> Because I have a kid to take care of. A job I need to keep, and a way of life I'd like to maintain.
Exactly, so why not go out on the streets and actually defend those things then? Currently your (presumed) inaction will cause those to be harmed, you're not "saving those" by saying and doing nothing, you're effectively giving them away if you don't actively protect them.
Because actually defending those things requires violence and I shy away from that. Sitting on the sidelines and protesting doesn't do a damn thing. It just makes the maga people laugh harder. Case in point: our own president sharing an AI video of himself wearing a crown and dumping feces on protestors.
Fair, avoiding violence is usually not the way to go, so fair point.
Protesting does do something though, the very least showing other people a direction to go in, to at least show something. It's hard to argue it does nothing, because images and videos do end up on social media and the news, and you really need the rest of the population on your side, if you actually want to change stuff.
You know what actually doesn't do a damn thing? Not doing a damn thing. Literally anything is better than nothing, just showing support is better than nothing. Talking about it is better than nothing.
> You know what actually doesn't do a damn thing? Not doing a damn thing. Literally anything is better than nothing, just showing support is better than nothing. Talking about it is better than nothing.
That's fair. And I'm talking about it right now and everywhere else I can in safe ways.
As far as protesting goes, I agree with you. It is better than nothing. It does help show people they're not alone. But as I said mentioned, this isn't happening where I live. It would literally take me days to travel to Milwaukee or another hotbed. Some people are stronger than me and take time off and make other sacrifices to attend rallies, and I admire those people, but it's not feasible for me. Or I suppose a more truthful way of saying it is it's not worth it for me because of the sacrifices I'd have to make just for the chance of getting hurt or being added to a list.
If nothing else, thank you for sharing your honest perspective, I appreciate it :)
> Or I suppose a more truthful way of saying it is it's not worth it for me because of the sacrifices I'd have to make just for the chance of getting hurt or being added to a list.
It's really sad to hear that the chilling effect is working so effectively. I of course understand why you make the choice you make, that's not strange, but that they managed to turn your society into this is nothing but sad to hear.
going to small protests has done a lot of good for my ability to regulate. Being involved with a cadre of street medics has made me feel a little less crazy.
It's nice to get off line and into the streets- the reasons are terrifying but it feels better to be with my friends in the road than to be at home fretting about stuff and writing dumb HN responses :D
What physical government oppression have I missed now? I'm not trying to claim Spain is perfect, because it really isn't, especially considering "freedom of speech" (depending on your perspective of it) and some other things Americans might take for granted.
But I'd say that usually when there are large issues impacting large parts of the population, then you can be pretty sure that there will be country-wide protests against it, many times with smaller violent elements, because people here make their opinions and feelings known.
My point is that what Americans face here is a collective action problem, which is no different than many of the problems facing Spain. While you might go out and protest, there are other collective action problems you're not solving today, even though you could if you took action as a group.
ICE is going door to door in some neighborhoods looking for non white people. US citizens have been arrested and detained, sometimes violently, and then released with no charges. So yes, our way of life is being threatened.
Here is an example of ICE invading a home without a warrant, reported by Fox. [0] That is definitely against our way of life.
Your list of crimes is just as prevalent in white people. Statistically immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born citizens. Undocumented immigrants commit even fewer violent crimes [1]. So if we're doing house to house searches for criminals we should start with citizens.
Illegal aliens are shown to commit more crimes than citizens when time is given to determine immigration status. [1]
> Studies purporting to show low illegal immigrant crime rates in Texas fail to account for the fact that illegal immigrants are not always identified immediately upon arrest. In many cases, illegal immigrants are identified only after they are imprisoned. Given sufficient time for data collection, it appears that illegal immigrants have above average conviction rates for homicide and sexual assault, while they have lower rates for robbery and drugs.
There is also the question of how many illegal aliens actually exist in the US, which severely complicates calculation of rates for their population.
Your pdf is a repost of the exact study (Light) cited here as being flawed.
Does not matter one bit. Law enforcement may not break down doors without a warrant except in limited cases. This was not one of them. They violated the constitution and our way of life.
> Legal ones...
I'm guessing you didn't read the cite. It clearly shows that undocumented immigrants commit significantly less crime. Once you read it I'd be interested to know if it changes your opinion at all.
The majority of illegal immigrants did commit a crime by virtue of being illegals, violating 8 U.S.C. 1325, so the crime-rate for illegals is certainly higher than non-immigrants right out of the gate.
For the less-than-half who have “only” committed civil immigration violations, the point still remains that they are here illegally and are subject to civil immigration proceedings.
I’m unfamiliar with the details of the door knocking case, but I’ll defer to the courts on it. More broadly, plenty of citizens have had their fourth amendment rights violated, petitioned the court for redress, and received it - that doesn’t mean we stop enforcing traffic laws, drug laws, or disband the local police.
Naturalization: not mentioned in my thread that I can see, but just like parole, TPS, and other immigration proceedings, it’s only permanent when it’s permanent.
