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This forum basically presents the cause of protests in Minneapolis as "blue tribe doesn't want immigration policy enforced". If this claim is controversial, I can back it up by linking several comments from last week saying as such, so I hope you don't feel strawmanned if you're broadly anti-protestor.
I want to present the claim that what ICE is doing in Minneapolis is inefficient at its stated goals, broadly unlawful/lawless, and disproportionate. I'm going to steelman the cause of the protestors - why it's good to go around notifying others of ICE's presence, making noise, and generally annoying them. I'm not going to support any form of unlawful action with this post, as I think it's wrong and unwise for one's personal safety to get into fights with law enforcement - but I'm going to explain why 10,000 people took to the streets in Minneapolis on Friday.
I'm using Gemini to get stats for this post, but all of the writing is entirely my own. Many of the examples I take are drawn from a recent twitter thread
In 2025, there were roughly 15,000 violent crimes in the entire state of Minnesota. Let us assume all of them occurred in Minneapolis, all of them were committed by a different illegal immigrant who was immediately released on bail or sentenced to ten minutes by liberal activist judges and then released, and all of those illegals reside in Minneapolis today. 170 murderers, 2159 rapes, 2836 robberies, 9826 aggravated assaults, all of them committed by a different illegal immigrant who is now at large in Minneapolis.
ICE has deployed approximately 3000 federal agents to Minneapolis. Supposing ICE is in fact, after the bad guys, they should probably be done by now, because they only had to arrest five people each in order to get all of the highly criminal illegals out.
The problem is, they keep wasting their time by engaging in completely lawless and unbelievable actions. These have a few flavours:
a) Firstly, as shown in many videos, ICE takes time out of their day to stop and question, photograph, detain, and arrest people for blowing whistles near them, yelling at them, and generally being annoying. I sympathize that these agents have some legitimate fears of the public, there are bad dudes who want to hurt cops. But it seems uncertain that any of these actions are actually intended to promote their safety, rather than intimidate protestors. Take a look at what started the entire Alex Pretti confrontation - they pepper sprayed a woman for what purpose, with what justification?
b) Secondly, the current immigration enforcement protocol seems to act on people who prosecutorial discretion should be utilized for, and has very consistently in the past, and then the government doesn't even bother to defend its acts to judges. Take this case, wherein we have a highly sympathetic detainee - but someone who nonetheless, I acknowledge, ordered removed many years ago, but not yet removed. That said, the government's position to the judge isn't even that they should do this, are allowed to do this, or want to do this - they literally offered no argument as to why she shouldn't be released. No, seriously, they submitted a three sentence response that said "we have no argument to present" - and then didn't just release the person themselves, without being ordered to? Why not? For what purpose does the government take actions that it does not represent to a court that it agrees with? For what purpose does the government require judges and court costs to issue orders to make them take actions that they have no argument to oppose?
Here's another case, this one directly out of Minnesota. Again, ICE should have plenty of evil criminals and pedophiles and whatnot to chase down - how and why do they have the time to go get this guy who appears to be causing no issues, other than being illegal? I understand that in the minds of many, that is sufficient, and that anyone who's illegal should be deported - ok, but what is pursuing that goal worth? Is it worth sending agents of the state to chase people down? The optimal level of any crime isn't zero, there are costs in lives, time, and tax dollars to enforce any law, and sending the government door to door for this guy is an insane waste of resources.
c) Thirdly, many of ICE's immigration enforcement actions are beyond "prosecutorial discretion should be used" - and thus, making the case for protest more important - they are actually lawless and illegal themselves. Take this case out of Minnesota. Let's assume that whatever this minor criminal history described is, it's highly objectionable, and this guy should be deported. You cannot just detain and deport someone with a pending application for lawful permanent residency, who is otherwise following the rules. If you want to deport him, you should file the paperwork to adjust his status, and give him a chance to contest it. This one is even more egregious - forget the tearjerking identity of the person arrested, just focus on the facts. This person applied for refugee status on entry, was vetted, and granted refugee status. The position of the administration, contrary to the law, appears to be that they can just arrest and detain anyone foreign present in the United States, even if they followed the rules. This is utterly lawless. Suppose that the Biden administration made a terrible mistake, and this woman is in fact a Burmese spy or a fugitive war criminal - how likely is it that figuring that out requires physical detention without warning? Has DHS actually raised a national security concern here? No - they're simply sweeping up whomever they can find, arresting people with valid paperwork, who entered lawfully, on the basis that the government has decided it wants to re-think prior decisions. This policy is illegal, cruel, arbitrary, and capricious. This is what ICE is doing in Minnesota - illegally kidnapping lawful migrants. If this alone is not worth taking to the streets to protest, what is?
