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Where is the shame, Americans? Where is the shame?
Background: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/20/ice-secretly-deported-grandfather (all bolding mine)
My first reaction after seeing this was a singular and complete WTF???. I do not see how it is possible to read this and go anything other than "Shame on you" at the American government, ICE in particular and also the American populace for acquiescing to this.
Note that this is not some drug dealer or gang lynchpin, this is 82 year old gramps, who is a retired leatherworker granted asylum fully under the rules who has been working in the USA for the last 40+ years and has raised a family in the country. Instead after losing his Green Card he gets summarily disappeared and put on a flight to Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection...
This is not the behaviour I would expect of a mature world power like the USA, this is more like what one would expect of Saudi Arabia, or actually no, at least the Saudis would at least have more respect for their elders. Instead what we see here is what happens when a modern secular polity jettisons the moral framework it took up as replacement for the laws of God and the ancient idea of noblesse oblige: we are left with a hollow shell; a massive cavity, ringing under the total emptiness of its own fundamental depravity.
The US supreme court has its own share of blame and shame to take here. Judicial Review is a fundamental check on the balance of power of any modern western government, as Americans with their whole "we have checks and balances" schick are wont to tell us. Instead some power tripping ICE worker two grades above the rank of janitor decided to act as judge, jury and executioner and sent a vulnerable 82 year old man off to a country with which he has no links whatsoever.
And what did the Supreme Court do? It approved this sort of behaviour from servants of the government just a few months earlier. Either this is direct malice from the court or the learned justices, sitting in that august hall (august by American standards, by our standards there is terraced housing within 5 minutes walk of me that is older), failed to consider the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions. Now I know what they say about Hanlon's Razor but even I will admit the people elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States aren't going to be incompetent...
In a civilized country like the UK, firstly something like this would never have happened as the man would have a right to argue against his deportation in front of a judge, so none of this "ambush deportation" would ever be possible. Furthermore, even if the deportation for some inexplicable reason happened without following any process the family of this old man would be able to bring a massive suit against the government which they would easily win if the government was foolish enough to not settle.
On top of this, in the UK they have a special class of damages called "Exemplary Damages" which are designed to punish the perpetrator instead of compensating the victim. Exemplary damages are very very rarely available under UK law, but one of the very few exceptions is "arbitrary and oppressive conduct by a servant of the government". In a mature democracy like the UK the government recognizes that it has more power, and therefore more responsibility, than a private entity in the same situation, and so opens itself to an additional type of liability when it makes a big mistake compared to a private company that does something equally as grave.
Instead in the USA we have the opposite situation where the government, with the tacit support of the judiciary, has cloaked itself with additional protections under the guise of "Sovereign Immunity" that mean it can behave in a malicious way and not leave itself liable to damages. The US talks the talk on how it has punitive damages which keeps big bad actors in line so they don't mistreat the little man but then you can take one look at its convoluted and extremely adversarial judicial system and realize instantly just how difficult it is for ordinary people to not get worn down in a war of attrition long before any final hearing.
The UK handles things so so much better here. The judge in the UK isn't a neutral umpire but they have their own duty to the court to ensure that cases are handled fairly and efficiently, the more inquisitorial nature of our legal system means that playing procedural games is frowned upon and both parties are incentivised to stay honest lest they piss off the judge, who has a certain amount of leeway available to them to help out the little man if necessary.
All in all as I learn more about the Law as it is in both the UK, other systems like European Civil Law and the US, I am slowly being drawn to the inescapable conclusion that the American legal system, for all its grandiose self professed claims, is a steaming pile of shit. And no, I'm not basing my conclusion here solely on modern jurisprudence, but also looking at old Supreme Court cases like Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co. where the court, in its infinite wisdom, decided 8-1 that refusing a job offer for a non-security sensitive role to a Mexican national who was a US green card holder with full working rights in the US just because they are technically not a citizen does not count as discrimination based on national origin...
And what may be the worst part of this sordid affair may not even be the ambush deportation, but the utter and total lack of class displayed in falsely telling the family that that their patriarch had died... I mean have some basic respect... The chain of failures and completely absolute misjudgment by multiple different individuals without somebody interjecting somewhere that what they are doing isn't right which must have happened for such a call to ever be made in the first place speaks volumes about the American psyche...
In a way this really goes to show us that the US, for all its wealth, is still a young country: it is still new money, in the worst possible sense of the word. I think the great LKY put it far far better than I ever could talking about the true character of Americans (n.b. I'd say that if you watch just one video today, this should be near the top of your list, it's only 3 minutes long and well worth the time as it shows one of the great men of the 20th century diagnosing the American malaise with effortless precision).
Perhaps after the end of Trump, the USA will be in a position where it can apply for readmission to the human race...
I suppose it depends on who you believe: the fellow's family, or the Guatemalan government
So! If your story as presented is full and true... it's absolutely god-awful, a horrible overreach, and there should be some sort of massive legal reaction against the levers of power that made it happen. If not... well, it's yet one more reason why I find it difficult to get worked up when I'm told about a horrible news story with political implications, especially a breaking one.
