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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29670 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.

This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.

There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.

This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.

Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.

Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!

I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.

it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war

Trump brought this on himself.

There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty. Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint has horrible optics. There are documented cases of people being deported to random nations, a few people have been disappeared (from public tracking, limiting a family's visibility into where a loved one is) and there's a general allergy to due process. Horrible optics.

"Cruelty is the point". I didn't believe it during Trump 1. For Trump 2, I believe it.

Here are the 'job requirements' for a deportation officer. Literally randos. (I retract my statement, I was wrong here)

  • U.S. citizenship
  • Have a valid driver's license
  • Be eligible to carry a firearm

There is reason that police & military training take time. Using a gun for law enforcement is a heavy responsibility. ICE is picking untrained civilians, giving them guns and asking them to go be bounty hunters.

Democrats are justified in believing that this will select for bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else. Given that most illegal immigrants are brown, I can see why democrats would believe that the average ICE agent is a raging racist too.

If Democrats believe what they claim to believe, then their actions are in line with those values. ICE agents look like an angry paramilitary that a dictator would deploy against his populace. People believe what they see. Democrats are cherry picking, but the cherry picked images are still real images.

Democratic response as what it is - basically outright treason against the U.S. federal gov

It may be treason. It may not. An accusation must be validated by a supposedly neutral arbiter. In your characterization, when the state oversteps its powers to oppose the federal govt, it is treason.

Now, both parties have operated in a maximally oppositional manner since Obama was elected. The adversarial nature has only gotten further amplified with every subsequent President. Given the way laws are written, both parties fight it out in the massive grey area between words. States vs Federal tussles are the most common form of inter-party warfare. This is business as usual. The system leaves it to Courts to decide what the bounds of this grey area are.

As with all accusations in the US, until the supreme courts weighs in, it isn't formally treason. Given that no one have been convicted of Treason since WW2, I think you're being hyperbolic.

I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.

I'm confused. Trump is consistently the first one to raise the temperature and to lower the bar for acceptable discourse. I don't want to sound like a kid. But, he started it. Only now, the democrats are responding.

Trump is the President and central figure to America's current polarization. If there is a civil war, it will be because of him. As the one in power, the onus is on Trump to reduce the temperature.

There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty.

Give me the power of mainstream media, and I can portray a "free school lunch" program as having the optics with the greatest cruelty. Like why, after everything that we discussed here overe the years, should anyone, including left-wingers, take any of these declarations seriously?

These two statements:

The left-leaning media will paint Republican efforts in the most negative light

and

Trump wants ICE to be seen as a force to be feared

are not incompatible. The first is true, but doesn't actually dismiss whether the second is true or not.

And as to this second point, Trump is currently the guy who frames illegal immigration as an invasion, pays for illegal immigrants to be sent directly to a foreign jail without trial as gang members despite having no criminal record even close to gang membership and suggests sending Americans there, and sends the National Guard to progressive cities.

Trump's entire shtick is portraying everything as war and himself as champion. He wants that image and uses the media's attempts to smear him as fuel for it.

Was it the mainstream media that put up videos of ICE enforcement with silly music in the background, or was that the administration itself?

Was it the mainstream media, or the administration itself that decided ICE officers should be masked and incognito, while performing arrests unlike law enforcement officials?

Was it the mainstream media or the administration itself that declared that violence commited against ICE was a direct result of Democrat rhetoric?

Perhaps if you ignore all the facts it's easy to assume that the cruelty and unusual nature of this treatment is all an invention of the "mainstream media" but such a perspective is not supported by the facts

But regardless of media spin they are actively choosing to have insane optics. The Hyundai plant. Tiktok videos with the pokemon theme song "gotta catch em all" on what I thought was a very serious topic that required significant government resources.

Also, again, they'd be way more justified if this wasn't so obviouslyfake. They don't actually want to solve this, they just want the base to think they are. It undermines all of it.

Where is e-verify? Why are they not going after illegal immigrants in hotels? Or farms? Why aren't they going after american employers, all of whom are documented, who make up a much smaller # of entities to deal with? American citizens pay illegal immigrants American dollars to work. Go after them! That's so much easier, that's so much more effective. Illegal immigrants will deport themselves if they can't make money to send home, they're not here for fun.

Or farms

Hotels looks like straight forwards corruption to me, but there isn’t really a replacement for illegal labor on farms. This would be a principled exception literally anyone makes. You can get farm work done by taking advantage of wage differentials(these guys think they’re making n Dakota oil money) or through forced labor. There is no other option.

Illegal immigrants will deport themselves if they can't make money to send home, they're not here for fun.

Correct, they’re not here for fun. But, the average daily wage for the paid in cash underclass in the US is similar to the average weekly wage for the normal working class in Mexico, which is the wealthiest of the countries these people are coming from. I really don’t think you’re going to solve the economic case with a few laws when señora cleaning one house a week for cash makes more than she would with a full time job in the old country. You’d have to make ATM’s illegal.

but there isn’t really a replacement for illegal labor on farms

Actual visas for the particular types of workers you want to bring in would be the way a functional country would handle this.

We aren’t that, though.

Agreed :(

I find the view "I'm against illegal immigrants except for farm worker ones they're fine" incomprehensible

That's just being fine with illegal immigration with extra steps.

I disagree, it's simply looking at the tradeoffs of enforcement within certain contexts. If the harm of enforcement within a certain context would be greater than the benefits, that doesn't invalidate enforcement everywhere.

Uh, what do you want done instead of immigrants on farms?

From what I've seen of US school lunches, you don't even need the power of mainstream media for that.

Is it the left that's posting videos of these raids? I seem to recall with the Hyundai plant raid that it was ICE themselves that released that video. They're definitely being intentional in their choice of optics within the video, at least.

There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty. Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint has horrible optics. There are documented cases of people being deported to random nations, a few people have been disappeared (from public tracking, limiting a family's visibility into where a loved one is) and there's a general allergy to due process. Horrible optics.

I dont think there is much evidence supporting this assertion. Arresting people is always going to generate the possibility of "bad optics" if the media wants to portray it as bad. Illegal immigrants are concentrated in cities that are run by Democrats. With not just passive resistance by Democratic governments, but often active participation in the thwarting of law enforcement actions, things would always have progressed to this point unless Trump just went along with the program and continued to not enforce immigration law. You had that judge in Wisconsin smuggling away an illegal in court, but court is the most orderly place to arrest ANYONE! They already went through a voluntary weapons screening and/or are already in custody and have been searched. So, no. He isn't going to the max, he's barely doing the minimum proscribed by law.

I dont think there is much evidence supporting this assertion

Yes there is???!

Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint has horrible optics.

This is happening, and the optics do suck. You can tell they suck because people hate and fear ICE officers in a way they didn't a year ago.

There are documented cases of people being deported to random nations, a few people have been disappeared (from public tracking, limiting a family's visibility into where a loved one is)

This happened, and the optics are so bad

and there's a general allergy to due process.

This has been happening.

Why are you in dental

  • -13

Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint has horrible optics.

This is happening, and the optics do suck. You can tell they suck because people hate and fear ICE officers in a way they didn't a year ago.

The core issue here is that there's no causal relationship between the optics sucking and the behavior of ICE, though. The optics are defined primarily by 2 things: what people see, and how they respond to what they see. Former is primarily determined by people who hate Trump and hate the core mission of ICE, and the latter is highly determined by those people as well. And the past decade or so has established a pattern that these people will always make the optics bad when it comes to Trump, in a way that's entirely orthogonal to truth and fact. So it makes sense that ICE and the people who lead it, like Trump, have decided to focus little on the optics.