d) Fourthly, and most importantly IMO, there are much better mechanisms to get to where ICE wants to go. We already have a surveillance state for the IRS that involves essentially all banking institutions and Paypal. Why won't Congress pass any number of measures that would criminalize, fine, and prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants? If the economic opportunity were much more limited, nobody would jump the border if they couldn't feed themselves after! This would have immediate negative consequences for mostly red states, however, it would likely gut their economies in short order.
The whole reason ICE is in Minneapolis has nothing to do with criminal illegal immigrants. The federal government has decided that it wants to send poorly trained, armed, and disguised agents to a city, to intimidate and cause chaos. Those who condemn the protests miss the point - the point is to show that they're not intimidated! And this is why various administration figures spend their time slandering protestors, because the goal isn't to arrest (Criminal/Illegal/Previously Prosecutorially Discretion Tolerated, pick a combo) people, or even to reduce the number of illegal immigrants living in the USA. If that were the goal, there are cheaper, faster, easier methods that don't risk the life of any agents, unless you think Tyson Foods executives are going to shoot at federal agents if their HQ gets raided. The entire operation is political theater, not a sincere attempt at policy enforcement, and utterly illegitimate from conception.
Two other arguments that I see made frequently here are:
a) All of this is necessary because of Sanctuary Policies that the Police Don't Co-Operate with DHS, so ICE Must Go Looking For The Criminals. Why don't they hang out outside the county jail and question people on their immigration status there on their release? Why don't they hang out at the courthouse - recall, a judge was just convicted of obstruction for preventing ICE from arresting someone at a hearing, they can sit in the gallery and question everyone's immigration status at the end of every hearing! You would be much more likely to arrest people guilty of criminal acts if you did this, than going door to door and getting into fights with protestors.
b) If nobody protested or interfered, then there would be much less chaos - aren't you giving Trump what he wants? Largely, no - Trump recognized pretty quickly once he watched the Renee Good video that it was regrettable and would hurt his poll numbers and his statements reflect that. Furthermore, no, I think it's good and justifiable that people protest when the state decides to waste tax dollars and commit illegal acts while acting like an occupying force rather than servants of the public! My least favourite (former) congressional representative makes the point rather well here. The behaviour of the feds, to inefficiently pursue questionable goals of questionable legality with strongarm tactics is to blame. It is the sign of a healthy, engaged citizenry that ten thousand people decided to go out in extremely cold temperatures and make their voices heard, peacefully.
In talking to blue people IRL, my sampling so far is:
Quite frankly, if we were all on the same page about doing deportations quickly, we wouldn't even have much of an argument.
I'm seeing more framing like you're presenting here. Transparently, I don't believe it. People don't show up to these protests to prove they aren't intimidated. None of the people protesting are going to be stopped by ICE's detention or deportation. The most charitable way I can frame it is that they view illegal immigrants as the people working at their favorite mexican place or mowing their yard and think it makes their cause righteous.
In reality, it's just garden-variety TDS. The anti-ICE riots are happening exclusively in blue cities where a critical mass of people and opinions are relishing the opportunity to get in a fight with agents of the state they view as extensions of Trump himself. But of course, they'd riot if he offered free ice cream.
I mean, look at this framing from NPR: "A Third of people arrested by ICE have no Criminal record". Are we for real here? ICE's track record is that even wildly dishonest, leftist institutions admit that 66% of them are criminals, and now we're talking about why we need to stop that activity?
The new argument ("We just want smart deportations") is because moderates do grok how insane it is to be using cars as weapons, to wrestle with cops while carrying a gun, and then to pretend like you're a victim. I've only heard it in the past 3 days. And I say this while believing that Saturday's shoot was not a good one - it's a huge bummer that he got killed, and it looks like a mistake more than anything else.
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This is called a ratchet. Apparently it's as easy as pie and not illegal to fly millions of foreigners deep into the country with the plan of solidifying your demographic base, but it's totally illegal and impossible to remove those same people.
No. They can be let in, and they can be removed. What did you expect?
