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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   27886 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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The irony of you mentioning "equivocation" further down this thread, as any equivocation—to the extent that it eventually occurred—was initially enabled here when you made this comment and the false equivalence it contains. You discuss ICE and anti-ICE false positive rates as if they're different sides of the same coin, yet:

ICE false positive: ICE was wrong in incorrectly arresting someone.
ICE true positive: ICE was right in correctly arresting someone.
Anti-ICE false positive: They were wrong in harassing someone that had nothing to do with ICE.
Anti-ICE true positive: They were wrong in harassing an ICE officer off-duty or wrong in obstructing an ICE officer on-duty.

There's not a "positive" for which anti-ICE can be in the right. Furthermore, ICE is right X% of the time and wrong (1-X%) of the time, whereas anti-ICE is wrong 100% of the time.

You could take this even further:

Anti-(good-ICE)-true-positive: Protesters harassing ICE while they are conducting an operation lawfully

Anti-(bad-ICE)-true-positive: Protesters harassing ICE while they are conducting an operation unlawfully

Unless ICE has a 100% conduct-the-operation-lawfully rate, at least some of these will A(BI)TPs.

There's not a "positive" for which anti-ICE can be in the right. Furthermore, ICE is right X% of the time and wrong (1-X%) of the time, whereas anti-ICE is wrong 100% of the time.

That's simply a value judgment that doesn't get us anywhere. Being anti-ICE is only "wrong" when the activity in furtherance of that position breaks the law. You may not like the fact that people are protesting, recording their activity, or warning the community of their presence, but all of these things are both legal and constitutionally protected.

That's simply a value judgment that doesn't get us anywhere. Being anti-ICE is only "wrong" when the activity in furtherance of that position breaks the law.

One of my values is that incorrect arrests are bad, although incorrect arrests are sometimes incurred in the "furtherance" of correct arrests, and there's a tradeoff between incorrect and correct arrests if one seeks correct arrests.

Another one of my values is that harassing people is bad, whether or not the person's occupation is law enforcement—if they're law enforcement, this especially goes while they're on duty. Perhaps your values differ on this front.

Either way, let’s play along and evaluate whether anti-ICE breaks the law in the "furtherance of [their] position" with the evidence that we have. I figured I'd take a look myself at Minnesota statutes given sometimes you might not have done your legal due diligence before commenting.

I was using "harassment" somewhat colloquially, but there's Subdivision 1. of Minnesota's Disorderly Conduct:

Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:

Where (3) of Subdivision 1. is:

engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

I would say impeding the path of an individual or group of individuals, blowing loud whistles in front of them, following them and shouting things like "FUCK YOU NAZI," following them and blowing whistles at them and honking at them, would qualify as "noisy conduct" or "abusive language" that could be reasonably interpreted as an attempt to "arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others."

There's also statutes on harassment per se:

A person who commits any of the acts listed in paragraph (c) is guilty of a gross misdemeanor if the person, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person:

(1) directly or indirectly, or through third parties, manifests a purpose or intent to injure the person, property, or rights of another by the commission of an unlawful act;

(2) follows, monitors, or pursues another, whether in person or through any available technological or other means;

Likewise, impeding the path of an individual or group of individuals, blowing loud whistles in front of them, following them and shouting things like 'FUCK YOU NAZI,' following them and blowing whistles at them and honking at them, could be reasonably interpreted as an attempt to "follow[] monitor[], or pursue[] another, whether in person or through any available technological or other mean... with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person." To intimidate would already qualify.

Then there's Obstruction. As (1) states:

(1) obstructs, hinders, or prevents the lawful execution of any legal process, civil or criminal, or apprehension of another on a charge or conviction of a criminal offense;

Once again, doing things such as the aforementioned "impeding the path of an individual or group of individuals, blowing loud whistles in front of them, following them and shouting things like ‘FUCK YOU NAZI,’ following them and blowing whistles at them and honking at them," would apply, much less hindering the lawful execution of any legal process by pathways such as driving your vehicle at them.

I would certainly feel hindered and obstructed at my job if a crowd showed up to do things including, but not limited to—blocking my path, surrounding me, and/or blowing whistles in my face.