Credibility takes a lifetime to earn and a millisecond to destroy, and unfortunately, the media and political organizations that are against Trump pretty much blew their load within his first presidency (I'd argue within his first campaign) and are still in the refractory period 8 years later, furiously rubbing the poor flesh and wondering why it just hurts instead of shooting another rope.

ICE literally posted a montage of masked dudes blowing up doors to the pokemon theme song.

I'm not saying the media isn't a biased shitshow, it is, but it would be much less effective if ICE were acting in an extremely professional and regimented manner, they aren't.

but it would be much less effective if ICE were acting in an extremely professional and regimented manner, they aren't.

Hard disagree. At best, it would be infinitesimally less effective, small enough that you'd need a magnifying glass to tell the difference. Of course, it's impossible to properly ascertain what an alternative universe would look like, but, based on the general reception that these official ICE-released videos got, I'd wager that the effect was net-neutral at worst in terms of Americans' perception of ICE.

the economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.

So it's clearly not making Americans like it more!

I could be mistaken, but aren't you yourself a non-american who really doesn't like Trump? It seems like you've been exasperated for months here about the way this administration is handling their immigration crackdown attempt, particularly in regard to bad optics, damaged polling, and hypocritical american values. Taken together though, that sounds more like concern trolling than persuasive analysis.

That's not how statistics work. It's quite possible that this action by ICE is making Americans like it more, it's just countered by the other stuff around optics that's also happened in that time lowering it. In whole, we can say that Americans like it less now than they did in January - we cannot say that one individual act that happened in that time caused the net negative effect, i.e. which is why I said "I'd wager that," not "it is the case that" or even "it is evident that."

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This is happening, and the optics do suck. You can tell they suck because people hate and fear ICE officers in a way they didn't a year ago.

Not too many years ago many of the same people hated a couple of catholic kids for standing at a bus stop and smiling.

Truly the proof of the fault was how many people hated them in a way they didn't the week prior.

I don't really understand what your comparison is here. I also don't care about whatever algorithmic rage bait slop event you're talking about. The Republicans shit their pants once about Obama wearing a tan suit. Does that mean all Republican concerns are now invalid?

The optics suck, you can tell they suck because they're terrible. You can tell they suck because people are shooting at ICE officers. You can tell they suck because city mayor's think they'll score political points by making it hard for ICE agents to do their jobs.

You can tell the optics suck because the economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.

This was an incredibly popular electoral issue. He crushed the election on it. Now he's underwater on it. I wonder why???

  • -10

I also don't care about whatever algorithmic rage bait slop event you're talking about.

This is what he is referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lincoln_Memorial_confrontation

I'd not describe it as rage bait slop.

It was genuinely upsetting that much of twitter at the time came to the conclusion of "this kid should be punched in the face". I specifically remember the comedian Patton Oswalt saying something along those lines.

Comments on Twitter you don't like is quite literally the definition of "algorithmic rage bait slop" because the Twitter algorithm specifically shows you things that'll make you unhappy because that makes you engage more.

If you take the opinions of a clown (liberal cuck? He's actually pathetic) like Patton Oswalt you are being rage baited.

I don't read Twitter. Patton Oswalt's comments got picked up off Twitter space, that's how I know about them.

The kid in the incident successfully sued/settled with two news agencies over how irresponsible they were in reporting on this.

The gravity of the incident was not about the twitter comments but the media coverage, which was both defamatory and inflamatory.

The optics suck, you can tell they suck because they're terrible. You can tell they suck because people are shooting at ICE officers. You can tell they suck because city mayor's think they'll score political points by making it hard for ICE agents to do their jobs.

"Yeah, ok, you didn't actually do those things, and I'm just describing normal policing like a total asshole, but doesn't the fact that I could believe you would do something so horrible say something terrible about you?"

No. It says something about you. As does your eliding that, per your own link, immigration is still Trump's best polling policy.

Sorry, you were lying?

A solid majority of Americans still want every illegal deported. The relentless propaganda you are cheerfully participating in hasn't actually changed that. I wonder what the polling would look like if people were asked to choose between an ICE agent doing his job versus one of your trantifa insurrectionists trying to kill his family over it?

This is unnecessarily antagonistic.

one of your trantifa insurrectionists trying to kill his family over it?

I have no connection, affiliation, or agreement with whatever portmanteau of trans(?) and Antifa you made here. I find both of those groups insufferable.

I don't understand your quote/allegory of my words to be honest.

As does your eliding that, per your own link, immigration is still Trump's best polling policy.

That has nothing to do with my thesis, which is that optics (perception) of ICE is horrible, and it's clearly shown by the fact his approval on immigration, relative to earlier, has been dropping.

Just because he's even more underwater on his other awful ideas doesn't challenge this.

A solid majority of Americans still want every illegal deported

Yes they do, which is fine, I don't blame them, but they're clearly not thrilled with how it's happening WHICH IS LITERALLY THE OPTICS THING LMFAO

Also as an aside but it's just so blatantly clear they don't actually want to "solve" immigration because as stated infinity times, they're not taking any action to make employers use e-verify more and they're EXPLICITLY AND DELIBERATELY not going after hotels or farms, which are two of the biggest low hanging fruit for tons of illegal immigrants in obvious places.

If they wanted to, they would, and they aren't, so they don't.

This entire forum is so allergic to admitting this. If they actually wanted to address immigration, they'd punish the American citizens who give illegal immigrants money to do jobs. THE ILLEGALS ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU PAY THEM. Just go after the people who pay them, it's that simple. Again, this forum is wildly allergic to admitting that.

Yes there is???!

Step me through this, please. Evidence of this being true would require a reasonably deep look at the anti-ICE narrative, the pro-ICE narrative, and some analysis of not only why the anti-ICE narrative is closer to the truth than the pro-ICE one, but an ironclad case for why ICE is being unnecessarily cruel.

I say some reasonably unoctroversial things like "gender affirming doctors are prescribing chemical castration drugs to children" and I'm expected to provide evidence with citations, but you make your case with "yes there is???!?" and repeating "thr optics are so horrible"? Why should I accept that?

For one, I don't see why you need any of that evidence. Optics aren't even about truth, it's OPTICS. I'm not taking a stance on if ICE is too cruel, or if the pro/anti ICE narrative is more true I'm saying that ICE's optics as an organization are not good. As in, ICE looks bad to many Americans.

The optics suck, you can tell they suck because they're terrible. You can tell they suck because people are shooting at ICE officers. You can tell they suck because city mayor's think they'll score political points by making it hard for ICE agents to do their jobs.

You can tell the optics suck because the economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.

This was an incredibly popular electoral issue. He crushed the election on it. Now he's underwater on it. I wonder why???

  • -10

For one, I don't see why you need any of that evidence.

When people tell me it exists, I like taking a look.

The optics suck, you can tell they suck because they're terrible. You can tell they suck because people are shooting at ICE officers.

If you get shot, does it mean your optics suck, or does it maybe say more about the person doing the shooting?

This was an incredibly popular electoral issue. He crushed the election on it. Now he's underwater on it. I wonder why???

Polls generally are a lame argument, and I'm even more puzzled about why you think the names of The Economist and Nate Silver specifically should carry any weight with me.

By the way, did you just type out the same 2-3 paragraphs in 3 different comments? Are you ok?

Polls are a lame argument when talking about public opinion and optics???

If you don't accept polls with evidence to the contrary of your views, and you don't accept arguments about shootings increasing being a sign of public opinion, then what evidence do you accept?

When people tell me it exists, I like taking a look.