It is the sign of an impending civil war that so many are willing to engage in insurgency against the federal government. This isn't Fort Sumter, but it's starting to look like Bleeding Kansas.
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Yes. Imagine your neighbor's yard was overrun with cats and kittens, and his first impulse was to send in a bunch of men to go and kick the kittens, and pull on the tails of the cats, and to get into fights with the shrill animal rights activists who filmed his "enforcement and removal operations".
"You know, there is an easier way to fix this," you offer. "You could just pick up all the open cans of tuna that have been placed all over your yard. Then the problem would basically take care of itself."
"I couldn't possibly," your neighbor, Donald, replies. "There are so many cans!"
"About that," you continue. "Donald, you know your roommates are the ones leaving the cans all over your yard? Maybe ask them to stop. Or take away their can openers."
"And if they keep doing it?"
"I guess you might have to kick them out."
"Right," Donald says as he nods his head. "Yeah. And then I wouldn't need to hire the men to torture the kittens and cats, cause they would all just go away. And the obnoxious PETA people wouldn't even be able to say I was doing anything wrong. And it would be way cheaper and work way better."
"Exactly," you reply.
Donald feels a growing sense of relief as he think about his new cat free future. But then his mind catches on an unforeseen complication, and he sighs with sudden grim realization that it couldn't possibly work: "But what about content for my "interrupting cats eating" social media accounts?" If my men can't kick kittens and pull on the tails of cats, the ICE X account will be dead in weeks."
"You're kidding me," you say. "That's your problem?"
"Yeah, Kristi would be crushed—she's the one overseeing this for me. She told me she hasn't had this much fun since she had to shoot that puppy of hers, uhm... Cricket." Donald shakes his head. "Oh well. It was a good thought anyway."
I'm fine with sending in a bunch of men to remove the cats and kittens. Especially since the people now claiming "Oh, go after the cans of tuna" favor providing free tuna by the palletload.
This sudden received indisputable wisdom that going after the employers is the best and only reasonable way to do anything about illegal immigration and, as a result, going directly after illegal immmigrants is cruel and should be verboten is not credible.
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I think this is fair, and not a strawman. So,
let me ask, is this actually your point of view? Ok, you've written your reasoned defense of this claim. But is that in alignment with your goals? Do you simply want ICE to become more efficient and lawful in exercising it's deportation goals? Do you think the real disagreement is how to maximize efficient deportations? Or are we right that the blue tribe doesn't want it? If the latter, what's the real value of the rest of the post?
I am not trying to be flippant. But otherwise this reads a lot like that one meme, where the atheist is basically saying: “I don’t believe your religion is true, but according to your religion you should act this way."
It is my point of view.
The NYT poll suggested deportation approval was 50% vs 47% and ICE approval was 63% vs 37%. Furthermore there was a question about ICE tactics which got 61%/26%/11% for gone-too-far/just-right/not-far-enough.
Put together it means that deportations are still popular but ICE tactics are not. There's about 11-13% of the electorate who holds these two opinions simultaneously. It's not everyone, but it is certainly sizable enough to swing elections. This poll was conducted prior to the most recent shooting, so if anything I'd expect even less support for ICE tactics now.
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Does that meme actually reduce the validity of what the atheist says though? Someone from outside your group may not share your basic goals but might still have a point.
Yes.
And that point can be by balanced by other points that they would not raise because they do not share your basic goals. Such as how they do not share your basic goals, and are merely using arguments as soldiers to get their goals instead of yours... and that their goal is to obstruct yours.
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I would be sympathetic to this (because I find it quite plausible that ICE are behaving in an undisciplined manner) if "blue tribe doesn't want immigration policy enforced" wasn't literally true. Every single claim they make, every video they post, every action they take, is tainted with the confounder that they also don't want immigration policy enforced. The world where ICE is completely professional and competent would have near identical protests and complaints to what we're seeing now, although probably with fewer deaths. I don't think most people are actually protesting ICE misbehavior, I think they're protesting "enforcing lawful immigration policy" and the ICE misbehavior is just a cherry on top for them to retroactively justify their protest. For many of them, the point of being annoying and obstructive is not to actually hinder the functioning of ICE but to trigger them into retaliating and thus create more viral videos to complain about. I strongly suspect that if the protests were not happening then all the issues would vanish and ICE could just arrest and deport illegal aliens like they're supposed to.
