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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24903 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are two three angles:

Angle 1

Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]

Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)

This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.

Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.

I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.

The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”

People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.

This is exactly the kind of situation I was afraid of when ICE started running amok in states where they aren't wanted. I don't see how it can be a "narrative" when we point out that the thing happened that we warned would happen. Giving a paramilitary organization the power to make people disappear without due process was always a recipe for disaster. These ICE agents now appear to be so power-drunk that they are shooting unarmed white women, something normal cops very rarely do.

From what I can see in the video, the ICE agent chose to put himself in front of the SUV to block the woman from leaving. Then she called his bluff and began driving anyway. At that point, shooting her made no difference in his ability to survive the situation. Even if she were killed instantly by a headshot, the car would still have the same amount of momentum when it hit the officer. If anything, he could have gotten out of the way faster if he weren't dealing with his gun. I don't see any justification here.

  • -20

Words have meanings. ICE is not a paramilitary, they're a law enforcement organization, regardless of whether you approve of the laws they enforce or the ways they enforce them. They are also not "making people disappear without due process." They are sending people back to their home countries. There is nothing illegal or evil about doing this, there is barely a square inch on the entire planet where you will not be deported if you do not have a citizenship or a valid visa. America is the only major country on the planet where people think that basic immigration enforcement is evil.

Then she called his bluff and began driving anyway.

What you are describing is called "attempted murder of a police officer" and it's kind of a big deal. People are allowed to try to prevent their own murder. Whether or not you, in hindsight, from the comfort of your keyboard, are able to see a way that the outcome could have been different, does not make it less legally justified because the law in its wisdom does not require the victims of crimes to be omniscient when they are deciding how to defend themselves.

They are also not "making people disappear without due process." They are sending people back to their home countries. (…) America is the only major country on the planet where people think that basic immigration enforcement is evil.

This strikes me as a motte and bailey - what does "basic immigration enforcement" mean? I don't object to deporting people. I object to grabbing them off the streets without warning. It's the difference between serving an eviction notice to a tenant-turned-squatter, and physically throwing them out without even letting them grab their stuff. The latter is inhumane behavior even in cases where a normal eviction notice would be legitimate and justified.

Now, maybe you want to argue that illegals are too good at evading detection, so that if immigration officers simply presented them with an order to leave within 10 days, they'd simply skip town while staying in the country - making immediate arrest the only viable recourse. Last time I got into this on this forum, we got quite deep in the weeds of this question. But even if I were to grant that the current circumstances demand these extraordinary measures, extraordinary measures is what they are, and describing them as "making people disappear" is not an unfair characterization.

The scope of the issue at this point is essentially intractable. The 'brutality' of ICE is partly a calculated effort to change the vibe enough to encourage more self-deportation of illegal immigrants.

I live in a SEA country with roughly 20-30% of the population allegedly made of illegal immigrants from neighboring poorer countries. I see immigration checkpoints and forced deportation of illegals fairly frequently, yet nobody external to this country cares too much about it. Obviously the lack of birthright citizenship in this country means there's far less issues with 'wait one of the 20 people we caught with no paperwork, minimal English and in a sketchy workplace situation was actually born here, MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION' that abounds in the West. The vast majority of people with the resources to make it to the USA are facing a low-moderate decrease in living standards from being removed, they're not being sent to Mordor or 'disappeared'

The vast majority of people with the resources to make it to the USA are facing a low-moderate decrease in living standards from being removed, they're not being sent to Mordor

This is fair, and worth repeating. But my primary concern is not with the long-term decrease in living standards once they're back home - my concern is with the inordinate amount of suffering involved in grabbing someone from their home without letting them pack their bags, say goodbye to their neighbors and coworkers, figure out what to do about pets, take a last stroll around the neighborhood that was their home for [X] years, etc. It's the difference between having to move, and having your house burn down. That (and of course the threat of violence during the raids themselves) is what I referred to as "brutal". That is what strikes me as being in violation of the Golden Rule, as being unkind, cruel, inhumane about ICE raids. Not the end goal of sending the illegals back to their country of origin.