I guess I'm just not sure how to define or quantify a fuzzy object like "optics" which by nature is opinion based, without pointing at measures of people's opinions.

Also on a real human level, they're just obviously bad? Partisanship aside can we not agree that dudes in face coverings abducting people and sending some of them to 3rd world prisons run by dictators is really fucking off-putting?

To be honest, I actually feel like you're being willfully ignorant here. When people in this thread say "Optics" they obviously mean "the public perception or appearance of an action, decision, or policy. How it looks rather than what it is."

Perception is everything here, and polls measure perception/opinion.

Why are polls a lame argument?

The Economist is generally regarded as a reliable source, and Nate Silver is a very talented pollster, so it is highly likely these pills are a real indication of how the American people feel. If you have a different hypothesis as to how the American people feel, you should present it.

By the way, did you just type out the same 2-3 paragraphs in 3 different comments? Are you ok?

I'm pretty sure I'm responding to 3 different people, so I wanted to make sure they all saw the stats that back my hypothesis. Copy and pasted so it was pretty easy, but I appreciate you checking.

Yes there is???!

Then by all means, lay it out. When I want to list law enforcement travesties by federal law enforcement, I list people murdered, women and children burned alive en masse, obviously unnecessary use of lethal force, decades-long patterns of abuse of rights and murderous malfeasence, destruction of evidence, perjury and coverups, all without meaningful accountability through any process intended to supply it.

What are the clear misdeeds of the current ICE offensive?

This is happening, and the optics do suck. You can tell they suck because people hate and fear ICE officers in a way they didn't a year ago.

Blue tribe emotions are not a reasonable guide to material reality.

What are the clear misdeeds of the current ICE offensive?

From my comment, quoting the comment above.

Masked and armed bouncers dragging people away at gunpoint.

There are documented cases of people being deported to random nations, a few people have been made deliberately hard to find (from public tracking, limiting a family's visibility into where a loved one is)

Breaking a guy's leg and holding him in a hospital for 37 days without any charges after signing him in with a fake name.

Blue tribe emotions are not a reasonable guide to material reality.

Quite literally half of the country hates something and you live in a democracy so you unfortunately don't get to not care lol.

You can tell the optics suck because the economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.

This was an incredibly popular electoral issue. He crushed the election on it. Now he's underwater on it. I wonder why???

But fmac is not talking about material reality. fmac is talking about the optics. If people hate and fear ICE officers in an unprecedented way, this is strong evidence that their optics suck. Being feared and hated doesn't prove they're actually behaving badly, but it does, almost tautologically, mean that they are giving off a scary hatable vibe.

Or evidence that their optics are exactly what they want them to be and they're reasonably competent at cultivating the appearance they want to have. So far I see no evidence that ICE wants to cultivate an image of professionals who dot every i and cross every t, and quite a bit of evidence that they want to cultivate an image as badass thugs who are getting shit done in terms of kicking anyone illegal out of America, no matter who they are and no matter why they think they're safe.

Well, sure, the phrase "their optics suck" is ambiguous. I think it can cover either of "ICE are unsuccessful at shaking off an unwanted bad reputation" or "ICE are successfully cultivating a bad reputation", and I agree the latter seems more likely, though some people in this thread vehemently deny it even as other ICE-supporters embrace it. But it still seems fair to call that "their optics suck", it would just mean that their optics suck on purpose for some inane galaxy-brained reason.

The meat of the disagreement is what constitutes a "bad reputation". At best it's scissor statements, my "efficient law enforcement" is your "brutal tyranny" but you started this with adjectives like "chaotic" that are pure outgroup messaging, and far from anything ICE is promoting about themselves. Seriously, go look at the @ICEgov twitter feed. The message they want out is "We are always getting bad guys, and if you act like a baby about it, we'll still get you and make fun of you for it, too."

That's a far cry from "chaos marauder stormtroopers".

but it does, almost tautologically, mean that they are giving off a scary hatable vibe.

I would surmise that the majority of americans have not seen an ICE officer performing their duty in real life, only through videos that are cherry-picked, contextualized and characterized by a hostile media. In that context, the vibe around them is definitely not something that they are tautologically giving off, but something that could be constructed around them.

ICE themselves posts videos of them raiding places. They posted a video to the pokemon sound track. The pokemon one has clips of masked dudes blowing up doors. It doesn't look good man.

You don't even need the media lol, they're structuring their own optics. It doesn't look great.

It doesn't look good man.

Would it not look good if it were not in the context of the media breathlessly describing them as stormtroopers for months? We're talking about counter-factual world we can't really observe here, but purely on its own, for me, masked guys blowing up doors to the Pokemon soundtrack doesn't really raise an eyebrow. It's not like they're committing atrocities, or even just filming themselves doing a bit of the ol' unnecessary police brutality and laughing about it, that'd be different.

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TheMotte is weirdly averse to admitting the Trump’s administration is often deliberately maximally inflammatory and absolutely does engage in “liberal tears” style antagonism. Yes, I understand that the media will always portray conservatives as the villain no matter what you do (Nicholas Sandman, Binders full of women, etc) but that doesn’t mean you have no agency in being more or less provocative. In many cases it may make no difference in your public perception due to media manipulation, but we shouldn’t ignore that Trump is openly, deliberately inflammatory

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ICE themselves posts videos of them raiding places. They posted a video to the pokemon sound track. The pokemon one has clips of masked dudes blowing up doors. It doesn't look good man.

It does, to the target audience, which is why they do it.

There is no way ICE can have good optics for Democrats and those who watch mainstream-left media. So they don't bother, which leaves them free to pander instead to those who are receptive.

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They also haven't seen and/or haven't thought about how law enforcement is done. It's often brutal, because you're trying to catch people who don't want to be caught and make them do things they don't want to do. It's also often far more brutal than it has to be, but most of the time you can't tell if it is that just by looking at a few short videos. Dragging people away at gunpoint is part of what law enforcement does, and indeed there are many circumstances where they are masked when doing so. I object to most of ICEs masking, but I don't believe for a second that the objection here would go away or become significantly less strident if they didn't do so.

It's also the El Salvadorian prison stuff. The whole vibe sucks.

I agree, the objection wouldn't have changed a lot, but the sway it has over the median American would.

If ICE acted in a less shitshow aggro way, the opposition to them would look more like crying blue-hair SJWs and not a broader coalition of SJWs, Americans who don't like para-military themed law enforcement, etc

Then, it would be a really intelligent wedge issue to bait democratic leadership into opposing something broadly popular, instead of now something that half of Americans don't like.

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Arresting people is always going to generate the possibility of "bad optics" if the media wants to portray it as bad.

This. If the media wanted to, they could run non-stop coverage of deranged leftists screaming at stone-faced ICE agents before assaulting the purported fascist stormtroopers. They could do wall-to-wall coverage of the attacks against feds, complete with interviews with crying wives and mothers.

IMO the optics are kind of the point of the current incarnation of ICE. Deportation is such a massive task that actually doing it at scale is very very difficult, so doing as much as possible to 'change the vibe' seems to have worked to discourage new illegals entering the country, increase self-deportation and create an atmosphere of fear. It also makes Trump's base feel that 'something is being done'.

There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty.

No plan has good optics when faced by hostile media, as well as protestors deliberately trying to create bad optics.

What about releasing an ICE montage over top of the pokemon theme song?

Democrats are justified in believing that this will select for bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else. Given that most illegal immigrants are brown, I can see why democrats would believe that the average ICE agent is a raging racist too.

Aw, man. Remember when Democrats believed that the people fighting in Iraq were bottom-feeder 10% loser retards who just wanted to be racist and murder sand-n**gers?

