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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15775 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Sorry I didn't get to reply to this in a more timely fashion.

I'm happy to accept for the sake of argument all of your criticism of Trump, but it's unclear to me how Trump not doing any of that is going to influence an ICE officer who was hired by the Obama administration when he's considering whether or not to shoot someone, any more than the whistleblower safeguards would.

You're laying out a lot of reasonable concerns about the Trump administration's actions, but the one that it seems to me could have prevented the shooting - the straw that broke the camel's back, here - was deciding to not send ICE into Minneapolis. Trump could fire Homan and Noem and go after Hatch Act offenders tomorrow and still send ICE agents into Minneapolis. And of course it's not clear to me that a different President wouldn't have sent ICE agents into Minneapolis.

Based on accounts from Central American women that ICE took into custody, the Southern Poverty Law Center concluded that the January raids “trampled legal rights, subjected mothers and children to terrifying and unnecessary police encounters, and [tore] families apart.” Their report alleges that ICE agents often failed to show warrants or ask for permission before entering the homes of the migrants they sought. At the time of the raids, many of the targets were complying with the rules and regulations set forth by immigration courts, such as wearing electronic ankle bracelets and keeping up with court appointments, according to SPLC’s report. Separate news accounts show that ICE agents picked up young people on their way to school. Against protocol, they even entered “sensitive locations” such as churches, Vice reports.

The effect of these raids on the immigrant community has been well-documented. Kids have been taken out of school. Their families have stopped going out—even to buy food—turning typically bustling immigrant locales into ghost towns, Esther Yu-Hsi Lee at ThinkProgress writes. Even in immigrant-friendly cities like New York, communities are paralyzed with fear.

This was written in 2016 about the Obama administration.

Furthermore, Congress recently voted to increase ICE's budget to accommodate a larger enforcement capability. So it seems to me that the system breakdown that led to this moment was not merely an arbitrary Presidential decision - it was due to our democratic system of government working as advertised. Trump was elected on a strong anti-illegal-immigration platform, Congress, in the course of its Constitutional duty, approved the funds to carry that out, ICE agents were deployed to enforce the laws, and that's what led to the shooting.

I think it's probably fair to criticize the techniques that ICE is using to enforce US immigration law. But ICE using smarter or softer-touch techniques doesn't, it seems to me, guarantee that a shooting won't happen, although it could reduce the odds.

Furthermore, your post claims that ICE agents are trained to avoid walking in front of cars. If that is true, it seems fair to me to criticize the officer for walking in front of the car. But it seems unfair to blame the series of events on "the system" given that the system in place would have prohibited his conduct (if your claims are true.)

I guess I am still trying to drill down on where you think the system failed exactly in this case. Is "the system" democracy? That would certainly make sense of your complaints about the allegedly corrupt conduct of the Trump administration.

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