.
That happened - it was 2024. It's really seeming like Democrat politicians don't actually care about winning elections. They did terribly and they're still doing terribly and not acknowledging they're doing terribly, when they should have the easiest job in the world running against Trump.
The scale of the protests means the protests are already working. They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.
I don’t see a connection between their efficacy and what happened in Minnesota, which was an event that is arguably all the more reason to protest.
Good strategy if voting is still allowed in 2028, not super useful if political violence bubbles over into a coup or such.
The scale of the protests is encouraging, but I remember the mass protests under Bush were about as large, and the war continued and he stayed in power. Organization needs to do something with the mass of people who are out in the streets to direct them.
Voting is always allowed. No matter how corrupt the country, no matter if it's ruled by a dictator, even in a "Free Democratic Union of Independent People's Republics", there's always going to be an election sooner or later.
Whether the elections are fair and the opposition is even allowed to field a candidate... now that's a different story.
Like the Blue Wave I was promised in 2024? When we took the house or senate or presidency? Invigorated, of course, by the Presidential candidate threatening war on allies, the revocation of addition rights (following the death of RvW), etc?
Because Trump reliably makes at least one statement in support of ANY point in possibility space.
You can pull-quote Trump saying literally anything, from being pro-gun to anti-gun, pro-queer to radically anti-queer, literal child molester to saint.
His words literally don't matter, because he says them all.
I mean, I'm voting and I'll tell everyone to vote. Support my preferences publicly, of course.
But given the combined discrepancy between Harris vs the Attorney General in every single county of NC, the Elon contact for those voting machines, and Trump saying it out loud, I'm kind of at the point I'm not sure if the last election was legitimate. I don't have a lot of hope for 2026 or 228 since we're already past "the US military is deployed against its own citizens and make an extra-constitutonal arrest" stage with no consequences. Also the "disobey the Supreme Court" stage. But I guess we'll see and it'll be a great day to be proven wrong.
Though, I hardly even called America a democracy before that given the intense Gerrymandering, a lack of an established right/obligation to vote, and completely disproportionate representation in legislation. The whole system is a joke in it's design.
Some wisdom: There are and have always been problems with American democracy. Yet at the end of the day vote counts and protest counts are the things that change the country's trajectory.
Part of the toxicness of current news media is the "And this can never be changed" doomerism.
Bullshit. Everything can be changed. It just takes action and convincing others to take action.
Protests mostly make people feel good, but rarely invoke change. MLK did not accomplish his goals through life, it was the violence that followed that precipitated actual change. Did RvW protests stop the SC? Did Palestine protests stop our involvement with Israel? Did Occupy Wall Street work? Did the LEO system get reformed after the massive Floyd protests? No. Not a single one of those protests with tens of millions of total participants worked.
France didn't preserve their retirement age by walking around with signs. They had to get disobedient. Break shit, stop collecting trash or running services.
Shockingly, people who are going to fuck you for power or money could care less if you're upset about being fucked. And now that the majority of media in America is controlled by 7 billionaires and they've spent 30 years justifying shooting or run over protestors, they're calling the bluff and betting Americans will roll over and take it.
Rhetoric doesn't match. Marx literally said that the only for the working class to overthrow their oppressors (business owners) was to make them not a live.
I find Capital to be a fairly moderate look at the situation - a lot of it is essentially an economics textbook. Marx was almost an optimist compared to the power capital has today, if you look at his predictions.
I think largely they have not yet been effective at protecting immigrants.
> They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.
Right, so to some degree they "work" as tools for existing political groups in attracting attention, resources and possibly votes. But does it better enable those groups to actually help immigrants? Or does it just give political organizations a powerful talking point in the midterms?
The latter is probably the strongest route to actually doing something, because there's no accountability within the system until both Senate and House have flipped D.
People power - that was an excellent display of it this last weekend. BLM, Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam are the only ones comparable. All of those built up - Vietnam was bc it was the first time people could see war like that, and we were sending lottery drafted 18 year olds - those very big deals.
This is solely in response to what has happened since January 21st of this year.
That's incredible actually. Concerning for sure if you planned on people being sheep.
When someone attempted to assassinate Trump would you have lumped all of those against Trump into "they"?
I don't support what the current administration is doing; not by a long shot. But to say, "they did just shoot two elected representatives," is disingenuous at best.
I have lumped every people with roughly the same ideology as the Trump shooter in a 'they'.
I don't remember the exact sentence but it was something like that: "That's the issue with pandering to violent conspiracy theorists, if they feel betrayed they will aim that violence at you".
Publicly they'll wring their hands and tell us a bunch of BS about how violence outside of the state is bad and whatnot but behind the scenes they'll go back to their research people and their focus groups and try and get to the bottom of whether it was just one crazy or an outlier who's of an existing trend in opinion they ought to care about. Same as they did when that CEO got shot.
Only one person shot two elected representatives, and AFAIK, his pronouns are not "they". There is zero evidence that he is part of some larger plan, and I have seen zero evidence of anyone cheering on his heinous acts (unlike with a recent left-wing murderer, who was lauded as upstanding and handsome).
I watched large portions of the right wing immediately denounce the killings as a left-wing assassination. I don't think any of these people truly believed that left-wing assassins conducted a targeted execution of two Democrats in a tightly-divided R/D state legislature: I think it was a very deliberate effort to confuse the news reporting and minimize the damage of their divisive rhetoric, until something else (a war) pushed it out of the spotlight.