“if we wanted to reduce crime, we'd go after citizens first”: Yes, I agree! Let’s fund the police and prosecutors, reinstate requirements to post bail for crimes, and enforce our existing laws, even for things like shoplifting, drug possession, and panhandling.
Constitutional limits don’t depend on innocence. Even if the target is removable, warrantless home entry is still a Fourth Amendment problem absent consent/exigent circumstances. Payton v. New York is the baseline: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/445/573/
“If you’re not an illegal alien you’re fine” isn’t how real enforcement works. Mistaken identity and broad neighborhood sweeps predictably hit citizens/legal residents, especially when decisions are made off appearance/location.
The “crime-rate is higher out of the gate” line is definitional sleight-of-hand. Not all undocumented people violated 8 U.S.C. §1325 (improper entry). Many are overstays, and unlawful presence itself is generally a civil violation, not a criminal conviction category comparable to assault/theft. §1325 text: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325
You can support immigration enforcement and still insist it be done with judicial warrants/consent and without turning civil status issues into “crime stats” rhetoric.
Just because it's happened before we don't have to put up with it. The door to door searches must stop. It is clearly a constitutional violation.
Since you like to defer to the courts, I assume you believe it wrong that the government shipped people like Kilmar Garcia to an El Salvador prison without any court being involved?
> Naturalization:
Sorry, I got threads mixed up. In Boston, ICE canceled a ceremony minutes before immigrants were to be sworn in as US citizens. You don't have a problem with this?
That study is yet another that fails to account for the fact that immigration status is not known immediately upon arrest.
> Studies purporting to show low illegal immigrant crime rates in Texas fail to account for the fact that illegal immigrants are not always identified immediately upon arrest. In many cases, illegal immigrants are identified only after they are imprisoned. Given sufficient time for data collection, it appears that illegal immigrants have above average conviction rates for homicide and sexual assault, while they have lower rates for robbery and drugs. [1]
There is also the question of how many illegal aliens actually exist in the US, which severely complicates calculation of rates for their population.
“Simply incorrect” overstates what your CIS link shows.
Yes, status isn’t always known at arrest, and time-lag/unknown-status classification is a real measurement issue. But that’s not a demonstration that the cited studies are false; it's a methodological dispute about how Texas data should be interpreted.
Even CIS effectively concedes the key limitation: “any crime” conviction rates aren’t meaningful under their own description because identification is biased toward longer prison terms/serious offenses. That means their approach can’t legitimately be used as a general claim that “undocumented commit more crime.”
The Cato author rebutted that article, and he and CIS traded rebuttals until this post, where the Cato author backs his point up with copious FOIA data. There seems to have been no further follow-up, so this could be the last word on that particular exchange:
"Is the argument that Minnesota isn’t emblematic of those issues or that those issues can’t be investigated because a “non white” community is involved with it?"
The issue is that you can’t randomly break down citizen’s doors without a warrant. Minnesota is only targeted because some rightwing TikTok asshole decided to """investigate""" daycare fraud and they wouldn’t let a creepy rando into their facilities for some reason.
"As for citizens being detained, interfering with and obstructing a law enforcement operation will get you detained, whether it’s ICE, FBI, or your local cop on a traffic stop."
> Are any of those things threatened and need defending?
If you don't think authoritarianism or fascism actually has a way of harming those things, then no, I guess not.
I think for most people who had to learn about these things in school growing up, for like 7 years or something, together with grandparents who experienced these things for themselves, it's pretty clear what's happening, but without actually having that perspective, I could understand it feels like "What is everyone so upset about? Doesn't seem so bad".
It’s a disservice to the horrors of the Holocaust to implicitly compare returning Mexican nationals to Mexico, Somalis to Somalia, or hell, even Venezuelans to El Salvador with sending box cars of people to death camps.
The US has had and enforced immigration laws for decades, with Obama alone deporting 3 million people.
What aspect of Trump doing it is uniquely fascist/authoritarian?
You do yourself a disservice by having a storybook version of the Holocaust in your head. It did not start with gassing and boxcars of people. Relative to how things turned out, the victims were treated quite "humanely" at first. The problem is that they were completely dehumanized, which made mass murder the "obvious" choice once resources and logistics started to get strained.
There was a recent story that described cramped jail cells full of dozens of wailing and weeping detainees while ICE agents nearby were laughing. We’re seeing dehumanization happen here at an alarming pace. And already, the administration seemed to relish sending noncriminal migrants to foreign torture/rape camps for essentially a life sentence. The components are all there for a repeat of the recent past. Will they coalesce? What’s going to stop them?
Remember: most Nazis were not gleeful, cackling sadists. They were normal-ass bureaucrats who'd been conditioned to see their victims as non-human.
> What aspect of Trump doing it is uniquely fascist/authoritarian?
Short non-extensive list:
Has enforcement been explicitly prioritized based on political control of areas? Yes, senior directives and public statements emphasized prioritizing deportations in Democratic-led cities.
Suppression of lawful civic activity? Yes, crowd-control force was repeatedly used against protesters, media, and observers near ICE facilities.
