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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   27728 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Every White Male In Minnesota is now ICE

First I saw the video of a MSM Cameraman who was accused by a crowd of being ICE due to the car he drove. He himeslf was Anti-ICE and fine with opening his vehicle up and showing that all he had inside was camera equipment. The crowd was not mollified by this, their demands just grew more ridiculous. "Get another car! Rent a car!" They learned no lessons about stereotyping people based on their race and vehicle. It was the victim's fault for looking like the wrong type of person.

Then I saw the video of the tech workers sitting down for lunch together. One of the gentlemen was on an Anti-ICE Signal chat and saw a notification that was accusing him and his friends of being ICE. At first it seemed funny, but then the mob descended. And of course, despite this mob not having any badges, several of them covering up their faces, generally being a threatening bunch, these tech workers were expected to give out details about where they work, where they live, what their occupation is, their politics, etc. lest they face the wrath of the mob.

The videos are abundant once you start looking. The Tree Trimmer who has a caravan of Anti-ICE cars following them around, honking, for the crime of driving a work van with tinted windows. The tall white guy just walking by himself with a warm jacket.

The irony of it all is that this is what anti ICE groups are accusing ICE of doing. Going to places and harassing people based off of stereotypes without any legal authority to do so. Demanding evidence to prove that someone belongs here.

However, that's just not true. ICE goes after specific people who have a final order of dismissal from an Immigration judge. When they do so, they often find other illegal immigrants living in the same area or working at the same business, as that is the nature of these things. Oftentimes these people also have final orders of removal. And so it goes.

From January to October of last year, only 170 US citizens were detained by ICE as reported by ProPublica. Of those 170, many were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Compare this with 234,211 removals (I don't have data on arrests or detentions, but I can assume the number of arrests/detentions is greater than removals. The "US Citizen arrest rate" is at most 0.07% of the ICE arrestees, probably much smaller due to fact that there are more detentions than removals.

In July 2025, during street arrests and similar activities, ICE arrested some 4,494 persons who had no criminal record and no final order of deportation. If ICE were just arresting people who looked different, this is the statistic that would show it. The vast majority of Black people (96%) and Hispanic people (79%) in this country are citizens, so, if a government dragnet arrests a bunch of Hispanic people just for their skin color, we would expect about four out of five of them to turn out to be U.S. citizens. The ratio would be even higher in this dataset, because we’re already excluding people with final orders of deportation.


Of the 4,494 immigration suspects arrested in July, 209 have been released (<5%). 30 won their cases and received some form of formal relief. The others were released without much detail, but it seems safe to assume that ICE realized that they were likely to win relief in some form and pre-emptively granted it themselves. Zero—I repeat, zero—of those arrested were U.S. citizens.

The narrative of, "ICE is just going to immigrant communities and asking to see papers and then arresting anyone who can't prove without a shadow of a doubt that they're here legally," does not hold up to scrutiny. But it seems like Anti-ICE people are assuming this is their playbook because it's what they would do, and are now doing.

From January to October of last year, only 170 US citizens were detained by ICE as reported by ProPublica. Of those 170, many were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Compare this with 234,211 removals (I don't have data on arrests or detentions, but I can assume the number of arrests/detentions is greater than removals. The "US Citizen arrest rate" is at most 0.07% of the ICE arrestees, probably much smaller due to fact that there are more detentions than removals.

It's interesting that you preceded this little tidbit with examples of four non-ICE being accused of ICE. How many people accused of being ICE actually were ICE? If you're implying that a certain false positive rate is acceptable, at least show that the behavior you're complaining about is above that rate.

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.

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.

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.

More comments

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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