Entering private property without a warrant does seem like it would be unlawful, yes. Fourth Amendment, yes? Do you know of court cases scheduled to make this argument?
Regarding protests and the response, that very much contradicts the video evidence I've seen.
There is no rhetoric, as far as I can tell, about "how democrats are terrorists", except in the sense that there equally is rhetoric about "how republicans are fascists". There is rhetoric about antifa, no quotes, because (among other things) of the demonstrable existence of protesters using black bloc tactics, explicitly describing themselves with that label, and explicitly stating a goal of countering supposed "fascism".
Do you otherwise disagree about the general principles of setting and enforcing rules for immigration?
Have you considered that it doesn’t matter that what they’re doing is legal?
You don’t need to know if it’s legal or illegal to know that it is wrong. It is against the spirit of this nation (or, perversely, you could say it’s the intrinsic spirit of this nation coming out…). There are plenty of things legal which are wrong.
That anyone is defending these actions by claiming to do them “legally” is a means of saving face with the people in our society who are distant enough from those directly and indirectly affected, and who struggle to differentiate morality from law. This kind of thinking is a slippery slope that leads to the institutionalization of violence.
If it were legal for ICE to hold *humans* classified by the state as “illegal migrants” in concentration camps, would you continue to defend that policy as merely enforcing the law?
This is not a humanity issue, this is a legal one. The president ran on removing people from this country who entered the country illegally. He is executing what he ran on and what the people voted for.
I don't personally approve of all the tactics that are being used, however it is clear that some cities are not in favor of these Federal laws at all no mater which tactic is used. I also realize how quickly these conversations turn.
What if immigration courts are also starting to target people who came here legally? (Green card holders)
What if they begin to find “clerical errors” in their applications that suggest their immigration status is “fraudulent and illegal”?
And what if they begin to target naturalized citizens, but only ones who had the misfortune of being born in “terrorists countries” like China and Venezuela and Iran?
At what point would you say that they’ve gone too far?
You have to recognize that the humanity of these people is worth more than their “legal immigration status”. The spirit of this country must continue to be the Statue of Liberty, not devolved into an ICE detention center.
I have a friend who’s been in the U.S. for 12 years and has been a green card holder for at least half that time. His siblings are citizens and minors. He and his parents are in the middle of being slow-motion deported, because the immigration courts are claiming his original application was fraudulent due to him being a national security threat. There is no new information or evidence that wasn’t in their original application. They just don’t like his country of origin and the high school his dad went to in the 70s. The whole family is trying to draw out the case so his siblings can finish high school before they’re deported.
These stories are everywhere. You can call them “anxiety” and try to ignore it, but this is not manipulation — it’s how this regime works. When they exhaust one layer of the vulnerable they have to go one rung higher up the ladder.
> This is not a humanity issue, this is a legal one.
Its only not a humanity issue if you have no humanity, but, even so, it is also an issue where the President has been violating more than executing the law,
Why does the legality only matter when it applies to a minority we're demonizing?
Trump's current wife very famously entered the US illegally, not to mention the dozens of other crimes trump has publically committed recently.
People in these conversations very frequently bring up laws and legality but fail to recognize that laws only work when they apply to everyone equally.
Which minorities are being arrested and deported and detained?
Non-citizens are a minority of people residing in this country (<15% of the population). This includes everything from people who immigrated here illegally, to asylum seekers, refugees, visa holders, and green card holders. And they’re being scapegoated for “crime”, unemployment, inflation, “domestic terrorism” (participating in protests).
Common sense retort (on the level of Asmongold): If you do not agree with a law (on moral grounds or whatever other reason), you do not get to selectively ignore it. Your options in this society are to either put up with it, or lobby to change it.
If you want for society to better align with your values, then lobby to fix the problems that made the introduction of the existing laws a necessity.
I don’t see how this retort applies to this conversation.
Do you think the executive branch was selectively ignoring the law by not sending asylum seekers to El Salvador under previous administrations?
The law is selectively and capriciously enforced all the time. Jay walking, tax evasion, speed limits, etc.
At the risk of repeating myself (selectively) “enforcing the law” is a great excuse for budding authoritarians, to save face with the segment of the population who struggle to discern right from wrong, and depend upon “the legal system” to make that distinction for them. You could dress up any behavior in the language of legal enforcement and necessary expressions of sovereignty, and that will apparently be enough for some people.