Have officials labeled resistance or disputed encounters as "terrorism"? Yes, senior DHS leadership publicly used "domestic terrorism" language in contested use-of-force cases.
Are there credible reports of physical or sexual abuse? Yes, civil-rights groups report detailed allegations at detention facilities
Are raids conducted with armored vehicles, masks, and heavily armed teams as standard practice? Yes, reporting documents armored vehicles, masked agents, and surge-style operations.
Have internal watchdogs or ombuds offices been dismantled or defanged? Yes, DHS eliminated or reduced multiple civil-rights and detention-oversight offices.
Has ICE expanded use of spyware, location tracking, or similar tools? Yes, contracts for advanced spyware and surveillance capabilities were activated and expanded.
Is enforcement content coordinated to generate viral political narratives? Yes, internal messages show coordination to amplify arrests and raids for public impact.
Is ICE currently exhibiting multiple indicators of a political-police / coercive-repression trajectory? Yes, politicized targeting, coercive force, anonymity, weakened oversight, surveillance expansion, political messaging.
Would you like me to go on? I have a couple of more, but I don't want to spam.
Do Americans not learn about fascism and authoritarianism in school when you grow up? Together with what to watch out for and more? Because it seems really obvious for us who did have that upbringing.
> Do Americans not learn about fascism and authoritarianism in school when you grow up?
Like, in historical names and dates, sure.
In terms of process, signs, and systemic issues? Not really, even before the recent push in many parts of the country to make the curriculum even more friendly to, particularly, white nationalist authoritarianism, historical and more current.
>Has enforcement been explicitly prioritized based on political control of areas? Yes, senior directives and public statements emphasized prioritizing deportations in Democratic-led cities.
Florida, Texas, and others use local law enforcement to enforce immigration detainers and cooperate with federal enforcement. Makes sense to go where the problems are.
>Suppression of lawful civic activity? Yes, crowd-control force was repeatedly used against protesters, media, and observers near ICE facilities.
Crowd control is used against riots and unlawful assemblies frequently: see G8 summits, Seattle May Day, Ferguson, and any time a sports ball team loses a contentious game in LA.
>Have officials labeled resistance or disputed encounters as "terrorism"? Yes, senior DHS leadership publicly used "domestic terrorism" language in contested use-of-force cases.
And? Homeland calling an assault on an officer terrorism is hardly surprising, and is still less weird than the idea that using the wrong pronouns is a hate crime.
> Are raids conducted with armored vehicles, masks, and heavily armed teams as standard practice? Yes, reporting documents armored vehicles, masked agents, and surge-style operations.
So when Clinton’s BP raided Elian Gonzalez, it was fine because it wasn’t Trump? Remember, the question was “what is Trump doing that is unique”.
> Has ICE expanded use of spyware, location tracking, or similar tools? Yes, contracts for advanced spyware and surveillance capabilities were activated and expanded.
Domestic spying by the federal government has been a thing for 100 years. Again, we’re talking unique.
> Is enforcement content coordinated to generate viral political narratives? Yes, internal messages show coordination to amplify arrests and raids for public impact.
Every task force, raid, and “crackdown” by law enforcement, even down to an organized enforcement against DUI, is intended to create that perception.
Do non-Americans not learn that the federal government has engaged in this conduct for 100 years?
We’ve enforce immigration laws, policed our populace, and had to balance 1st/4th amendment rights against the interest of a functioning state for a long time.
> So when Clinton’s BP raided Elian Gonzalez
That followed a court order. And many people were very upset about it.
>We’ve enforce immigration laws, policed our populace, and had to balance 1st/4th amendment rights against the interest of a functioning state for a long time.
Nothing on this scale since the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII. And even that did not involve (AFAIK) the mass disappearances and torture of thousands of people.
>Nothing on this scale since the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII
Obama removed more people than Trump. Clinton removed and returned more people than any president. Crazy the world didn’t end in the 90s or 2010s, huh?
Because he didn't have agents cosplaying military operations. They blended in and calmly and quietly did their jobs/work. Many of these ICE agaents are undertrained, under vetted, and unprofessional.
So you don't do anything because you have a job you need to keep and a kid to take care of, but you're perfectly okay with moving to a completely different country on short notice?
The US, for better or worse, isn't a cohesive country of people interested in a collective, but a smash and grab of economic gains sourced from those who are forced to live in it and cannot flee to developed countries. You come to it, or stay in it, to make more income you would in developed countries at the detriment of everyone else.
Whether you believe the economic human factory farm that is the US is worth saving or preserving will be a function of your lived experience and mental model. "What are you optimizing for?"
Yes because one of those can get my face smashed in by a baton. Moving is a far safer option for my family.
Call it selfish if you want (hell, I'd even agree with you) but my priority is my family and my life. This idea that I have to care about "my country" is patriotic BS pounded into us to make it more likely to join the army.
I care about people but I don't give a fuck about my country. It's just a place to live. If it gets too bad I'll move my family elsewhere.
Also, this whole checks and balances thing we learned about in school will surely kick in sometime soon...