Maybe they actually are overstepping their bounds and arresting legal migrants they don't have a legal right to arrest, but I would take such accusations more seriously if they weren't mixed in with complaints about any immigration policy enforcement. If the claims were "we should deport every single illegal immigrant, but make sure to minimize collateral damage along the way" (which is what I believe), and then claims that ICE has too high collateral damage mixed in with their legitimate duties, then I would take that seriously. But if the claim is "All ICE behavior is illegitimate" then I'm just going to treat it like wolf crying. Come back when you have a better plan which contains deporting all the illegals as an axiom, and less collateral damage. It's probably possible. But if the choices are (deportation + limited misbehavior) or (total non enforcement) I'd prefer the former.
I think OP offered that up. Go after companies hiring illegals was the plan.
I definitely think that would help reduce the flow inwards, because if they can't get easy jobs then they won't expect a better life here. I definitely approve of that as a low-hanging fruit that we should be doing in addition to everything else. But it doesn't actually deport anyone who's already here. If anything it would turn them even more underclass and thus strain any welfare systems they might have snuck themselves into, or turn them to crime or homelessness. Which I suppose might make them easier to detect and thus deport, so isn't a fatal flaw in a system that was actually deporting them, but is not going to give good outcomes if we just keep playing catch and release.
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Yeah this is always my frustration. It’s so extremely fucking annoying that we got an anti immigration president in power twice, and both times he refuses to press the “easily fix illegal immigration” button.
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Is there anyone on the left actually pushing that, not as a piece of rhetoric? If Trump pivoted to that, would a sustantial portion of the left get on board with deportations and remigrations? If not, it's not a better plan; it's a distraction.
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Perhaps one fewer death. The "ICE is untrained and incompetent" claim is just a backstop to the "ICE is an invading army" claim. I have watched all sorts of videos showing arrests which were claimed to be some sort of horrible, and in nearly every one, it shows an arrest more professional and with less drama than I'd expect from one on the news with local cops. To have Ross not shoot Good wouldn't be a matter of Ross being more competent and professional, it'd be a matter of Ross being omniscient.
I don't even thing protesting "enforcing lawful immigration policy" is the center of the onion here; it's "resistance to Trump". If someone with a (D) after their name wanted to enforce lawful immigration policy, we wouldn't see anything like this.
This is too heavily entangled for this claim to be meaningful. They like the Democrats largely because the Democrats are obsessed with optics and placating the extreme left and being on "the right side of history". If someone with a (D) after their name wanted to enforce lawful immigration policy we would see complaints and pushback and then the Democrats would back down and not do it. Or do a much lesser version of it. They would surgically come in and get the pedophiles and stuff and deport them and the left would allow it as long as they credibly promised not to deport anyone sympathetic.
But they would not have ramped up ICE activity the way Trump has in the first place, so of course the protests wouldn't have escalated like this, but it's hard to disentangle that from the protestors being nicer to the Democrats, or the Democrats being nicer to the protestors and giving them what they want sooner.
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I will add that the whole "ICE is going after criminals" argument for their big operations in Blue cities is absurd.
Legally, states and municipalities have a lot of levers to affect crime rates. Most violent crime is judged under state laws, after all. Some have the death penalty, some don't. Some have strict gun laws, some don't. Some have legalized pot. Some make enforcement of laws against sex work a priority, some don't. Some have three strike laws. Some let well-connected people prostitute minors. Some criminalize abortion.
The basic idea (supported traditionally very much by the Republicans, e.g. in regard to Dobbs) seems to be that state governments are much better at creating a criminal justice system accommodating the preferences of their local population, be they Utah Mormons or California hippies, than a far-away federal government in DC would. Of course there are Federal guard rails (you can't legalize slavery, or raping kids, or hanging Blacks), but for the most part it is the locals who decide if an offender gets probation or a lifelong prison sentence.
Suppose for the sake of the argument that the bleeding heart liberals in Minneapolis do not deport any violent criminals, thereby endangering their local population.
Why should the tax dollars of women living in Amarillo, Texas be spent to keep women in in Minneapolis safe just because their local state and municipal government has (hypothetically) decided not to invest in keeping them safe? How often do illegals get on a greyhound bus and go on a rape trip in the next state, really? If California abolishes all police tomorrow, will Trump send in federal agents to direct the traffic in LA?
There is certainly an argument to be made that immigration is federal policy, and illegals living in one state may affect the union in the long run (due to birthright citizenship, if nothing else).