You should explain why that psychotically uncharitable dehumanization of the outgroup belief was as justified as this one.

Then we'll all hold hands and agree that the progressives occupying their Long March positions in the regulatory agencies are just bottom-feeder pseudo-intellectual retards looking for the high of acting like Ayn Rand villains on account of their raging bigotries and inferiority complexes.

Right?

Remember when Democrats believed that the people fighting in Iraq were bottom-feeder 10% loser retards who just wanted to be racist and murder sand-n**gers?

You should explain why that belief was as justified as this one.

Both are retarded beliefs, and both government actions are retarded as well

Sadly, I don't. I did not read western news back then :(

You know what, I saw the admission to the other poster, and I always find myself liking and respecting people who do that.

Sorry for the heat.

Here are the 'job requirements' for a deportation officer. Literally randos.

U.S. citizenship Have a valid driver's license Be eligible to carry a firearm

No. It it has many other requirements such as the ability to hold a secret clearance, a background check, drug testing. Do you think 'randos' and 'bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else' can qualify for a secret clearance?

The deportation officer role also requires 16 weeks of training which is less than the NYPD's 26 weeks in their police academy, but plenty for their specialised role.

Frankly, I was indeed worried that the bar was that low.

Reviewing the job profile, these qualification demands are more rigorous than I gave them credit for. I said a lot of things today, and I have been corrected on a good few. I am glad that happened. Turns out that US is a liberal first world nation, and standards are standards. I am satisfied.

Do you think 'randos' and 'bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else' can qualify for a secret clearance?

Not anymore

NYPD's 26 weeks in their police academy, but plenty for their specialised role.

It's 6 months in the academy and then ~2 years in probation.

being qualified to carry a gun selects against "bottom feeders," a term I feel is more appropriate for say, fentanyl addicts. but it probably does select for people who are not well into the arts, i.e. philistines. That's a kind of bottom feeder for many.

If Democrats believe what they claim to believe, then their actions are in line with those values. ICE agents look like an angry paramilitary that a dictator would deploy against his populace. People believe what they see. Democrats are cherry picking, but the cherry picked images are still real images.

Does this rule apply to any other political cause?

Because we had a debate about a predawn raid where masked and unidentifiable men broke down someone's door and shot the guy in the head over some simple paperwork crimes -- complete with defiance of long-standing policy and only-by-the-text compliance with a warrant -- and people here defended it as all acceptable because He Broke The Law.

For some reason, the cherrypicked image of his ventilated skull wasn't a cause celebre nor a moment for deep retroflection on the costs of a cause; at most, it was reason Those Damned Republicans Should Want Police Reform (that won't apply here). Nor, for that matter, were the dozens of other examples going back decades, sometimes with far greater casualty counts, which, to skip the charcoal briquettes rant, did nothing to sate progressive efforts to The Cause.

Ah, well, nonetheless.

Perhaps there are clear examples of immigration enforcement that weren't cause celebres for the Left? The Nicer, Kinder, Cruelty Isn't The Point 2018 policies were not tolerated and accepted -- even when some of the outrage was based on photos dating to the previous Democratic admin, or entirely made up, it still became The Worst Thing Ever at the same time it didn't work, only for all of those problems to get shoved back in the box as soon as something was (D)ifferent in the Presidency.

Does this rule apply to any other political cause?

Yes? Is this a trick question? It looks like people here were pretty close to universal in saying the ATF was incompetent, malicious, or most likely both here.

For some reason, the cherrypicked image of his ventilated skull wasn't a cause celebre nor a moment for deep retroflection on the costs of a cause

Yeah, it is an unfortunate truth that "someone did an unambiguously terrible thing and now the world is worse :(" doesn't get nearly as much engagement as "someone did a thing, maybe it's very bad, maybe it's not so bad, but everyone has an opinion and thinks anyone who disagrees with them is an evil mutant".

Perhaps there are clear examples of immigration enforcement that weren't cause celebres for the Left?

Yeah, almost all of them. In (to pick an arbitrary Biden year) 2022, ICE deported about 70,000 people. Not more than a handful of those people were cause celebres. Likewise in 2018 (to pick an arbitrary Trump 1 year), and likewise this year.

It looks like people here were pretty close to universal in saying the ATF was incompetent, malicious, or most likely both here.

Would you like to demonstrate where, exactly, Rov_Scam said that, rather than moe about gun owners not wanting to compromise?

Yeah, it is an unfortunate truth that "someone did an unambiguously terrible thing and now the world is worse :(" doesn't get nearly as much engagement as "someone did a thing, maybe it's very bad, maybe it's not so bad, but everyone has an opinion and thinks anyone who disagrees with them is an evil mutant".

Oh, if everyone agreed it was awful, then there must be a whole ton of sympathetic coverage from mainstream and even progressive sources, right? I must be able to find some Honest Gun Control Advocate who talked about how they wanted enforcement, but Not Like This, rather than just memory hole or completely ignore the matter? President Biden, who was willing to speak out personally about an immigration officer using reins on a horse, must have spoken on the matter: it was the middle of election season and an excellent opportunity to Sister Souljah nutjobs. Or if his brain was too applesauce at the time, perhaps Kamala "I own A Glock" Harris did so? The officers in question -- who unquestionably did violate policy, and near-certainly violated a lot of constitutional protections in addition to the not-getting-shot-in-head-bit -- must have been fired or at least demoted, right, even if they couldn't be prosecuted?

Ah, no.

In (to pick an arbitrary Biden year) 2022, ICE deported about 70,000 people. Not more than a handful of those people were cause celebres. Likewise in 2018 (to pick an arbitrary Trump 1 year), and likewise this year.

Did you follow the link? Because a good part of the complaint here is that those 2018-2019 period did get a massive amount of often-not-honest outrage, even when the some of photos predated Trump. Yes, no one cared about Biden deportations, that's the punchline.

That's the joke, and that's why the outrage here is a joke.

There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty.

Could have been maximally "gentle" and the cruelty would have been manufactured by the mainstream media. Under Biden the media used forced perspective to make it look like border patrol was whipping illegal aliens.

Trump brought this on himself. There's a million ways he could've implemented the ICE program, and he chose one with the greatest optics of cruelty.

There's a million ways he could have implemented the ICE program completely ineffectually. This way is delivering at least some level of results, and there is no reason to believe that any other plausible method would deliver better results.

"Cruelty is the point". I didn't believe it during Trump 1. For Trump 2, I believe it.

This has been a bipartisan pattern throughout the last decade, pretty clearly as a result of collapsing federal authority. Gun laws are routinely enforced this way, and have been for decades. COVID mandates were very clearly enforced this way. Trans ideology was enforced this way.

Here are the 'job requirements' for a deportation officer. Literally randos.

What job requirements would seem more appropriate to you? Can you point to some examples of how low recruiting standards have resulted in bad outcomes?

Democrats are justified in believing that this will select for bottom-feeder men with anger problems looking to get the high of having power over someone else.

As you say, "An accusation must be validated by a supposedly neutral arbiter." I disagree that Democrats are justified in such a belief. On the other hand, I can point to recent cases where federal agents promulgated official orders to violate their core mission to better discriminate against Reds.

As with all accusations in the US, until the supreme courts weighs in, it isn't formally treason.

I think you overestimate the sociopolitical "pull" maintained by the courts, including the Supreme Court. We are more than a decade into lesser courts, and local, state and federal officials operating in open defiance of rulings they disagree with.

