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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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A lot of people, when asked for example of when something happened, do not immediately reach for an example where there's no information available whether something happened or not, and present it as their example of something happening. Because if they do it, other people might conclude they really do not have any better examples.

since ICE hasn't commented at all on it

I guess this report from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/11/cannabis-farm-worker-in-california-dies-day-after-chaotic-federal-immigration-raid.html saying:

George Retes complied with federal officers when he arrived to check on friends and colleagues who might have been affected by the raids, but instead he was arrested on suspicion of assault, according to immigration officials.

is just my hallucination? Or they lied claiming immigration officials told him that? Why, in your opinion, CNBC would lie about something like that, and what is your source for accusing them of lying in this case? How do you know ICE hasn't actually commented even though CNBC claims they did?

That same article also claims "Immigration officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

At some point according to this paywalled CNN article, DHS (in the person of assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, not anyone from ICE) said the arrest was for "alleged assault".

So, the current theory is the DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin was lying and he wasn't actually arrested for suspicion of assault? Or you are ready to admin that your example has nothing to do with ICE errors and you are 0:2 as far as supporting your claims with evidence goes?

My theory is he was arrested because he was there and "suspicion of assault" was a post-facto invention to cover a bad arrest.

And no, regardless of this I am still right about Abrego Garcia; he was certainly initially deported to the wrong place.

There's a huge difference between somebody being a legal alien worker and being mistakenly deported as illegal and somebody being definitely an illegal with a final removal order who gets their lawyer to declare the entire Western hemisphere is itching to torture him, activist judges playing along because nobody can ever be deported no matter why, and ICE needing to find some country that is not on the list lawyers managed to push through. I mean, we have to follow the law, and that at times includes tolerating lawyer tricks that everybody knows are tricks, because that's the only way to make the process work at scale, but conflating these two situations is bullshit. There's nothing in common between Garcia - who is definitely illegal alien and no court doubts that - and some hypothetical situation where ICE thinks a legal alien or a citizen is illegal. These are two completely different things.