Honestly, this makes me think it is more likely to have happened - and there is some kind of mistaken identity at the source. Some guy messed up his own DOB or something (maybe he didn't have a known DOB, picked one when coming into the country, picked another one that was more significant later and didn't remember the one he used on his paperwork, IDK.) Maybe the government mixed up the files.
My prior is that people typically don't outright lie but rather twist the truth. It's a heck of a story to make up whole cloth. Stranger things have happened, so I wouldn't be too put out if it turned out to be someone's imaginary Grandpa. But Bureaucratic mistake seems more likely to me.
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Interesting. Lets wait and see where things settle down. But honestly, the fact that such a story is even believable speaks volumes about the situation on the ground, five years ago this story would have been seen as too absurd for The Onion.
You're trying too hard, obvious bait is obvious.
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Please put this juvenile argument to bed, permanently. If something didn't happen, the fact that it could have is irrelevant.
To be the devil's advocate here, that's not true in practice. Drunk driving without killing someone is punished because it could have lead to someone dying as a consequence, or at least severely increased the risk of an adverse outcome.
I phrased it poorly. What I mean is, if Alice is accused of having done something bad, and then it's conclusively demonstrated that she didn't do it, the fact that Bob thinks the accusation against her was "plausible" is irrelevant.
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It's plausible, and I'll reserve judgement before making any specific assessments, but I'll point out some red flags beyond the Guatemalan denial:
What, exactly, is this claim? Was she arrested or detained for ten hours? Is she a citizen, and that's the only reason she wasn't deported herself? If she's a non-citizen, did they attempt to deport her? Those things are all possible, but the sentence would also be technically honest if she just didn't have a ride home.
This is some incredibly precise phrasing. No one knows the first date this woman called, and the Guardian doesn't know what the claims were? Other sources say this was probably somewhere around 6/23ish, but don't expand on the claims. Three weeks ago, she called again, gave the family false information, and then no one knows her name or even if she's actually an immigration lawyer?
More critically, while Guatemala is one of the countries that has agreed to receive third-country deporations (albeit not of people from Chile), it is not a country that has (or is known to have) received Alien Enemies Act deportations. The time period from 6/20 to 7/3, the claimed range, was after both AARP v. Trump and Trump vs. JGG, which clearly established AEA deportations still had judicial review. And neither the Guardian nor other media I can find say he was deported under the AEA. Indeed, it's not clear how many, if any, LPRs have been deported under the AEA.
Any other deportation would require a (admittedly waiveable) hearing with an administrative law judge. It's possible that the Trump administration just fucked things up, or that the immigration judge involved was just rubber-stamping papers. Or for a more borderline (or scissory) example his LPR was revoked; unlike naturalization, green cards can be revoked for a pretty wide variety of reasons, some serious and some less so. But few of these answers give a result compatible with "Instead some power tripping ICE worker two grades above the rank of janitor decided to act as judge, jury and executioner and sent a vulnerable 82 year old man off to a country with which he has no links whatsoever."
And some of that other reporting gives other reasons to put your antenna up:
Perhaps that's just a reasonable reaction to what could well have been an extremely traumatic experience. Perhaps.
AAAAAH.
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"The fact that I would believe bad things about my enemies proves they're bad" is an UR example of a horrendously bad faith argument. This post was more worthy of a ban than the original.
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I remeber people saying the same thing about Juicy Smolliet.
I didn't. Smollett's story had more red flags than the Chinese Parliament. This one at least has the chance of being a series of bureaucratic fuckups -- those are a lot more common on the ground than MAGA fans of Empire who carry around bleach and a noose in a Chicago winter.
Oh, don't misunderstand me. I was being rather suggestive with that post, pointing out that "the fact that I COULD believe it" is really, really terrible guidepost.
I didnt believe Jussie either - my only failing being the extent of my disbelief not going far enough. I was prepared to say drug deal/prostitution gone wrong. Performative self-lynching wasn't on the menu.
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I'll be honest with you, that's one of my least favorite arguments, and says more about the sayer than the situation. "The fact that I'm able to believe something terrible about my outgroup, even if false, is just another indication about how bad they are!" It's tiresome whether it's the Left, the Right, the Orange, the Purple, the Monarchists, or the Revolutionaries. "I may be wrong about this" should be cause for self-reflection about other cases where oneself may be wrong--"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken"--not as an excuse to double-down against the group being unfairly maligned.
After all, if my hunch/info turns out to be incorrect, and the situation as originally presented was 100% truthful, would you say to me (with sincerity) "That's alright: the fact that you considered it believable that the news might be misrepresenting the situation or jumping the gun speaks volumes about how terrible and inaccurate the reporting usually is on these things?"
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No, it wouldn't be, and that's the point. I've cited some examples of the Obama administration deporting U.S. citizens.
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