Nothing can convince me that a not-otherwise-criminal illegal immigrant morally "deserves" that kind of treatment. You can make a pragmatic argument that, in practice, this is the only way to ensure they are deported at all, because they would otherwise vanish into the night the moment the officers' eyes are off them. But that just begs the question of how we got to that situation. It should not be beyond the state's capacity to "tag" an individual once identified by law enforcement, such that if they have not left the borders within [X] days they can instantly be tracked down and arrested. I'm taking ankle monitors, hell, maybe daily check-ins of some sort. Just something so that no human being has to suffer the inordinate stress and grief of being torn from their home literally overnight without the chance to put their affairs in order - an amount of suffering which is totally out of proportion with the very diffuse amount of harm that any given not-otherwise-criminal illegal immigrant causes by their continued presence in a host country.

my concern is with the inordinate amount of suffering involved in grabbing someone from their home without letting them pack their bags, say goodbye to their neighbors and coworkers, figure out what to do about pets, take a last stroll around the neighborhood that was their home for [X] years, etc. It's the difference between having to move, and having your house burn down.

I seriously do not comprehend this level of bleeding heart. If you sneak into a country illegally it comes with the territory that the life you build there will be precarious and liable to be snatched away at a moment’s notice. If we let people pack up all their possessions and move at their leisure then we are imposing no penalty on them, there would be no deterrence. There should be a degree of fear associated with living in a country illegally, ideally this will make some number self deport.

I suppose part of it is that think of illegal-immigrant status - particularly for people who outstayed a visa, rather than coming in illegally - as… well, not not a big deal exactly, but not the kind of thing that prima facie justifies any kind of retaliatory violence. Outstaying a visa seems more comparable to filing your taxes wrong than driving without a license, and still more similar to driving without a license than to drug trafficking. It's the kind of rule-breaking where if a critical mass of people do it at a time, it begins to harm the country in aggregate, so obviously the government takes measures to prevent it - but where a given rule-breaker isn't much more morally culpable than a jaywalker or someone who forgets a stray $50 on their tax reports.

To put it another way, I recognize at a rational, central-planning level that there must be limits on immigration, but I don't feel any personal animus against someone who circumvents those limits on the margins. My gut reaction isn't "this is an evil thing to do", it's "well, that seems a bit selfish in the grand scheme of things, a more virtuous person would think about the big picture and refrain from adding another straw to the camel's back… but eh, it is not given to just anybody to instinctively think like a central planner about the diffuse economic effects of excess untaxable unskilled labor, this is just some poor shmuck cutting corners and were I in their circumstances I might have taken the same leap". By all means we should try and take broad-level measures so that the opportunities for ignoring the rules close, but, as much as is possible, we shouldn't take this out on the actual human beings involved, who aren't doing anything that emotionally resonates with me as egregiously "immoral".

All of which being said, I'm also just a strong believer in kindness/charity/the Golden Rule. Even in cases where my gut reaction to a crime is disgust or resentment (and there are such crimes, illegal immigration just isn't among them), my higher conscience still generally tells me that to the extent that such a thing can be achieved while still suitably deterring further crimes of the same type, the individuals at issue should still be treated as well as possible - should still be given as much of a shot at happiness as possible without putting innocents at a disadvantage. Presumably your underlying moral principles differ somewhat.