I realize that you're the lawyer and I'm not, but I didn't think that harassing people (as we see in these videos) is constitutionally protected.

Is it really constitutionally protected to warn a felon of the presence of the police? Like let's say Alice gets a phone alert that a white murderer who killed three black kids escaped from prison. Alice sides with the murder because she's a white supremacist. Alice later sees several police cruisers on a nearby street. Worried that her favorite convict is nearby and will be returned to prison, she starts blowing a whistle and making a ruckus to help the convict escape.

That is constitutionally protected speech?

There's a review on the history of such speech in section 2(a) of this paper.

Ok, but the standard is Brandenburg and Brandenburg says you can't incite imminent lawless action. Evading the police is lawless action, and alerting criminals to police is inciting them to flee.

In your example Alice isn't inciting lawless action, the murderer is going to try to escape regardless. At best, she's aiding or facilitating it, which isn't squarely covered by Brandenburg.

If you care to read the section aptly titled The Existing Crime-Facilitating Speech Cases is a fairly comprehensive survey of cases on it.

Would you like to specify which case you think matches Alice's example? Because the ones that match most closely take my side, for instance:

Haig v. Agee concluded that an ex-CIA agent's "repeated disclosures of intelligence operations and names of intelligence personnel" were as constitutionally unprotected as "'the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops,"' at least when the disclosures were done for "the declared purpose of obstructing intelligence operations and the recruiting of intelligence personnel."'

and

Several federal circuit cases have held that speech that intentionally facilitates tax evasion, illegal immigration, drugmaking, and contract killing is constitutionally unprotected.

At most your source is saying there's a complex history of caselaw here and the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on this action specifically.

The very next sentence is

But the Court didn't explain the scope of this exception-it spent just a few sentences on the subject-and in particular didn't discuss whether the exception reached beyond threats to national security. And the following year, the Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware that knowingly publishing the names of people who weren't complying with a boycott was constitutionally protected, even though some people who weren't observing the boycott had been violently attacked, and the publication clearly could facilitate such attacks.

I agree, the caselaw is complex and there isn't a definitive ruling one way or the other. In particular, I don't think Brandenburg is deciding here, it's just an unresolved question.

Do you believe "warning a felon of police presence" is the best analogy for the average case of people warning illegal immigrants about ICE? Isn't unlawful presence a civil offense, and a first offense illegal entry into the US a federal misdemeanor, so nowhere near as bad as a felony from a legal standpoint?

If you compared it to another non-felony, like having the fines from an overdue library book going to collections, do you believe that warning your buddy that a debt collector is going to their house should not be allowed under the First Amendment? Even if you think such a warning is anti-social and breaks the social contract of paying fines or debts that you accrue, surely you can see that the choice of analogy biases the analysis here?

Unlawful entry is criminal, not civil, under 8 USC 1325 carrying a maximum prison sentence of up to six months on the first offense (higher on subsequent offenses). That makes it a Class B misdemeanor (18 USC 3559).

So misdemeanor, no probs right? Still way worse than a library fine, but less than a murder. But a significant number of people ICE targets are felons, as in having committed a crime inside the US which they have been found guilty of. And a significant number of those who are not are guilty of committing crimes in their home countries. ICE's method in Sanctuary Cities is largely to go to locations where released criminals are, arrest the criminal, and grab anyone else there who shouldn't be here.

Cato (a pretty hostile source) says:

The ICE data show that the share of immigrants detained after an ICE arrest who had criminal convictions has fallen in half since January from 62 percent of detainees to 31 percent in November.

Note they say convictions, many of those without convictions have pending criminal charges. And then, as they say in the headline, only 5% have violent convictions.

So let's take that smallest number, 5%. You only have a 5% chance each time you mob ICE of preventing a violent convicted felon from being deported. If you make a habit of it, say you interfere in 10 arrests, you have at least a 40% chance of having interfered in the arrest of a violent felon. Great work!

Edit: I changed it to "At least 40%" because from my understanding, ICE often targets violent felons, and then catches others unlawfully present. So this is kind of a floor, the likelihood of a violent felon being caught in any given raid is likely higher than 5%.

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