> Have you considered that it doesn’t matter that what they’re doing is legal?
No, because it does matter.
> You don’t need to know if it’s legal or illegal to know that it is wrong.
Please explain why you think it is wrong. Or exactly, where does the wrongness come in?
Is it wrong because they attempt to enforce immigration law? Do you consider it invalid for countries to restrict legal immigration? Why?
Is it wrong because they wear masks? Why?
Is it wrong because they operate "in broad daylight"? Why?
It is definitely not wrong "because they kidnap people", because that is at best circular reasoning. Arrest is a standard tool of law enforcement.
> a means of saving face with the people in our society who are distant enough from those directly and indirectly affected, and who struggle to differentiate morality from law.
This is incorrect in my case, and frankly insulting. For example, marijuana has been legal here for several years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Canada) and I was in favour of that since long before it changed. I grew up and socialized in a world where it was outlawed and clearly not harmful, and I saw the injustice in that.
But national borders are perfectly moral, in my view.
> This kind of thinking is a slippery slope that leads to the institutionalization of violence.
In the broad sense that your argument requires, violence is supposed to be institutionalized. That's what the criminal justice system is. Never mind capital punishment, or corporal punishment (I oppose both of course): apprehending criminals requires force.
That said, I respect that you acknowledge the slippery slope fallacy here. Putting aside that "concentration camp" is not a well defined term (and people have argued since at least the Obama years about the conditions in ICE detainment facilities), that's clearly not where things are headed. Nobody wants to detain the people who are legally not entitled to be in the country. The entire point is to have them not in the country.
Besides, is it any more moral to let employers (who violate laws themselves in this way) hold the threat of deportation over illegal immigrants, to deprive them of workers' rights and fair payment? Of course these employers should also be punished, but that isn't going to stop people from coming.
> I grew up and socialized in a world where it was outlawed and clearly not harmful, and I saw the injustice in that.
So you are able to see the injustice of marijuana being illegal to consume but not the injustice of masked anonymous federal (maybe) agents kidnapping people off the street, assaulting people random bystanders and in general attempting to create a culture of terror?
To see injustice in this, it would have to be happening as you describe. I already explained multiple inaccuracies in the description and you have added more.
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor. While what Trump did is a felony. Do you see masked agents kidnapping Trump without due process in the middle of the night?
How did we go from "in broad daylight" being used for emotional appeal, to using "in the middle of the night" for emotional appeal? If there is not a better time of day at which to take these actions, then adding these phrases is just highlighting the irrationality of the argument.
I already explained why this is definitionally not "kidnapping" nor a violation of due process. Being lawfully apprehended by federal agents is an arrest, which is completely compatible with due process. Due process rights apply after that point: things like not being held indefinitely, having access to legal representation, etc.
Some of the people being detained and deported are asylum seekers who came to this country fleeing persecution in their home nation.
They arrived at this country following all the rules provided to them by prior administrations (including the last Trump administration). They have shown up for their court dates. Those that were permitted to work have found ways to contribute to their local economies. They've created homes, found love, and become part of their local communities. Their stories are abundant and well-documented, you can find them trivially.
I think it is wrong to remove peaceful, hard-working people from their present communities, doubly-so if they are asylum-seekers who have already demonstrated an extreme ability to suffer through the hardship of coming here.
The current administration is making a deliberate choice to interpret immigration law in a way that enables them to arbitrarily detain and deport these people, while rhetorically defining them as a violent, criminal invasion by foreign powers. Just because the executive branch has the legal right to treat non-citizens within our borders with impunity, does not make it right to do so.
What part of this picture do you think is right, and why?
Regarding slippery slope fallacy: if a policy choice enables or disables centralized detention and deportation infrastructure, wouldn't you prefer to follow the precautionary principle and avoid inadvertently building the tools of fascism? Even if you think Trump is acting in good faith and with restraint, his successors need not, and will inherit an infrastructure that amplifies their ability to inflict damage up the ladder of minorities.
