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That is a fully general counterargument. Quite frankly, if you do not like to read opinions on culture war topics by people who may in fact not be 100% neutral observers, The Motte might not be for you.
If you bother to click on the substack link, you will find that Unikowsky did for example link the court document detailing the procedure.
Sure, not every claim is backed up by evidence of that level. But if your suspicion is that detainees were generally verbally advised to get their lawyer to file a habeas petition and inform ICE of their intend to file, it is up to you to write or link an effort-post detailing how in the time period in question, tons of immigrants served with AEA 21-B filed a habeas petition, with links to their cases and everything.
From my own priors, I think that the story as presented -- the Trump administration engaging in malicious compliance to get a few more immigrants out of the country before the courts stop them -- would not be very surprising.
Who says I do not like to read opinions on culture war topics by non-neutral observers?
Fortunately, the counter-argument is not fully generalizable. It can be countered by providing an introduction of a source, characterizing the source regardless of its level of bias.
And if the OP (sockpuppet) had bothered to introduce their argument, no one would be expected to conduct their own internet archeology to find it. I have a similarly dim view of people who link to long youtube videos for supporting context in lieu of their own arguments.
As a matter of practice- both in terms of advancing an argument and as as a framing device when introducing someone else for an argument- it is incumbent on the opener to provide some level of contextual justification for the audience as to why. This is particularly relevant if the opener is going to outsource their argument to someone else.
If OP's argument is going to be based on Unikowsky's views, then it will behoove the OP to justify why Unikowsky's views are significant.
My suspicion is that the the OP is making a broader culture war argument by selecting a take they agree with, but do not want to make themself, and so are attempting to smuggle in an insinuation of authoritative neutrality by presenting someone without characterization to make the argument by proxy, even if that person is more biased then the OP might care to admit and would undermine their opening position.
I base this suspicion in part by how the OP introduces Unikowsky to make an argument about deportation process, but then concludes with an appeal to HL Menken on the nature of resisting oppression. This is not Unikowski's position from the position of what is cited, but it is the conclusion that the OP cares to focus on using Unikowski as the buildup.
This suggests the OP is conducting a bait-and-switch argument, using Unikowksy's position as the opening bait (neutral observer on deportation process) for the concluding switch (deportation is a part of Trumpian oppression that must be resisted).
The way to test a bait-and-switch argument is to challenge the presenter to justify the bait.
Neither would I, but this in and of itself is not a reason to trust / care about the views of Unikowsky, absent further argument about why Unikowsky's framings should be believed or cared about.
It looks like we both agree that if Unikowsky had posted his article directly on the motte under a new user account, that would have been fine.
What we disagree on is how much introduction should be required when a motte user quotes a source. My position is that as I am already reading takes from random persons on the internet, if a source is not contextualized (or I do not trust the poster's contextualization of the source), I will simply treat it with the same level of skepticism I would have for a new motte poster.
Total agreement here. They are the worst.
(Second worst are links directly to twitter threads, which depending on how Musk is feeling might only show me the first tweet and tell me to create an account.)
I browsed a bit through the substack, and it seems that at least 50% of the articles are Trump/CW related (and generally Democrat-leaning), 10% are about LLMs in judicial processes, with some other legal topics being sprinkled in here and there. The main difference is that while @sockpuppet2 with his Mecken quote points out that the deportees deserve due process even if they are as guilty as sin, the substack focuses more on the fact that many of them might not actually be Tren de Aragua, but simply people with unrelated tattoos.
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