I think ICE is using barbaric tactics and if we were serious about this whole get rid of the illegal immigrants thing we'd have passed Verify and mostly avoided the theatrics. But this view just seems so strangely naive. They didn't make a mistake on their tax, in the metaphor they've just decided that they're not going to pay taxes. They're blatantly and intentionally defying their host country's right to decide who is within their borders. I wouldn't feel like I was doing an oopsie if I decided to violate the borders and laws of my host country. The idea that they need to be served individual papers to be informed that their evicted is baffling, those papers were posted on whatever port of entry they came through. The time to say goodbye to their neighbors was before their stay became illegal. If this was them accidentally missing a renewal or thinking their stay ended next week rather than this week and it was all a clerical error then I could see what you mean but that's not what is happening. These are people who have been here for years and years after their legal status ended if they had one to begin with.

this is just some poor shmuck cutting corners and were I in their circumstances I might have taken the same leap". By all means we should try and take broad-level measures so that the opportunities for ignoring the rules close, but, as much as is possible, we shouldn't take this out on the actual human beings involved, who aren't doing anything that emotionally resonates with me as egregiously "immoral".

Recent experience says that you can't have both of these. Because this makes you subject to the very attack that has caused these sorts of ICE shenanigans and the general polarization around immigration: anyone who knows you're squeamish in this way can exploit it by refusing to enforce immigration laws on a local level and then hammer your empathy when someone from ICE finally gets that guy who's slipped past for a half-decade.

At which point, you'll be put in a position to pick a side and end up like everyone else.

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without letting them [wind down their life here]

They had literal years, decades even, to do this. How much time is enough?

That is what strikes me as being in violation of the Golden Rule, as being unkind, cruel, inhumane about ICE raids.

I'd rather them prosecute the traffickers directly, but "daring to remove trafficked humans" might legitimately be the most punishment for the pro-trafficking faction that the anti-trafficking faction can muster.

They had literal years, decades even, to do this. How much time is enough?

Quoting myself from elsewhere in the thread:

I don't think human psychology is such that a mass message of this kind is fungible with a personal "you, yes you, we know who and where you are - you need to scram" notification, for much the same reason that a big sign that says 'don't step on the grass' is not as effective as a guard personally yelling 'hey, you, with the ugly sweater, get off the grass' - even though, in the latter case, many more people will comply with the verbal command than escalate to physical violence. We can wish human behavior were more rational, but you've got to work with what you've got.

Sure, but what actually happened here was half the country going "here's a free plane ticket, come on in, we'll never enforce this law, and you should ignore it- the guard may personally tell you you're in violation but he can't do anything, don't worry".

The guard now has the power to enforce the law, and has proceeded to do that.

without letting them pack their bags, say goodbye to their neighbors and coworkers, figure out what to do about pets, take a last stroll around the neighborhood that was their home for [X] years

As the reply to you states, a good chunk of these are already in the "this is the time you have to pack your bags and say goodbye" stage. For the ones that have not, they've been on notice since January 2025 when some official got on TV and said the guard's power was coming back, and literally half the nation (and statistically, where the trafficked humans are most likely to live) went into hysterics about "the guard is finally removing people".

Killing enemy soldiers is not breaking Golden Rule.

It might not be their fault they were there, but I'm not actually owed special protection from things that are not my fault, and trying to force me to grant it is an injury much like removing trafficked humans is to you. You could have bargained to change that law, and compromised with me, but you didn't do that. So, by Golden Rule Your Rules, Fairly...

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describing them as "making people disappear" is not an unfair characterization.

When Pinochet "made people disappear" in Chile, they had cement blocks tied to their feet and were thrown into the Pacific Ocean from a helicopter. Then the government never acknowledged that this happened.

These death flights have been used by proper dictators to "make people disappear" all over the world. The Trump method of "disappearing" people is very different, and using the same word to describe them is an obvious motte-and-baily.

Physically removed, so to speak.

Your second paragraph would be my argument against your first.

The thing I would add is that the Trump administration has offered a free plane ticket to anywhere plus thousands of dollars to anyone willing to self-deport. That was their opportunity to pack their stuff and arrange an orderly return to their home country. Everybody who is still here, is here because they rejected that opportunity. To go back to the tenant analogy - you served them an eviction notice, that was their chance to pack up their stuff and move out in an orderly fashion. If they keep staying, virtually nobody disagrees that it's legitimate to have the sheriff show up and physically remove them and their possessions.