There is also an argument to be made that getting rid of all of the illegals will also reduce crime rates (no HBD needed, illegals are generally poor, and poor people are more likely to commit violent crimes). (It would also wreck the sectors which are based on illegal's labor, which is why Trump is not doing it.)
But the framing that ICE is busy catching rapists and murderers in MN is bullshit. They are there to fill their quotas. Number go up. Rapists make the number go up. Sick 70yo women make the number go up. 6yo's make the number go up. Trump needs to tell his base that he has deported more people than the Democrats, and the job of the DHS is to make the number he will claim less of an obvious lie.
Of course, whenever the WH issues a press release about an incident, their ERO men were hot on the heels of a violent criminal. But this is about as believable as their claims that anyone their goons shoot is a domestic terrorist.
I feel like your take would be a lot more reasonable in a world where the epicenter of resistance didn't just so happen to be the city where a billion-dollar fraud ring with probable links to high-ranking state officials was just uncovered.
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Local governments do not have the power to decide who gets to live there, either positively or negatively.
I want the 70y/o women and 6y/o children deported just as much as the criminals. Hell, the criminals probably aren't costing me as much in taxes an an old lady getting benefits and a young kid leeching off the public education system.
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Digression, but the blue tribe is not a monolith.
Commenters may argue that "The purpose of a system is what it does". Therefore, Biden's intention was to flood the US with immigrants. However, outcomes based evaluations opens a can of worms that may not help the red tribe cause. Broadly, I don't believe the outcomes were the policy objectives, as much as the equilibrium result of internal infighting.
On this forum, we acknowledge sub-tribes within the Republican tent. Tech right, single-issue abortion voters, isolationists, heritage Americans, conspiracy theorists and anti-wokes, and so on. As the conversation evolves, I'd like to see the criticisms be targeted at different sub-tribes among Democrats, instead of the blue-tribe at large.
Sadly, Biden was senile and Kamala was a powerless face. This made them particularly ineffective. As a result, faceless staffers & unelected ideologues who caused the worst outcomes have avoided the public eye. Makes it hard to identify the leaders within the blue tribe who want open borders at the expense of American people. There is some real guerilla warfare going on there.
Name a single democrat elected official in federal office who has spoken explicitly in favor of deporting more illegals.
Does 2016 Bernie Sanders count?
This 2016 bernie sanders? https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-senator-bernie-sanders-deportations https://web.archive.org/web/20160317081749/https://berniesanders.com/issues/a-fair-and-humane-immigration-policy/
I see not a single thing advocating for removing illegals, but tons of breathless advocacy for the importation of millions and millions of foreigners and also giving them citizenship.
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Seems like there's roughly 4 types of Democrats on this issue:
I know people on the right who fit into (1) pretty well too: "We're fine with immigrants, but we should enforce the laws as written because that's the process. Those laws could maybe be improved (exact direction unclear), but distributed decisions to not enforce laws is not the way to change them." Those folks are generally pretty positive about legal immigrants and naturalization, although maybe there's some skepticism of specific programs (H1-B).
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I would describe myself as a proponent of a more reasoned, systematized form of 3. I regard illegal immigration per se as something that certainly should be illegal, but which it is wholly disproportionate to repress through life-ruining violence, especially when we are in a status quo where millions of people are involved. Treating every illegal as if they were some sort of dangerous felon seems as obviously daft and inhumane to me as clapping people in irons for jaywalking.
If there is an epidemic of jaywalking in the country with millions and millions of jaywalkers, and death tolls from traffic accidents start rising as a result, then certainly you should take top-down measures to curb the phenomenon - but going after individual, benign jaywalkers with the full force of the law would be an absurd and nasty way to do it. If a strict interpretation the law as written designates millions of perfectly harmless people as serious criminals, then there's an unaccountable chasm between the letter of the law and the reality we're faced with. Ruining random people's lives (and in some cases ending them) for daring to do what hundreds of thousands of people do every year, what half the population of their own country would sympathize with at worst and actively praise at best, is not how you deal with that - it is not kind, it is not just, and it's frankly not that effective, compared to a more systematic solution that treated the cause instead of bashing the symptom.
You can stop a jaywalking in progress by getting the jaywalker out of the street. It seems absurd to me to compare that to an ongoing crime where halting it requires forcing the perpetrator to move their entire residence.
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Well a couple of things.