The fact is that systems of law do not constrain human will, individually or collectively. "Treason" is a word invented by humans, applied by humans, and assessed by humans. If the argument here is that Democrat local and state officials probably won't be charged, convicted and sentenced for Treason for the things they're doing right now, I'll readily agree with you. But the fight that is happening right now is more likely to grow than to gutter out, and there does not appear to be an obvious point where it will stop. Blue Tribe has acted for decades as though it is above the law, and it turns out those actions have consequences.

Trump is consistently the first one to raise the temperature and to lower the bar for acceptable discourse. I don't want to sound like a kid. But, he started it. Only now, the democrats are responding.

It is certainly true that Trump started raising the temperature, if one carefully defines "raising the temperature" to exclude everything Democrats have done to raise the temperature over the last decade or more. Trump is essentially a copy of Bill Clinton. His cabinet and associates are full of former high-tier democrat figures. His policies used to be entirely normal within the democratic party as recently as a decade ago. Red Tribe has slaughtered numerous sacred cows to assemble their current coalition, essentially capitulating to broad swathes of the Democratic policy platform. The democrats have only moved further left in response, and have made both unconscionable government repression and large-scale, organized lawless violence core aspects of their political program.

The democratic party announced their intention to use mass immigration to secure a permanent majority Twenty years ago. It turns out that this was not quite the silver bullet they expected, but Reds are assessing future cooperation in terms of intentions, not results, and Blues have made it abundantly clear that further cooperation with them leads to no livable future for Reds.

Reds are not going to back down because there is no retreat available to us. We decline to be reduced to second-class citizens in our native country. We decline to be victimized by the full power of the Federal Government. We decline to uphold rules that are enforced only to our detriment and never to our benefit. We decline to maintain systems that exist only to oppress us.

No justice, no peace.

there is no reason to believe that any other plausible method would deliver better results.

You don't even need e-verify

Just go after employers! Fine the shit out of people who knowingly use illegal labour. Imprison them! They're basically traitors to you anyway right? They're aiding and abetting these illegal immigrants. THE IMMIGRANTS DON'T COME TO THE USA FOR THE WEATHER, THEY COME BECAUSE AMERICANS PAY THEM MONEY FOR THEIR LABOUR.

I know two sectors that use HUGE amounts of illegal labour, hotels and farmers! Just go after them! Fish in a barrel.

Oh wait no nevermind we can't go after those guys because... reasons that I'm sure have nothing to do with Trump owning hotels.

Direct quote for you, by Trump:

“But you know, when you go into a farm and you set somebody working with them for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do and a lot of people aren’t going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away — it’s a problem. You know, I’m on both sides of the thing. I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been, and that includes also hotels and, you know, places where people work, a certain group of people work,”

The segue to hotels is hilarious

there is no reason to believe that any other plausible method would deliver better results.

This is factually false. E-verify is a thing. If you want to stop people who are not authorized to work from working, then mandating that employers actually check that their employees are authorized to work for them seems like an obvious step to take.

If you haven't even taken the step of mandating the use of e-verify for all employers, I don't believe you when you say "but we have to disappear people, it's the only strategy that could possibly work".

E-Verify is currently very easy to circumvent and would require an act of Congress, aka 60 senators, to fix. The current batch of senators cannot cobble together 60 who will vote for a clean continuing resolution because sunset provisions for a free money from the sky provision are going into effect.

Yes, the fact that one of the three branches of government has decided not to do their job does seem to be the root of the problem here.

I don't believe you when you say "but we have to disappear people, it's the only strategy that could possibly work".

Nobody is getting disappeared. Everyone apprehended can be looked up on a public website. https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search

Nobody, you say?

A federal judge has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to temporarily end round-the-clock surveillance of a man hospitalized with a broken leg he suffered during his arrest [...] The man, who suffered a broken leg while being arrested in California on August 27, had been detained for more than 37 days [...] To date, ICE has not placed petitioner in removal proceedings, charged him with violating immigration law, set bond, issued a Notice to Appear or otherwise processed him [...] The man, registered by ICE with the pseudonym “Har Maine UNK Thirteen,” was arrested by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Carson Car Wash in Carson, California, on August 27

So ICE arrested someone, detained him for 37 days in the hospital under armed guard, did not charge him with anything, denied him legal counsel, and used a pseudonym when registering him in the locator. That sure sounds to me like "ICE disappeared that guy".

If he was in the hospital ICE would have gone to a judge and obtained a hospital order wherein they explained to the judge why he could not be brought to court for his initial court appearance. The judge then changed his/her mind after this situation continued for such a long time that he/she deemed it unreasonable given the state of the case. Your ignorance of criminal law has allowed you to be propagandized.

You wanna bring receipts on that for this case? I can bring them for the proceedings leading up to the TRO, and I see nothing like that mentioned.

Well all the documents appear to be sealed....

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If a federal judge can order ICE to release you, you have not been disappeared. You are very much in the system, documented, and his lawyers and the judge know his name even if the hospital does not, that's for sure.

In this case it looks like he got badly hurt during arrest and was taken to a hospital where he was admitted under a pseudonym and kept under guard. ICE says they were waiting for him to be released from the hospital and taken to their LA processing center before charging him. The judge said they had to release him from custody because they hadn't charged him yet. ICE did, and basically said they'd arrest him again after he gets out of the hospital and then charge him properly.

If your lawyer can talk to you and file court motions on your behalf, you have not been disappeared. When the NKVD showed up at your apartment in the dead of night and took you away, nobody saw or heard you again. That was proper disappearing! A lot of them were taken to the basement of the Lubyanka and shot in the back of the head.

When the NKVD showed up at your apartment in the dead of night and took you away, nobody saw or heard you again. That was proper disappearing!

Ok, I admit I don't have any documented examples of people being disappeared without a trace by ICE and never heard from again. I don't think things have to get to the point of "literally as bad as the NKVD" for us to go "wait a second this is not good and I want to see less of this" though.

We had this argument repeatedly during the "Maryland Dad" fiasco. The best example people could come up with for malfeasance was a missed piece of paperwork before quite properly deporting a human smuggling, wife-beating gang banger.

Napkin math suggests ICE is the most properly functioning government agency of all time. I'm honestly kind of shocked that there hasn't been any proper travesties.

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“Disappeared” is what the NKVD did, what ICE is doing is called “arresting”. If you say people are being disappeared, you’re saying it has gotten to the point of being as bad as the NKVD!

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It does not appear he was "disappeared". Otherwise, how would the habeas corpus petition be filed in the first place?

The habeas corpus petition was filed on September 30. He was detained on August 27. That's a solid month. How long do you think is appropriate to hold someone without charging them?

On September 17th, 3 weeks after he was first detained, CBP informed him that they still hadn't assigned him an A-number - so

  • the ICE locator mentioned upthread wouldn't show him by his name
  • the ICE locator mentioned upthread wouldn't show him by a-number because one had not been assigned

My non expert reading is that the judge is pissed at a level that is not normal. From the temporary restraining order

There is generally no public interest in the perpetuation of unlawful agency action. To the contrary, there is a substantial public interest ‘in having governmental agencies abide by the federal laws that govern their existence and operations.

And looks like she's expecting malicious compliance from ICE as well

To be clear, Respondents must not remove Petitioner from the hospital, cause his discharge before his medical team deems it medically appropriate, or require his in-person appearance before an immigration officer prior to his discharge from the hospital. Rather, the Court orders that guards be withdrawn from Petitioner’s hospital room, that restrictions on his activities be lifted (including his ability to make telephone calls to family and friends and to confer confidentially with counsel outside the presence of ICE agents), and that any physical restraints, such as handcuffs, be removed.

