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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.
I don't understand why everyone is beating around the bush (actually I do, it's partisanship, or in rationalist speak "in-group bias").
ICE's mission obviously isn't a bad mission, and most people agree with the overall goal.
ICE's conduct is obviously not good, especially in an American context, which is a country that (ideally) has a stronger aversion to government overreach than most.
"Muh masks" seems to have become a meme here, but it's real. You're Americans, why are you okay being cucked by your government. Masked non-uniformed men are stuffing people into vans. Not just that, they're sending them to third world prisons??? That's insane. Obviously it's nowhere near as bad as the NKVD, but why are you okay taking even a step in that direction? What if the Democrats spin up the "super ATF" who start kidnapping people who fuck up their gun paperwork into unmarked vans to be sent to Romania? Government overreach is bad, period.
Judges, prosecutors, and the supermajority of law enforcement agents manage to do their jobs with their faces uncovered. ICE agents could too. Doxxing ICE agents is illegal and prosecuting people who do that is almost a bipartisan slam dunk. It would be especially bipartisan if ICE didn't make themselves such easy targets by acting like NKVD-wannabes. Most Americans don't like the current immigration situation. So make ICE not maximally shit looking, and then let the Democratic leadership alienate themselves protesting something Americans like, instead of currently, where Americans are starting to dislike ICE.
Further, the actions of ICE are WILDLY UNDERMINED by the fact the administration is EXPLICITLY SAYING they won't go after farm or hotel labour (why hotels?????) If they were serious about immigrants, they'd go after them where they were in large concentrations. They'd use their political capital to push e-verify. They'd go after the AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO PAY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AMERICAN DOLLARS. But they aren't, because they don't want to. This massively undermines the legitimacy of ICE.
They made ICE maximally inflammatory, and then you act suprised the Dems are inflamed? This is the sibling equivalent of winding up your little brother then acting suprised when he tries to kick you in the nuts. You'd get a lot more parental (american people) sympathy if you weren't obviously trying to piss him off and were actually doing the thing you said is your goal, because right now it just looks like you're trying to piss him off and don't care about the goal.
They're not US citizens, I don't give a fuck. It's extremely sane, and extremely awesome. FAFO, lawbreakers.
Gun people are meticulous about paperwork, and don't have much sympathy for people who don't do their paperwork. FAFO, lawbreakers.
I have already covered this before.
Perfect is the enemy of good. When the GOP fields a "deport all lawbreakers except hotel and farm worker candidate" versus a "deport all lawbreakers" candidate, I'll vote for the latter. But so far, we've only ever been offered the former.
I'm not surprised, I'm indifferent. They are inflamed because I exist. I don't care that they don't like it. No matter what I do, they will be inflamed and continuously encroach on me and mine. It's war now, war to the knife. The time for talking is over.
I write this not to wage the culture war, but to express what (I think) many who support these ICE actions are feeling and thinking. In the context above, supporting ICE makes sense. Your use of caps lock made me think you were genuinely distressed and looking to understand the other side. Maybe my answer is disappointing because there is nothing there for you to relate to (hopefully I'm wrong!), but I really think that many people feel this way and therefore really do not care what ICE does to illegals.
‘Trump isn’t going after the problematic illegals’ is a reasoned criticism. The guys in a Home Depot parking lot are probably not people I want my kids hanging around with once they’re done with work(I mean, they’re roustabouts), but that doesn’t make them the worst people. The worst ones are outside of employment, making their money off of other illegals or crime.
Now farm and slaughterhouse workers are probably the least problematic ones, when native citizens have the choice between doing those jobs and jail they choose jail. Somebody has to pick the crops and slaughter the chickens and thats a very reasonable principled exception.
???????
That’s not principled at all.
If your “principle” is “no illegals, except for these specific jobs that natives shouldn’t sully themselves with” then that’s just a comedic farce and the left would absolutely have every right to spit in ICE’s face in that case.
I'm reminded of an ironic line someone posted in a comment back on slatestarcodex or perhaps the subreddit, well before TheMotte was a thing:
I'm also reminded of a discussion I had on the SlateStarCodex subreddit with someone probably around 2020, when they were arguing that Twitter was being perfectly principled in selectively censoring Trump, since they were following the principle of "I don't want Trump to speak" (it might have been some different public figure on some different platform - my memory is fuzzy).
If you make principles sufficiently absolute or sufficiently bespoke, then you can make any behavior principled. Which, sort of like "everything is political," is really just word games, since the entire point of words having meaning is to discriminate between things that match that word and things that don't, and this destroys this ability to discriminate between "principled" and "unprincipled."
Either that, or perhaps it forces people to explicitly declare which principles are involved, forcing people to recognize different principles that each other have that were only implicit until then.
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