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General poll of opinions here, since I don't see much conversation about it - either because of news bubbles or general disinterest in discussing the ugly side of authoritarianism.
Main query: Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?
Genuinely, I don't have a steelman for blackbagging tactics. Right now, ICE is targeting a certain type of "undesirable", namely, allegedly undocumented illegal immigrants, and appear to have carte blanche to apprehend anyone who disrupts that process. But the hallmark of authoritarianism is to expand the definition of "undesirable" to include your political opponents - and if blackbagging undesirables is already palatable, then you can blackbag your political opponents. It's a matter of convenience that political enemies are already attempting to disrupt the blackbagging of undocumented illegal immigrants - it makes that leap that much easier were it to happen. How convenient as well that there's now an entire organizational apparatus gaining valuable experience in how to make people disappear on US soil? They may look like mall cops who are dressed for the paintball arena for now, but if they happened to get any of that DoD money...
Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design, as a flex of the unitary executive theory that the judiciary exists only to serve the will of the executive. The judiciary is viewed as uncooperative and painted as obstructive, despite being intentionally hamstrung by the right wing of congress that has refused for several presidential terms to pass any immigration reform despite bipartisan efforts. One doesn't have to look very hard at all to find red tribe voices foaming at the mouth to declare enemies of the state: official mouthpieces of the current administration, senators, congresspeople. History rhymes, and I know enough of the current admin has read Carl Schmitt to recognize the paths that are available to them at this point if they happen to be hungry for power.
Ending query: Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that? History buffs, what are the best examples of countries barely recovering from the brink of authoritarianism?
Edit: I appreciate the responses, there was actually quite a bit of variety which was nice to read. I came away with a steelman (which I didn't have originally) which is that the theatrics of ICE is meant to intimidate illegal immigrants. In effect, it would seem like that would select for immigrants who are reckless and fearless (yikes), or immigrants who face such extreme danger in their home country that even Twitter videos of brown people being tackled by men in masks doesn't slow them down (these desperate people would probably be considered "authentic" refugees by most leftists, and not just "economic migrants").
The deportation LARPing events are stupid wastes of political capital meant to appease fools like Catturd that want to watch a few dozen immigrants be manhandled by armored goonsquads on Twitter and Fox News. This is the type of crap that made Dems freak out when they won the presidency and do defacto open borders via loophole. With the current bent now the public will have even more reasons to associate any enforcement of immigration laws with authoritarianism. It's just a dumb, unforced error by Republicans who are listening to their sectarian cheerleaders instead of trying to be strategic with their approach.
If MAGA actually wanted to deal with immigration, they'd first take the R trifecta and pass comprehensive immigration reform like the old Lankford bill, but an even tougher version. Close the loopholes and make it harder for Dem presidents to not enforce the law. Have more of their executive orders get shredded in the courts like DAPA did during Obama's tenure, and like a lot of Trump's EOs always do. This at least does something to prevent the problem from getting worse, and is the lowest rung on the totem pole in terms of political capital required.
Then, if Republicans want to remove the illegals already here, go after the employers that hire them. Break the incentive structure that acts as a magnet to illegal immigrants in the first place. This will cause economic pain and will take a lot more political capital, but is better than hurling immigrants out one-by-one. Note that I don't really think this is actually a good idea, at least for throwing out the entire illegal population as there are a lot of jobs Americans genuinely don't want to do for illegal-tier prices. I'd go after some of the legal immigrants instead, mainly the H1B scourge that's drenched in fraud and that's actually hurting the employment prospects of Americans for good jobs.
Here we go again with cheerleading Biden's poison pilled bill for the millionth time. Sure, maybe we need some kind of immigration bill, but that one wasn't it, it's dead, and maybe you can just stop talking about it.
Many posters here have brought up legitimate concerns with the old bill, which you have ignored every time. Amd every chance you get you want to shill that bill like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Like all those arguments about it never happened.
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You are misinformed, the MAGA/Tea-Party Right isn't looking to change existing law, they're looking to enforce the existing laws.
Trying to "make it harder for Dem presidents to not enforce the law" by changing the law is charitably a fool's errand, and less charitably completely asinine. What is supposed to stop a future Democratic president from just not enforcing the law against not enforcing the law?
No, the real way you make it harder for Democratic presidents to not enforce the law is by setting the precedent now that such behavior will come with harsh consequences.
I don't see how "consequences" is the right model here. The current administration (and future ones with the same goal) would enforce immigration law regardless of what Democrats do in power.
Unless harsh consequences is actually a thought experiment/answering the question? Do you have any ideas for harsh consequences?