This guy had 2-4 guards posted 24/7 for over a month. Someone high up signed off on this, this can't be written off as a single agent acting alone. Seems pretty egregious to me..

The habeas corpus petition was filed on September 30. He was detained on August 27. That's a solid month. How long do you think is appropriate to hold someone without charging them?

That wasn't the question. The question is whether he was disappeared. He was not. I do not know why it took a month to file the petition.

It's quite possible ICE did wrong here. What they did not do is disappear someone.

My non expert reading is that the judge is pissed at a level that is not normal.

I don't much care. Performative pissyness from judges seems to be pretty standard in political cases, and doesn't stop the judges from being overruled.

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But they wore masks while they did it, masks make people feel bad. That's basically the same as disappearing people, amirite?

This is low effort sneering. Don't do this.

The eVerify mandate [edit: sorry, not eVerify, but a card check] is old enough to vote; while it doesn’t apply to literally every business, it applies to almost all of them. Even outside of the error mode where every other Presidential administration unlawfully issues bulk work permits and mugs about standing to the courts, or shut down compliance audits, several Blue states have undermined it by the letter of the law and destroyed it in practice, and it’s biggest impact has been a burst of SSN fraud.

E-Verify is also old enough to vote. It's just not mandatory at the federal level. It is mandatory in some states, so it's not like it's a half-baked system which wouldn't work at scale. It exists, and it works in practice, but it's still not mandatory everywhere. As far as I can tell nothing is preventing Congress from passing a law to make it mandatory, other than "congress has decided it no longer needs to do its job".

Anyway, I'm looking at the examples you gave:

  • Illinois SB0508 - this... just looks like it's saying "employers who use E-verify still have to comply with all other relevant employment law"? Is there a particular part of this you object to? Maybe the bit which says "An employer shall ensure that the System is not used for any purpose other than employment verification of newly hired employees and shall ensure that the information contained in the System and the means of access to the System are not disseminated to any person other than employees who need such information" - is your objection that actually Illinois should allow E-verify to be used for employment verification of existing employees as well?
  • California AB 450 QA - As far as I can tell, this says "Employers shall not voluntarily and actively assist immigration officials in accessing areas which are closed to the public, or actively provide records to immigration officials, unless those immigration officials have a warrant or subpoena. If immigration officials insist anyway employers have no obligation to try to stop them". That seems fine and very much in line with other regulations in California, e.g. CA Civ Code § 56.10 which says "A provider of health care, health care service plan, or contractor shall not disclose medical information regarding a patient of the provider of health care or an enrollee or subscriber of a health care service plan without first obtaining an authorization, except as provided in subdivision (b) or (c)" and subdivisions (b) and (c) are basically "(b) there's a warrant or equivalent" or "(c) the information is being disclosed to the insurer / other parts of the medical system". I like this law. Law enforcement agents should need either a warrant or reasonable suspicion - I don't like fishing expeditions by law enforcement, and this law seems to specifically prohibit employers from assisting in fishing expeditions where there is no warrant and no probable cause.

As far as I can tell nothing is preventing Congress from passing a law to make it mandatory, other than "congress has decided it no longer needs to do its job".

Congress is doing its job of being partisan. Democrats do not want E-Verify to work, so they oppose legislation that would make it work. That isn't not doing your job, its just doing your job in a way that gets stagnant results. The fact that large numbers of Democratic voters prefer a functioning E-Verify, and overwhelming numbers of Republican voters prefer it is of no moment if they do not punish at the polls non-compliance with that desire. Republican voters have carried out that displeasure via Trump, Cotton, etc. Democrat voters have not punished this specific non-compliance with their expressed policy desires, so the elite Democratic party position remains unchallenged in law until enough voters get angry to put 60 yes votes in the senate.

Or they get rid of the filibuster.

Illinois prohibits employers from using eVerify to any extent not mandated by the federal government, prohibits local jurisdictions from doing anything not mandated by the federal government (even for their own employees!), and requires employers to notify employees within 72 hours of receiving notification of an i9 audit.

California prohibits employers from complying with federal administrative warrants ("Documents issued by a government agency but not issued by a court and signed by a judge are not judicial warrants. An immigration enforcement agent may show up with something called an “administrative warrant” or a “warrant of deportation or removal.” These documents are not judicial warrants"), and from voluntarily providing any employment information. If you're willing to call the current state of eVerify a fishing expedition, that's on you, but I'm not going to take it seriously.

Q: What should employers do if an immigration enforcement agent seeks to enter the employer’s place of business?
A: Employers, or persons acting on behalf of the employer, shall not provide “voluntary consent” to the entry of an immigration enforcement agent to “any nonpublic areas of a place of labor.”
This provision does not apply if the agent enters a nonpublic area without the consent of the employer or other person in control of the place of labor or if the immigration enforcement agent presents a judicial warrant. In addition, employers are not precluded from taking an agent to a nonpublic area if all of the following are met: (1) employees are not present in the nonpublic area; (2) the agent is taken to the nonpublic area for the purpose of verifying whether the agent has a judicial warrant; and (3) no consent to search the nonpublic area is given in the process.
See Government Code Section 7285.1.

Q: What does it mean to provide “voluntary” consent to the entry of an immigration enforcement agent?
In general, for consent to be voluntary, it should not be the result of duress or coercion, either express or implied.
An example of providing “voluntary” consent to enter a nonpublic area could be freely asking or inviting an immigration enforcement agent to enter that area. This could be indicated by words and/or by the act of freely opening doors to that area for the agent, for instance.
Whether or not voluntary consent was given by the employer is a factual, case-by-case determination that will be made based on the totality of circumstances in each specific situation.
This law does not require physically blocking or physically interfering with the entry of an immigration enforcement agent in order to show that voluntary consent was not provided.

Q: What should employers do if an immigration enforcement agent tries to access, review, or obtain employee records?
A: Employers, or persons acting on behalf of the employer, shall not provide “voluntary consent” to an immigration enforcement agent “to access, review, or obtain the employer’s employee records.” This provision does not apply if the agent accesses, reviews, or obtains employee records without the consent of the employer or other person in control of the place of labor. In addition, exceptions to this provision apply if: • The immigration enforcement agent provides a subpoena for the employee records; or • The agent provides a judicial warrant for the employee records; or • The employee records accessed, reviewed, or obtained by the immigration enforcement agent are I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification forms and other documents that are requested in a Notice of Inspection issued under federal law.

Q: Does AB 450 require employers to defy federal requirements?
A: No. Compliance with AB 450 does not compel any employer to violate federal law. Rather, it may require employers in some instances to decline requests for voluntary cooperation by federal agents. However, the statute makes clear that its provisions only apply “[e]xcept as otherwise required by federal law” and do not restrict or limit an employer’s compliance with any memorandum of understanding governing use of the federal E-Verify system.

That, again, seems fine? My impression is that the stuff about voluntary vs involuntary search is that it mainly has to do with what evidence is admissible in court - law enforcement agents are going to be able to go where they want whether or not your cooperation is voluntary.

And in terms of documents, documents that are actually relevant to work eligibility are already covered as things that employers should cooperate with if there's an administrative warrant. My understanding is that what you can't do is hand over the Workday login to ICE and invite them to go on a fishing expedition unless you are compelled to do so.

All that said I am not a lawyer, maybe I'm reading the law wrong? ChatGPT agrees with my interpretation when I ask it, but it also agrees with your interpretation when I ask it.

My impression is that the stuff about voluntary vs involuntary search is that it mainly has to do with what evidence is admissible in court - law enforcement agents are going to be able to go where they want whether or not your cooperation is voluntary.