First you listed a number of false positives, people being wrongfully arrested/deported. Any sufficiently large scale operation will have mistakes. If you tried to crack down on disability fraud surely you would end up mistakenly depriving some genuinely deserving people. As you said, the optimal level of crime is not zero, similarly, the optimal level of wrongful convictions/arrests/deportations isn't zero. If you could demonstrate that it was egregiously error-prone then there would be cause for concern. But at the moment I don't trust the media to be objective. Surely the Obama administration occasionally wrongfully detained a legal immigrant but the media wasn't shouting it from the rooftops when it happened.
Regarding the theatricality. Of course there is an element of theater to it, as there is with the protesting. What good does blowing a whistle or shouting "fuck you Nazis" actually do to impede their activities? Basically nothing, it is entirely theater. The theatricality of ICE and the focus on Minneapolis is largely about sending a message loudly, publicly and clearly that "no, blue states do not get to veto federal laws whenever the choose as they have a history of doing." The protestors do theater and ICE does counter theater. We can argue that their theatricality is losing in the court of public opinion, but I appreciated it at least.
Well whistles aren’t just intended to be annoying (though imagine having to work with whistles like that all the time). They are intended to warn illegals of your presence. It isnt just theatre.
IMO "subjecting federal agents to noise likely to cause long-term hearing damage" (impossible to tell from the videos, but quite believable) probably shouldn't be allowed. Having them don hearing protection and ignore people talking to them seems the worse option there.
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Obama did more than that - he deported four US Citizens.
He also ordered the extrajudicial killing of a teenage American citizen.
Claim not supported by your source, according to which the teenager was killed in a drone strike against someone else - just bad luck.
Fair. His (citizen) father's killing was ordered extrajudicially. The son was a bystander in a separate ordered extrajudicial killing.
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No police force had their procedures written with the assumption that random people will stalk them to run into their operations blowing whistles constantly. And nobody is making these randos run into the middle of active police operations blowing whistles and starting fights. ICE seems to be moving around conducting targeted raids, not 'going door to door getting in fights with protestors'. The fights with protestors seem to be things that, frankly, are self inflicted- even if ICE climbs the escalation ladder too quickly, running into active police cordons blowing whistles everywhere and attempting to obstruct them will get some police response.
This did not mean Alex Pretti deserved to die. But a strategy of 'interrupting police cordons to physically obstruct operations and then attack police for trying to arrest people' will leave bodies lying in the streets. If the Trump admin was competent they'd use the FBI and US marshalls to start arresting protestors that physically obstruct ICE after the fact. But still.
I think the Trump administration may be skeptical of the FBI's loyalties.
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I'm curious as to why someone in the country for 26 years who has been compliant with regulations isn't given asylum or citizenship. I'm not doubting the story, but if this is so, then the entire system is backed up worse than a toilet and is clearly not able to handle the applicants it has, on top of the new applications flooding in.
As to the whistling, etc. yeah it's annoying rather than dangerous but at the same time, it is intended to interfere with ICE agents doing their jobs. Imagine you at your own job and someone standing nearby yelling, blowing a whistle, etc. Would you just shrug and go "well it's not illegal and I'm not in danger of harm" or would you get security to bounce them out the door? The protestors are there to interfere with ICE carrying out their duty, so they have to expect ICE to question them and even arrest them.
EDIT: Also, your harmless peaceful protestors are plenty able to engage in mob behaviour themselves; invading a church because, apparently, the pastor has the same surname as an ICE official. No checking out who the guy is, if this is the right place - nope, just storm on in and disrupt the service. Luckily this time nobody got hurt, but this is the kind of mob behaviour that can go bad.
The whistling is coordinated signaling as part of the insurgency that's being run.
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People who came in illegally and lived law-abiding lives for decades are still technically here illegally. There are avenues for such people to pursue naturalization and citizenship, but it's not simple and typically they have to leave the country and spend a minimum number of years outside the US before being allowed to reenter. As abused as asylum laws are, not everyone can just claim asylum ("Really, you were fleeing from the dystopian failed state of... Ireland?") So yeah, there are people who have been here for years, raised families, pay taxes, but technically could be arrested by ICE even now. Reagan issued an amnesty in the 80s which allowed many long-time illegal residents to naturalize, but there hasn't been such an opportunity since.