I don't think human psychology is such that a mass message of this kind is fungible with a personal "you, yes you, we know who and where you are - you need to scram" notification, for much the same reason that a big sign that says 'don't step on the grass' is not as effective as a guard personally yelling 'hey, you, with the ugly sweater, get off the grass' - even though, in the latter case, many more people will comply with the verbal command than escalate to physical violence. We can wish human behavior were more rational, but you've got to work with what you've got.

Regardless, I must once again return to a key point: it was not my intent to get into a debate about the practical merits of the "brutal" measures. Maybe they are necessary! Maybe they are morally justifiable! But that still leaves them quite different from "basic immigration enforcement".

Does the notice to them need to be in triplicate?

They know they are here illegal. They know there is a concerted effort to get them to leave. They could easily google and understand they will be treated nicely if they self deport.

A bunch of the people I've seen who have been deported have literally had multiple court days along the way in which they've been told to leave the country due to being unable to renew the visas, yet remained. The majority of the illegal immigrants aren't brought in via coyotes without ever encountering the system at all. They're just overstayers who've likely received explicit communications to leave.

It's the difference between serving an eviction notice to a tenant-turned-squatter, and physically throwing them out without even letting them grab their stuff.

Certainly these are different things, and I support both.

This strikes me as a motte and bailey - what does "basic immigration enforcement" mean? I don't object to deporting people. I object to grabbing them off the streets without warning. It's the difference between serving an eviction notice to a tenant-turned-squatter, and physically throwing them out without even letting them grab their stuff. The latter is inhumane behavior even in cases where a normal eviction notice would be legitimate and justified.

We've literally spent a year telling everyone that the party is over and it's time to leave, and offering them thousands of dollars if they just go willingly. You're the one doing a motte-and-bailey - "warning" in practice means a decade of catch and release, ignored court appointments and endless illegitimate appeals.

America is the only major country on the planet where people think that basic immigration enforcement is evil.

America is also the only country on the planet that protects free speech and the right to bear arms. Maybe I'll care what those other countries are doing when they've established basic freedoms.

People are allowed to try to prevent their own murder.

And maybe she was trying to prevent her own murder as well? She just saw a group of masked thugs surrounding her car. How could she know it was safe to surrender to them?

  • -15

America is also the only country on the planet that protects free speech and the right to bear arms.

Switzerland?

I don't think free speech in Switzerland is quite as expansive as in the US, and they have a few exceptions for incitement or hate speech, which I oppose. But the US does have a few exceptions as well, and in the most part I think they're fairly solid. I do respect the US for their ongoing and steadfast refusal to recognise 'hate speech' as a valid concept, but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that it's the only country on the planet with free speech.

America is also the only country on the planet that protects free speech and the right to bear arms. Maybe I'll care what those other countries are doing when they've established basic freedoms.

Do you think that it's a "basic freedom" to be allowed to live anywhere you want without citizenship or a visa? Nowhere in the world is this considered a right, not even in the USA.

And maybe she was trying to prevent her own murder as well? She just saw a group of masked thugs surrounding her car. How could she know it was safe to surrender to them?

Don't be disingenuous. She knew they were ICE because that's the entire reason she was blocking them with her car.

Do you think that it's a "basic freedom" to be allowed to live anywhere you want without citizenship or a visa?

Not necessarily. I'm just saying that I'm not convinced by the "other countries do it" argument. The question we should be asking is, what have we done so right that we're arguably the only country on earth with basic freedoms? I think our skepticism of federal authority has a lot to do with that. It's hard to enforce draconian immigration policies without infringing on our freedoms. In any situation where we have to choose between freedom and safety, we err on the side of freedom. I think a few people being murdered by illegal immigrants is a small price to pay.

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