The harsh consequences are the terror, pain, and distress of the deportation process, ideally aggravated as much as possible by willful right-wing executives. This is what I referred to in my other post as the "psychic wound" -- make being an illegal in the US as traumatic as possible, and many of them will self-deport, while others, not yet in the US, will be scared of the danger and not come at all.
There is no meaningful way for the state to bind its descendants. Laws can be changed or ignored. Personnel will change. Short of a constitutional amendment -- which ain't happening, and even if it did, could theoretically happen again after that to undo it -- there is no way to stop the next admin from fucking everything you did up.
So solutions must be outside the usual bounds of law and state capacity. The solution is to create something that outlasts any one administration. Memories of horror and pain are one such option -- generational wounds, enduring long after Trump's out of office and the next Democrat is once again promising infinity immigration with no brakes and permanent amnesty.
Or maybe administrations should not try to bind their successors by extralegal means, because the fact that it is difficult is a feature not a bug.
I don't agree that the Trump administration is engaged in unusual thuggishness, but whether they are or they aren't, they shouldn't.
I agree, it'd be great if they didn't. Unfortunately, we've had multiple administrations fill the nation with illegals, who contribute to the electoral power of the very administrations that do this, and they then dodge (with help) the legal means of deporting them.
It'd be lovely if I could make Democrats stop, but I can't. So instead, I'm going for the fixes that are actually possible.
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I don't think this is possible, either in principle or in practice. The president has wide discretion not to enforce laws for a variety of reasons. And federal judges, who are routinely blue tribe even when right-leaning, will mostly be looking for reasons to allow a Democratic or neocon Republican president to skip out on his side of the bargain.
We've tried things like this before, and the pro-illegal-immigration factions have successfully defected at the first opportunity. I don't see any reason for optimism that the compromise will be honored in an even more divided country.
They have wide discretion because most of the INA is subject to "may" clauses instead of "shall" clauses right now. Also, R's are looking to have a durable advantage on court appointments due to Dem weakness in the Senate. The idea that R's auto-lose every court case is just not correct.
What things have we tried like this before? And why are you talking about a compromise? R's have a trifecta, and immigration is an animating issue, AND Dems are (or were, before the deportation nonsense started) on the back foot on this topic in public opinion. This would be a diktat, not a negotiation.
You would think so, but it seems that Rs are not as "good" at picking judges as Ds. Taking SCOTUS, from the lens of pure partisan power politics, the Ds have appointed 3 judges, the Rs 6. The Ds judges vote together, at higher rates. The Rs judges are split. 3 vote together, at high but less high rates as the Ds vote. Then there are 3 more moderate, more swing votes from the Rs. So the Ds are great at picking judges that advance the cause, the Rs have a mixed bag.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188
I can't find the graph, but lower court judge appointments follow this as well. Ds overwhelmingly go for liberal judges, Rs were pretty evenly split. A lot likely due to Rs having lower capacity to draw from though is my guess.
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If you want to strictly go into the weeds, a Dem president could probably "legally" just choose not to patrol 90% of the border and just send the agents to sit around somewhere else.
And I bet if that was the only way to let illegals in, they would do it.
Sounds like a great way for them to get smoked in elections
Biden did something similar, and he did get smoked in the election. Doesn't seem like any Democrats learned any lesson from that except do it even harder next time.
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And this guy has been told, repeatedly, that the very specific law he claims has "may" clauses had "shall" clauses, already; that there was a massive court case over it, and it didn't do jack or shit.
Forget it, Hieronymus. It's Ben__Garrison.
I never seen somoeone get under your skin quite so much.
I understand the frustration, but you don't need the explicit hostility to make your point. Even if your every word was coated in pure sugar, it would be hard not to reach the same conclusion as you did.
The Antipopulist is literally the nerd emoji who goes around saying, 'if we replace all the MAY with SHALL, that TOTALLY restores the legitimacy of the system. This won't be worked around by motivated reasoning! The open-borders advocates will take their ball and go home and the government will enforce the laws as intended!'
I refuse to accept it, on this face, to believe that someone could be stupid enough to argue this. Or that he would believe us stupid enough to believe it. It is totally pedantic, almost surreal. This will not happen. It has never happened. No one has given up on a cause because of the wording of a law. And all of it is a moot point, because, and let me shout it loud so that the people in the back can hear...
IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW WELL A LAW IS WRITTEN IF THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF ENFORCING IT DECLINE TO DO SO.
OBVIOUSLY.
The hostility is deserved.
Yes, I know. My point is that Gattsuru can, and does, show that irrespective of the hostility he exhibits, and therefore the hostility is unnecessary, and only drags the quality of the discourse down.
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