And how exactly is a life illegally spent in the United States "law abiding"? Literally every moment they aren't choosing to leave they are participating in an ongoing crime. I'm not even that invested in this kind of demographic control of the US, but the mental gymnastics the left employs to pretend that immigration law in the US isn't really US law are mind boggling to me, and it seems like normies basically just accept it. If anything violating immigration law should count extra for lawbreaking because it's literally the first area of law you'd need to investigate upon entering a foreign country.
Some grandma staying in the US illegally is very much not a central case of what people think by "criminal" (the directional opposite of "law abiding"), any more than an elderly hippie who grows some pot for personal use is.
I think there are circumstances where 99% would be willing to violate the law of their host country (e.g. if the alternative was to get deported to Afghanistan). I will grant you that there are illegals for whom going back would not be a matter of life and death, but 'merely' an inconvenience.
I also am generally doubtful that Republicans are really as much into obeying the law as they claim they are. Rolling coal seems to be very much a Red Tribe thing, after all.
(Or hypothetically, suppose that a liberal SCOTUS ruled that 2A only applied to weapon designs existing in 1791, and Congress banned all newer guns. "Too bad, but the constitution says what SCOTUS says it says, so I better get all my guns neutered and buy a nice flintlock pistol for home defense. After all, the law is the law, even if I do not agree with it. I certainly would not want to own an illegal firearm, after all!" is what a law-abiding person might think. I think plenty of Republicans would instead break this law or condone others breaking it, and red states would simply decide that enforcing it is not a policing priority.)
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Yes, of course it's law. It's not all migrants from third world countries, though. There are people who overstayed tourist or student visas, maybe had some kids, and because of various complicated personal situations, couldn't or wouldn't become legalized. Are they breaking the law? Sure. Do I think they made avoidable mistakes at some point? Yes. Should they all be tackled by ICE outside their homes and shipped home in cuffs, even if they've been working and paying taxes for decades? Yeah, I am aware this gives some people a hard-on.
Should every single one of us be subjected to maximal enforcement of every law we have every violated? Okay, fine, you hate illegals. I think illegal immigrants should be prosecuted and deterred. I think people who break other laws should be prosecuted and deterred.
I hate drunk drivers. DUI is bad, I think they absolutely should be punished. Should the police pull every drunk driver out of their car at gunpoint? No. And I don't necessarily think everyone should go to jail on their first DUI, but certainly on their third or fourth. But some people think you should go to prison and lose your driving privileges forever on your first DUI. I disagree with these people. It doesn't mean I think DUI is okay or shouldn't be enforced. Some people think DUI is a minor violation and no big deal and everyone does it. I think those people are wrong too.
This analogy would work better if the drunk driver was choosing to drive drunk every single day for years. He can stop at any point, but he chooses not to. Residing in a country illegally isn't committing one crime, it's committing the same crime every day for however long you stay in the country.
Okay. Lots of people walk around every day committing some form of crime, whether it's minor violations they aren't even aware of or an ongoing illegal behavior. I am just not moved by "EVERY SINGLE DAY THEY WAKE UP ILLEGAL THEY ARE CONSTANTLY IN A STATE OF DOING CRIME!" Yes, that's true. I disagree we should make every one of them eat pavement and boot and there's no other remedy but that, but I understand this is a minority view here. Perhaps if you stretch your capacity for charity a bit you can understand this does not also mean I think everyone should be allowed to COMMIT CRIME EVERY DAY with impunity.
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I'm just objecting here to the rhetorical pose of remaining in the country illegally as "law-abiding" behavior.
If I inserted the word "otherwise" would you be less distressed?
Yes, though it's a loadbearing "otherwise" and I think it unravels the argument you're trying to make, as you're trying to argue the state should be less aggressive in punishing a completed crime, not that it should be less aggressive in stopping an ongoing crime.
I'm arguing the state should exercise discretion in punishing crimes, not all crimes are equal in severity, and not all criminals are equal in deleteriousness to the public good. This is why we have courts and judges and a Constitution, though I am increasingly persuaded by those who argue that these things are fabulations and all that matters is who's holding the gun. I think that's a very unfortunate descent.
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Also it's presuming that the median peaceful resident of the USA is productive simply by virtue of not actively commiting crimes. It's still eminently possible to be a net drain on public resources whilst holding a full time job
Sure, but that also describes many people who voted for Trump. Should we deport every working-age able-bodied adult who falls below a given productivity threshold?
If that is the deal that needs to be made to get far more deportations then that is the deal that should be made.