The California bill has absolutely zero to do with what's admissible in court -- not just because immigration courts are federal processes where it can't apply, but also because it includes a fine aimed at employers who voluntarily cooperate with federal agents, or voluntarily provide documentation to federal agents.

And in terms of documents, documents that are actually relevant to work eligibility are already covered as things that employers should cooperate with if there's an administrative warrant.

The law requires employers to ignore administrative warrants for personnel records. It's in the FAQ you're quoting!

My understanding is that what you can't do is hand over the Workday login to ICE and invite them to go on a fishing expedition unless you are compelled to do so.

Or access to a nonpublic area of a workplace. Or specific employee records. Even if given an administrative warrant, you can not do so without risking tens of thousands of dollars per instance. Or to reverify existing employees, such as, just as a theoretical exercise, an employer isn't quite sure if they did that initial eVerify check.

If you stop people from working, they are still in the country. If you disappear them, they disappear and are not in the country.

People come here to work. If they're not going to work, there's not much point in being here.

I'm confused. Trump is consistently the first one to raise the temperature and to lower the bar for acceptable discourse. I don't want to sound like a kid. But, he started it. Only now, the democrats are responding.

Trump is the President and central figure to America's current polarization. If there is a civil war, it will be because of him. As the one in power, the onus is on Trump to reduce the temperature.

I agree. If we can get Trump to speak nicely about deportations, then people will suddenly calm down...

Yes, I think that Trump's camp is doing a lot of damage to the pro-ICE position, and is raising tensions in the country, by going with the "fuck you, we're sending ICE in and by the way, fuck you again" optics. I don't know why they're doing it that way. My only guess is that it feels good to them and it delivers quick cheap optics wins to serve to their base, because it feels good to many in the base as well.

The left is also very much to blame in many ways for raising tensions in the country, so it's not like I'm just blaming Trump's camp. But Trump's camp is certainly choosing to display, frame, and discuss their actions in an inflammatory way.

I don't know why they're doing it that way. My only guess is that it feels good to them and it delivers quick cheap optics wins to serve to their base, because it feels good to many in the base as well.

My personal theory is that while the Trump base legitimately wants to put an end to illegal immigration due in large part to the economic consequences, those economic consequences are actually extremely beneficial to a lot of republican donors. When you remove illegal immigrant labor and force the farmers to hire Americans (legally) the price of everything goes up. Ultimately society and the economy would be healthier after this gets done, but the political consequences for Trump in the short term would be disastrous. "All basic staples are now twice as expensive, but in exchange your wages will improve permanently in 9 months" might be a great deal for his base in the long run, but it is suicidal for someone who has to care about daily opinion polls and work around congressmen and senators who are taking vast sums of money from the people who benefit from illegal labour.

"All basic staples are now twice as expensive,

So, between deportations and self-deportations, a purported 2 million illegal immigrants have left. What percent of the "twice as expensive" are we up to?

Well they're explicitly not going after farm workers, even though a huge % of illegals work on farms. I'm sure the Mexican nanny labour market has gotten much tighter, but that doesn't effect as many people.

So, literally nothing you can point to. Thanks, you made my point abundantly clear.

Is there actually real, serious and muscular enforcement of immigration law against migrant workers? I was under the impression that Trump was explicitly preventing this from happening because illegal immigrants can be treated badly and help keep the costs of produce down.

Trump, who has appeared sympathetic to both farmers and immigration hawks, said Tuesday that the farm laborers aren’t easy to replace — an argument that runs up against critics’ argument that native-born workers could fill the jobs. The president said that “people that live in the inner city” won’t do the work.

“They’ve tried. We’ve tried, Everybody’s tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally,” Trump said. “I said ‘what happens’ — to a farmer the other day — ’what happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting.’ In many ways, they’re very, very special people.”

If I'm wrong and Trump has been aggressively enforcing the laws against the employment of illegal immigrants I'd be happy to hear it.

It's hard to gauge. Here's an article claiming that the raids have devastated the industry, but journalists/hate/insufficient/etc.

That article seems to suggest that I'm correct.

Across the nation today, about 70% of workers in the U.S. farm sector are foreign born, according to the Federal Reserve of Kansas City. The National Milk Producers Federation says milk prices could nearly double if the U.S. dairy industry loses its foreign-born workforce, the group said.

70% of all your farm workers are foreign born and I have zero doubt that the vast majority of those would be illegal immigrants, because the entire reason they can get those jobs is their lack of labor protection and inability to protest terrible conditions. Remove them and the price of staples like milk will double - which is why I believe Trump and ICE are focusing on getting deportations into the news rather than actually fixing the problem.

Again, 2 million immigrants are gone in the last 9 months. Where price doubling?

It seems possible that there are simply so many illegal immigrants in the US that even herculean efforts at mass deportations will take years, e.g. enough time to gracefully offramp most industries.

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My only guess is that it feels good to them and it delivers quick cheap optics wins to serve to their base, because it feels good to many in the base as well.

Yeah, of course this is part of it. How could it not be? This is a political question being driven by political considerations for the consumption of audiences of political information. A government should deliver on its pre-election promises as best it can and make sure its voters know about it. Else it will lose to ones that do.

I don't know why they're doing it that way.

The optics, as you said, but also - why not? People interfering with ICE operations are in open defiance of Federal courts. They're deporting people with final orders of deportation. How much restraint is the Sovereign supposed to show towards internal unrest? (That's rhetorical, it's situational.)

Now we do live in a world of state level legalized marijuana so it's absolutely fair to call the administration hypocritical to choose to bring a sledgehammer to immigration law enforcement while playing dumb on marijuana. Completely true and fair and it doesn't change the fact that the Feds can enforce their law inside States up to Constitutional limits when and where and how they choose.

The best thing Dem elected officials could do (and to be fair, I assume basically are doing in many times and places) for the country would be to provide exactly as much assistance as legally required. This is not necessarily the best thing for them to always do electorally. Similar dilemmas exist on the Republican side.

Or, to invoke my proud heritage of a defeated people: why did the 82nd Airborne have to invade Little Rock?

Proposition 1: it is impossible to deport millions of people by actually catching them and deporting them.

Proposition 2: People who are afraid will self deport.

Proposition 3: We want to deport millions.

Solution: Make illegals afraid they might be caught and disappeared.

Here in Texas we’re getting radio ads to that effect.

“If you’re in the country illegally, leave.”

Definitely in line with the strategy.

But those ads are in English. Might I suggest that they’re campaign ads for Trump and not actually targeted at illegals?

¿Por que no los dos?

It’s one of the more efficient and reasonable approaches of this initiative, in my opinion.

There are Spanish versions of those ads. I suspect they're both.

People who are afraid will self deport.

Illegals aren't afraid of being caught by ICE, they're afraid of having to leave America. The only illegals who will actually leave on their own are either rich enough to avoid the dysfunction of their home countries (in which case, they're probably not illegal) or so dirt-poor that it makes no difference. For the average Jose, living in America is such a massive increase to quality of life that he'll pay his life savings to smugglers for the chance to escape his shithole of origin[1].

This solution would still work nearly as well if ICE just acquired a reputation of being very efficient, without the Trumpian "fuck the left" optics.

Lol, Lmao even. Why do you think ICE gets to pick their own optics? Like any federal agency, they get to wear whatever label the media slaps on them today. And the leftoid media industrial complex has decided "nazi storm troopers" is the label ICE gets to wear for the foreseeable future.

