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Notes -
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 arresting of illegal immigrants bothers me not at all. And there is actually a point to making the arrests seem maximally scary, namely than illegal immigrants are not morons and are too numerous to deport all of them. But a scary deportation regime makes the act of illegally immigrating seem like a worse value proposition for those currently not in the US who are considering hopping the border, much as Biden's aggressively pro-immigrant stance made it seem like a good deal. Even if both administrations are actually deporting similar numbers they will have much different rates of new offenders.
All that said, I do not like the idea of the ICE agents being masked, it makes it too easy for bad actors to pretend to be cops. That erodes social trust in a way I find unnecessary and concerning. Their actual actions seem fine though.
I put this in my edit, but your comment stood out to me:
What are your thoughts on the selective pressure this will have for illegal immigrants? My first thoughts were that it would select for:
Probably a general success, then, because "economic migrant" is probably the lowest position on even the left's list of "immigrants who should move to the front of the line".
In this case I think "selecting for criminals and actual refugees" is 100% upside.
In the case of criminals, they were coming anyway under a more gentle/permissive structure. Some economic migrants are discouraged, some smaller number of criminals are also discouraged, but no one is being encouraged to come who wasn't coming before. So even if the population of illegals is worse, there is no new damage (new criminal migrants relative to status quo ante).
And a population of illegals which is all cartel members and actual refugees is much easier to police. Without a bunch of bogus asylum claims the legit ones are easier to work through, and without a large population of otherwise unobjectionable illegals for the really bad apples to blend into authorities can more easily find them and will not have as much pushback from liberals worried about the damage to the less objectionable population that no longer exists.
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