TBH, I want such reps to be loud about that. We need to stop pretending that the right is not leveraging stochastic terrorism. The problem doesn't go away by ignoring it.
Yes, that's risky. Some people might get hurt. A lot of people are being hurt, and will continue to be hurt, by the current situation. We all have to make our own choices about when principles and long-term outcomes outweigh our instinct for self preservation.
It seems like it would be possible for state and local forces (police) to arrest and imprison ICE agents that are acting illegally. Specifically, arrest them for kidnapping when the nab people off the streets. Sure, they'll get out because they can lie and pretend they have cause; but they could be locked up for a while at least. And do it enough, and maybe they'll start thinking twice before acting stupid.
I have bad news about the police. They are exactly the same as ICE. If they fight it would be more like gang warfare over turf and money, since that is all they really are.
Your outrage is not that ICE is acting illegally but that they are enforcing US law. Having local law enforcement launch some kind of insurrection is the kind of myopic nonsense you would have condemned a few years ago, even months. Heck, for the last 50 years the Imperial Presidency also was a bipartisan consensus.
It looks different when it's your ox getting gored, but the solution is actually temperance, restraint and dialog.
I hear story after story about ICE kidnapping folks, wearing masks, not showing ID (in fact, being told _not_ to wear id). And story after story of those folks being held without the ability to consult a lawyer, or see their families, etc. And story after story of people being deported without due process. And story after story of judges saying very clearly that this is illegal. And ordering it to stop. And yet it continues.
So no, I'm not outraged that they are enforcing US law. I am outraged that they are breaking US law in the name of enforcing it. And I think they should be forced to stop it. And clearly, the judicial branch telling them it's illegal isn't getting them to stop.
Mostly because they're acting as agents of the president's agenda, and as such, even if one were to prosecute them for their crimes, the president would just blanket-pardon them all and executive-order that they're immune to any legal enforcement against them, and the toadies in D.C. would roll over and allow it all to happen.
But none of that has to do with a president's own qualified immunity.
ICE isn't inheriting the president's qualified immunity; they have it because they're government employees. It doesn't matter if they're acting in the presidents interests or not and for state employees if they're acting in the governors interests or not.
Pardon is a very clearly enumerated power of the president so any usage of it is very clearly legal (although typically undesirable).
The problem with the presidential pardon is that it enables the president or his accomplices to carry out any amount of federal crimes. See Iran-Contra.
I feel like hackernews has been getting astroturfed by the same people that ruined reddit. Over the past few months, there have been increasingly one sided political stories and comments. It's a shame.
> Any average citizen would be arrested and detained.
yes, ICE thugs would probably behave equally lawlessly towards any civilian challenging them for a warrant. that doesn't make what happened less horrifying.
> They are not "thugs". They are federal officers.
are they? maybe they should identify themselves as such with names, badge numbers, and warrants?
> They are upholding federal law.
they clearly aren't given the number of court cases the Trump administration is rapidly losing related to its deportation activity.
> This constant manipulation of words is tiring
this constant sanewashing of cruelty is tiring. you should find it horrifying.
but I'm not going to go in circles with you. I hope you eventually look back on this part of your life with shame about your beliefs and who and what you defended.
Not American but are law enforcement required to present the warrant to a person who is not the individual named in the warrant? It would make sense to present it to their attorney but this gentleman seems like a third party.
Sort of crazy that questioning the existence of something that may not exist, when there isn't physical evidence of it existing, can get you detained. Wait a second, I think we've seen that before...
It takes a simple google to figure out that you are incorrect. If an arrest warrant exists, police need to produce an arrest warrant as soon as possible but not at time of arrest.
How does the police _justify_ the arrest then, to the ones being arrested, their family, and to their counsel?
How do those know what happens next, and where?
You know, basic questions, even more critical in a democracy.
You cannot force a citizen without a legal reason to do so. If you don't have a warrant (or a legitimate reason at the time of arrest), you're legally naked.
Nothing about what you said matters. The police are legally allowed to arrest a person without presenting an arrest warrant, if the arrest warrant exists. Then after they are brought to jail, they will present to warrant to the person arrested or their counsel. The family is owed no information from the police. That's not how it works.
Thanks for exemplifying the problem: the culture of might over right (I don't know if you realise how deep the "nothing about what you said matters" runs).
The family is totally owed information from the police and the state. That's exactly how it must work in a free, democratic society.
There’s a lot in the law that won’t be necessarily obvious or intuitive to you, that doesn’t mean you should assume you know what you’re talking about. Go ahead and look it up rather than commenting about something you don’t understand.
He was clearly obstructing justice. Whether or not he will formally get charged, who knows, but it's more than enough to detain him to stop him from interfering with the arrest by ICE of the person.
"New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained inside a Lower Manhattan immigration court building Tuesday morning by masked federal agents as he attempted to escort a man from his court appearance there. "
This is actually what happened, not the headline. He tried to forcibly remove someone there for court. It's all a a show, to make the Trump administration look bad.
Contrary to the current title here on HN, Lander was not arrested for asking to see a warrant; TFA states the opposite, "It wasn’t immediately clear what charges, if any, the mayoral candidate will face. A spokesperson for ICE didn’t immediately return a request for comment."
If an event is so important to know about, why fabricate such an important aspect of the event in this way?