Compared to most feds, ICE seems to be undertaking an extremely difficult task, that puts them in quite a lot of personal danger, in a reasonably professional manner. That puts them in the top 5% of efficient agencies as far as I'm concerned. Lefty shitflinging will happen completely independently of how ICE is actually performing, because it mostly works at convincing the average lefty voter their country is turning into the Fourth Reich.

They literally posted a montage of dudes in masks blowing up doors and arresting people with the pokemon theme song.

No media bias required to look retarded

You did the meme.

I voted for this, actually. Deport all foreigners, especially the legal ones, especially the unnaturalized paper citizens, especially the anchor babies. I do not care about their rights, I do not care about their welfare, I do not care where they go when they leave here, I care that they are gone. The longer it takes to accomplish this, and the more resistance encountered, the less I'm going to care about norms, or laws, or rights, or anything other than what I want accomplished.

This is called being a reactionary. The thing is, you can simply fix what I'm reacting to and I won't be a reactionary any more. Neat trick.

you can simply fix what I'm reacting to and I won't be a reactionary any more

I agree! That's why they're going after farms and hotels, two of the biggest employers of illegal immigrants and the main reason they come to America.

Oh wait, they explicitly said they aren't...

"Gotta catch 'em [illegal immigrants] all" has long been a mantra of Trump and his his supporters.

You think its retarded because the media bias in this country has led you to believe Anarcho-Tyranny is an acceptable form of government. That montage was a cute little poke at the fact that its not, and times are a' changin.

No I think it's retarded because it looked bad and doesn't help them achieve their stated goals.

The economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.

You would prefer "Ride Of The Valkyries" or "Bad Boys" or "Paint it Black" perhaps?

None of the above. I take law enforcement seriously and I expect the government should too.

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Because they're posting videos from their own raids, and those videos get lots of engagement, and the reactions to the videos that ICE posts is largely in line with what you'd expect given what footage ICE chooses to show and how they choose to show it.

Yes, but that is all far, far downstream of the media industrial complex's and the DNC's (but I repeat myself) decision to push the idea that immigration law doesnt matter and anyone who enforces it is a evil nazi. What options does ICE have? Attempt to arrest between 10-30 million illegals, give them multiple hearings, provide all legal care and shelter during said hearing period, while being fought tooth and claw by approximately half of the population? Lol, not a fucking chance.

ICE is doing the only thing it can do- demonstrate in a highly visible way that they will enforce the law, and the days of free-riding are over, might as well self-deport doe the thousand bucks and free plane ticket. If this offends the left, well, fuck it, they broke the system first.

Consider the possibility that you are in a bubble. Twitter will show you what it thinks you want to see. When I look at the last "cruel" ICE post on twitter, it shows 161k likes and 10k comments, almost all of which appear to be positive on the logged-out, incognito-mode mirror I'm checking.

I don't think faul_sname meant that the reaction is overwhelmingly negative. But if the positive reactions are along the lines of "hell yeah! make illegals afraid!" rather than "ah, normal policemen doing their work normally, how neat and orderly" then it's still support for the claim that ICE is deliberately projecting an image of themselves as scary chaotic mofos. Which they are. You might very well think that's a good thing because it'll intimidate illegals into self-deporting, but "ICE are scary goons" isn't left-wing slander, it's the image they're deliberately leaning into because that's what Trump's base wants them to do.

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I'm not saying that ICE is picking their own optics, I'm saying that the Trump camp are framing their immigration enforcement in a "fuck the left" way.

Okay, and I'm saying its only "fuck the left" because the left has abandoned any pretense of rule of law and embraced Anarcho-Tyranny. The left could end the controversy tomorrow, if they just said "actually yes, lets enforce immigration law and stop selectively chosing which criminals are good and which are bad. Then we can work on comprehensive reform."

"Fuck ICE fascists!" Is not the own the left thinks its is.

Yeah. The mainstream media is definitely trying to make ICE look maximally bad, but also there's been a conspicuous decision from the people managing ICE to maximize the intimidation impact of their activities.

Which might not even be a bad idea, considering it keeps the Red Tribe happy that 'something is being done', makes the blue tribe wail amusingly and seems to have cut down on people entering the country.

Its not just not a bad idea, its the only idea that will work. Self-deportations greatly outnumber ICE deportations, and have to do so for anything meaningful to be accomplished.

The legal system in America is simply unable to deal with millions of deportation hearings, you have to set examples pour encourager les autres.

No, it wouldn't because the optics are the primary deterrent and the right wouldn't control the bureaucratic infrastructure that would be overseeing this "efficient" process. Without the optics of swift deportation, left wing lawyers and nonprofits would be using every tool imaginable in order to become equally as efficient at delaying deportations.

Just go after American farm owners who pay illegals American money to work for them.

You don't even need to deport them, make it impossible for them to work, make them poorer in America than they are in Mexico, that will solve this permanently.

If you aren't targeting the employers of illegal immigrants, you aren't serious about immigration. If you aren't pushing e-verify, you aren't serious about immigration. If Trump EXPLICITLY says he's not enforcing immigration against farms and hotels, it's clear he's not serious about immigration.

Go after our agricultural industry and significantly increase food prices? What political benefit does that have?

If you aren't targeting the employers of illegal immigrants, you aren't serious about immigration

Most in the Republican party don't actually care about getting rid of all illegal immigration. They care about progressives and democrats giving the entire planet a green light to migrate here.

Pause for a moment and try to disabuse yourself of the literalness of the argument you hold yourself to. Nobody who runs the country actually thinks they can get rid of all illegals and survive it politically, but if we can project an image that says "We will deport you if you come or stay here illegally." then the likelihood of people trying to come here illegally plummets. This is far more preferable than quickly creating or using a system that the left will then take and turn into an entry permission slip for millions of illegals, like they already have. If Dems and Republicans want to re-implement something like that, then ok, but it will fuck with the optics and people will flood the border, and the media will report on the humanitarian crisis, and Democrats will adopt policy to allow more people in than what was agreed to. Overall, you want to perfect or streamline something that is ripe for left wing overreach. We know this because we just got out of an admin that did it.

I actually agree with most of what you wrote but projecting an image of:

"If you come here, you won't make any money because every farmer/hotel/roofing company will be too scared to even talk to you, let alone give you american dollars in exchange for your time. You have more economic opportunities in Mexico than you ever will here."

Would be even more effective. In the current version if you can get to Texas/Florida/California and find a farm to work for, you know you're pretty safe.

Most in the Republican party don't actually care about getting rid of all illegal immigration.

Sure but then doing dumb shit that degrades personal liberty and stretches norms about acceptable government force isn't worth the marginal benefit of deporting a small % of illegals? That's a horrible trade.

Given everything you say is true, who are my alternatives? Where is my better option?

I don't see one, and so I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, I'll take what I can get and ask for more.

That's fair enough, I guess I'd just hope you'd ask for more in general from your government and society

America is really down bad if that's where people's standard is lol

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You have a point. I can see how that would be the case, although that doesn't mean I think that it's necessarily worth the damage it causes to society in other ways or that I necessarily believe that this is the Trump camp's actual motivation.

I can't help but see every counter proposal made thus far as anything other than favorable to progressives and detrimental to Republicans and their voters.

If they try to be legally efficient and spend months checking boxes for every potential deportee, it slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.

If they defer to local law enforcement overseen by Democratic mayors, it slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.

If agents remove their masks and get doxxed by the public, it endangers agents and slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.

If they kneecap ICE agents' discretion when it comes to use of force, it slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.

Democrats and Republicans working together on maximizing efficiency and morality of deportations would be something, but it simply is not possible. Democrats will resist every step of the way.

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