Also, it's not true that "nobody wants to detain people who are legally not entitled to be in this country". There's a whole cottage industry of facilities popping up around the country that are paid by the inmate-detention-day, who do everything they can to avoid giving people due process so they can maximize their revenue. This industry will be happy to lobby for detention to apply to an ever-increasing circle of people.
> Can you otherwise show that law is not being followed?
How, when we, the people/country, are not allowed to arrest ice agents and put them on trial? How do you propose we apply legal rules if some people are above them?
> Fourth Amendment, yes? Do you know of court cases scheduled to make this argument?
No, because the people involved DON'T GET COURT CASES.
I genuinely do not know if you merely haven't taken in any new information over the last 12 months or are deliberately trying to promote a false agenda.
> Do you otherwise disagree about the general principles of setting and enforcing rules for immigration?
If you are genuinely trying to discuss this matter, you can't use deflection tactics like this.
The primary WBEZ source editorialized, and Slate's analysis took it further, such that your one-sentence summary ends up factually incorrect. The direct quote offered by WBEZ:
> “You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that,” Bovino said. “It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location.
> “Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” he said to the reporter, a tall, middle-aged man of Anglo descent.
I disagree with such profiling, generally speaking, but as an objective matter of fact it is not being done "only on race/language". Also, it appears that these "Kavanaugh stops" involve possibly being taken in for questioning, but not any extended detainment.
Further, they did get a 6-3 SCOTUS decision permitting it — a decision that underscores that other factors are being used, not just "race/language". Specifically: "presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like" and "the type of work one does". This is affirmed later: "Plaintiffs’ standing theory is especially deficient in this case because immigration officers also use their experience to stop suspected illegal immigrants based on a variety of factors. So even if the Government had a policy of making stops based on the factors prohibited by the District Court, immigration officers might not rely only on those factors if and when they stop plaintiffs in the future."
If there is a serious problem, it will end in widespread lawsuits from legal immigrants unjustly detained, or on their behalf. If Fourth Amendment rights are being violated, the system allows for justice to be done. I am not denying this possibility. But as the concurrence notes (omitting references to precedent):
> To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the
United States... a lesser requirement than probable cause and “considerably short” of the preponderance of the evidence standard... [that] depends on the totality of the circumstances. Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs... that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of [them]... come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone
cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient
factors.
Someone else ITT proposed to me that ICE can't be held to account because the people in question "don't get court cases". Thanks for highlighting that they do, in fact.
Slate claims that Kavanaugh's "reasoning crumbled upon scrutiny", but there is nothing official about this — they're just linking some law professor's opinion on Substack. Slate doesn't do a great job of objective journalism in my experience; they routinely present opinion as fact like this.
The "Rhetoric from Trump" names two specific individuals as potentially funding terror groups, who are also known to fund the Democratic party. This is not the same as calling Democrats terrorists. Miller's rhetoric is precisely an example in 'the sense that there equally is rhetoric about "how republicans are fascists"' that I mentioned. It's him mouthing off on Hannity, not in an official government capacity. And the article doesn't even concretely show what it claims to be showing. It merely alludes to Hannity and Miller "... trying to paint the picture that all political violence occurring in the United States is the result of radical left-wingers incited by Democrats." Which again is not applying the label to Democrats broadly. The only hard evidence provided is linking to a tweet that has screencaps of other tweets from Miller — which are from during Biden's administration.
Off the top of my head, Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a judicial stay against exportation and the administration said his deportation was an error, but he spent weeks in an El Salvadoran prison. And there was the Korean battery factory workers in Georgia.
It is not semantics. They are not doing any such "targeting"; they are using this information among other factors, in a context where it objectively is rational to use that information, and it has already been found in court (hence "Kavanaugh Stops decision") that this is lawful. (Granted, this is only a stay against an injunction.) I gave details at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45581400 .
> An important part of the premise of "Don't Be a Sucker" is that the Hungarian storyteller is an American citizen who followed all the necessary legal processes to gain citizenship.
An important part missing from your argument is a comparison of how difficult it was to gain citizenship then and now.
No, nothing about the argument considers that comparison relevant. The claim includes a provision that nations are allowed to make the process easier or harder, according to their perceived needs and aims.
i'm fine with upholding laws, but secret police are bullshit. we have a serious problem with police accountability in the USA, they shouldn't be allowed to obscure their badge number and face, as that only encourages bad behavior.