Genetically inferior America is a huge risks to civilization. Indian doesn’t invent tech despite potentially having as many IQ individuals as the west because they have a lot of low IQ people do. Civilization would entire be dependent on China if America fell.
If we could only do deportations based on measured IQ then we should do it.
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If they are immigrants rather than than citizens, then yes. All immigrants should contribute to their host country.
But deportation of illegals isn't a punishment or a form of demographic shaping, it's correcting a breach in the law, like repairing a vandalised window. France* shouldn't be deporting the native French underclass because they are rightly France's problem, but France absolutely should deport its immigrant underclass, especially if they arrived illegally. Similarly, the heritage American dysfunctional Trump voters are America's problem, why should any other country be obliged to take them?
*I chose France to avoid the mess of birthright citizenship, which should obviously be abolished due to the moral hazard it represents.
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I've encountered my fair share of Irish people unironically describing it as such. They lack perspective.
Is it the "I survived the Irish theocracy of the 90s" type or are they saying Ireland is like that now?
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No, they don't take time out of their day. They are interrupted from performing their jobs by these people who are interfering with arrests.
No, this is actually applying the law as written. Someone who applies for refugee status still does not have a right to walk freely in the United States. The law is for them to be detained until their case is processed. The problem is, we started letting these people out into the US on bond and everyone in the entire world learned that they do not have to follow US Immigration procedures but just had to show up at the border and say the magic words. Then the number of people applying for asylum got too big for us even consider detaining them all until their cases were evaluated.
Congress gave ICE explicit authority to revoke this bond for any reason, as there is no legal right to wander the United States if they are not citizens or here on one of the official visas.
Acting harshly here is the only way to stop the spurious asylum cases that ballooned under Biden.
In Sanctuary States, these people do not need jobs, they can have a US Citizen child and live on welfare. I would love for Federal mandated E-verify, but we cannot pretend that would solve every problem here. There would still be a need for targeted enforcement.
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Enforcement specifically in Minneapolis is kind of a stupid waste of time, as there's not that significant an illegal immigrant population and it's more kneejerk responsiveness to a combination of the Somalis and the general vibe from major Minnesota figures such as Walz and Ilhan Omar.
On the other hand, the situation is showing the weakness of trying to do any sort of aggressive policing in the age of short-form video content as even the most compliant, disciplined and skilled police force ever are going to occasionally throw up incidents where they look oppressive from some angle if redacted sufficiently. The conditions that ICE is operating under with regards to 'random interlopers on all tasks actively interfering with police work with no particular expectation of punishment' are also incredibly rare for any sort of a police force to have to work under. I don't believe ICE are necessarily massively less trained and equipped than other legal forces in effectiveness terms, but 'you are trying to do your job in the face of the Armed Minneapolis Vehicular Vuvuzela Orchestra' is going to inherently increase the friction and likelihood of issues.
Doing anything at scale is going to produce edge-cases, especially something as messy and emotionally charged as this. Completely derailing the artifice of state every time something somewhat sad happens is what produces the massive scope drift and inefficiency that is slowly choking the Western world. The protestors even having the privilege of acting like this is reflective of the extraordinary liberal permissiveness of the USA by any real historical or world political standard.
Once again, Minnesota and New York are easily the two most adamant "sanctuary" states and that's why the focus is on them.
As I keep saying, the Feds don't need to enforce compliance on states that are already cooperating.
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It’s not about vibes or Somalis - it’s because a state can’t just say no to federal immigration laws.
You say it's not about Somalis but doesn't it seem a bit convenient that the epicenter of violence just so happens to be in the same city where a billion-dollar fraud ring with probable links to high-ranking state officials was just uncovered?.
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Ironically, it's mostly not ICE there, it's CBP officials under Greg Bovino because Homan, the head of ICE was against this whole plan and so was the actual head of the CBP who was bypassed by Noem and handed off to Bovino.
https://x.com/EWErickson/status/2015289632385024333
The Noem/Miller/Lewandowski faction especially fucked up with their messaging immediately after the shooting and internal politics has shifted against them and towards Homan, via Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin https://x.com/BillMelugin_/status/2015571364212609379
Now as Matt Finn (another fox news guy) points out, the decision to send Homan into Minnesota reflects a notable change in the Trump admin's posture. Again, away from the Noem crowd which fucked up and towards the Tom Homan view. https://x.com/MattFinnFNC/status/2015784517789794574
They wanted a spectacle, they got it twice in a month. Be careful what you wish for.
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