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AFAICT, thus hubbub is just bad faith lies. We had a month-long national meltdown over a single missed piece of paperwork that had no material effect on the outcome. When progressives say "due process" what they mean is "continue the process until we win".
No, I actually talk to immigrants, including illegal ones, every day. Legal immigrants think ICE is snatching anyone, legal/illegal/citizen who happens to be brown and black-bagging them to never be seen again. I have had multiple strangers tell me they believed this. This is not an even slightly justifiable belief, but it is the natural result of the relentless propoganda being pushed by progressives.
And for the last time, this is not a justified belief. All data I can find says ICE error/failure rates are lower than almost every other government agency. Maybe instead of relentlessly hammering how understandable it is that innocent people are believing these lies, you could try correcting the lies.
Then please justify that claim.
That is exactly my point. This is the widespread belief. I agree it's obviously not actually happening, but it is so widespread that I don't think that fact can be attributed to "bad faith lies" alone - at least, not in the sense of lies perpetrated by enemies of ICE and which ICE is fighting back against with any real vigor. I think the prevalence of that paranoia proves that ICE is very bad at optics. Either they are deliberately encouraging this kind of paranoia, or at the absolute minimum, they are inordinately terrible at fighting back against the smears. Which brings me to my next point -
They have not made any PR efforts to counteract that impression. (To my knowledge! I would be happy to be corrected! But if they have, why do they never come up in these threads?) If what we're looking at is the result of an unwanted smear campaign, then where's the counter-propaganda? Where are the ICE spokesmen releasing prominent public statements to the tune of "we have nothing against legal immigrants and we will do everything in our power to make sure they are safe, we take the risk of a raid affecting the innocent very very seriously, you have nothing to worry about", to camera, in so many words? It's one thing to be accused of being evil by your enemies' propaganda. It's another to let that propaganda spread indefinitely without supplying your own side of the story. At that point, I can't help but think that you like the story your enemies are telling about you. Particularly when half of your own supporters will cheerfully say that yes, you are creating a climate of fear and that's a good thing because [galaxy brain reasoning about incentivizing self-deportation].
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