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ICE (et al.) do not currently have any credibility that they would act moderately and reasonably. Have they apologised or even admitted error for sending innocent people to a foreign torture prison? Have they apologised for detaining someone for writing a milquetoast op ed? Have they apologised for calling people their agents have shot assassins and terrorists based on zero evidence?
Until they express that they have not been acting moderately, and express a desire to change, I don't buy that the protesters are doing anything but revealing abuses that were already happening. Yeah, these specific clashes with protesters wouldn't be happening. But I don't believe that they have any desire or intention to prevent equally egregious actions from happening when the cameras aren't on.
"ICE doesn't have any credibility because I believe in fake news"
That's more or less how that parses to me. "Sending innocent people to a foreign torture prison?" El Salvador was the murder capital of the world until Bukele locked up all the gangs, so now ICE can't deport illegal immigrants back to El Salvador because Bukele will put some in jail? Ridiculous, realize your own part in escalating this conflict because leftist rioters think we aren't allowed to legally deport people the easy way. ICE could be deporting convicted criminals straight out of jail, it would be the easiest thing in the world, all it takes is local officials cooperating with ICE -- oh, but that hurts leftwing bleeding heart feelings so we can't do that.
That is not what happened. Venezuelans, some of whom had not been accused of any crime and were in the middle of asylum cases, were deported to El Salvador with the understanding that they would be sent to CECOT, with the US paying El Salvador for this service. By all accounts "torture prison" is a perfectly reasonable way to describe CECOT, "concentration camp" is another word one could use and only be exaggerating a little. As far as I can tell, no official has apologized for this or outlined what steps will be taken to prevent something equally horrifying from happening again.
I'm not sure how the other two things I listed could be considered fake news either.
Call me a bleeding heart all you like, but this administration cannot be trusted to treat deportees humanely, and so, well I would generally agree that sanctuary city policies go too far, loosening them right now is a terrible idea.
It’s hard for me to have any sympathy for this position.
Tens of millions of illegal immigrants came into this country over decades, then President Biden enabled millions more. They made an app so anyone could apply for asylum and wait in the US while their claims processed (designed to take years if they ever even happened). Welfare, work authorization, no verification. Crime, gangs, murderers, pedophiles, sex traffickers, the works. People came pouring into this country. The worst of them are now sitting in jail cells across the country, known to local authorities. And we can’t deport them because bleeding heart liberals think it’s mean. We want to deport all the criminals, we want the murderers and pedophiles gone, and your actions are preventing us. You don’t want to cooperate with ICE, ok, then we are going to have to focus on deporting the illegals who aren’t sitting in jail cells. And some of them, I assume, are good people.
And we’re not going to give them all trials, they’re here illegally, deportation is their due process. Maybe in a gentler time we could have been nicer. That time is over because our immigration process was abused by the same bleeding heart liberals saying we can’t deport criminals. Cry me a river, give me a break. I don’t care if a few hundred Venezuelans with gang tattoos get deported to an El Salvadoran jail. It’s fake news of the media to suggest that we’re just kidnapping random legal immigrants and putting them in death camps.
Can Trump be trusted to deport immigrants humanely? No, because you made that impossible. This is what you wanted, this is what sanctuary cities are. We don’t have law anymore. We let in millions of immigrants and millions of criminals then said we aren’t even allowed to deport the ones who were so bad they still ended up in jail. Ok, what’s your next move? You can protest and riot in the streets and incite more bleeding hearts to pick fights with cops until more people get shot. Humane! As long as the bleeding hearts feel good.
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I'm not speaking on the legality of this because I don't know and don't care what the current legal situation is. But, this seems perfectly reasonable to me. If their asylum cases had not been resolved in their favor, what makes them entitled to be in the United States? The impression I get from comments like this is that our asylum/refugee system has essentially worked like this: get to the border somehow, say magic words that trigger asylum/refugee case (that you are fed by activist organizations that coach you), get let into the United States with some maybe-in-future court date that might resolve your asylum case years down the line. Until then, you basically have free run of the country and can disappear trivially.
Frankly this system seems absolutely ridiculous. I don't know why we accept asylum seekers at all, there's no reason for it. And the faster we can dismantle this absurd system and start deporting the people abusing it the better.
The United States accepts asylum seekers because of laws such as the Refugee Act of 1980, which was passed into law by legitimately elected democratic representatives.
Perhaps you should petition your elected representatives to change the laws to do so. Until then, the United States has offered people a legal process to be allowed to live in a country, and if they are taking part in that process exactly how they are supposed to, it is obviously not legitimate or moral to suddenly deport them to a torture prison because you don't like what the laws say.
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what specific features of CECOT that distinguish it as a torture prison?
That inmates there report things such as:
"Four guards grabbed me. And they beat me until I bled, to the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall; that was when they broke one of my teeth." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-on-beatings-in-salvadoran-prison-after-deportation-from-us-60-minutes-transcript/
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What specifically did Eleocharis assert do you think is fake news?
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If it's Abrego Garcia he's referring to, ICE actually DID admit error.
To be clear, what happened is that a lawyer, against instructions, admitted that it was an error, and was fired for it. I do not believe that the official position of the administration has ever been to admit that error, although I could be wrong.
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This is merely a function of what gets reported on. The vast majority of arrests and deportations around the country are conducted peacefully, with fewer officers, and without any bright lights or fanfare. ICE are moderate and reasonable in all places except where they face immoderate and unreasonable opposition.
If the media would report on every altercation where ICE officers professionally deescalated a situation, every instance where they peacefully detained a convicted criminal, or reported all the successful operations conducted with the cooperation of local law enforcement, then ICE would have all the credibility.
There is really very little evidence that ICE is actually doing a bad job, but just that they make mistakes when repeatedly put in very difficult and dangerous scenarios, but would the local police, national guard, or any other law enforcement agency do better in the same circumstances? That is really not clear at all, but the media is making it seem so. The BLM riots killed more than 2 people, and yet very many good people kept supporting those. In fact, one might say they've only killed 2 protesters so far! Is that high or low relative to the circumstances they are working with? I don't really know, but I also know the truth doesn't matter to anyone. The question is just whether those deaths can be used to pursue political goals. ICE are just losing the propaganda war, because they're outmanned and outgunned.
If ICE owned up to mistakes, apologized, and indicated that they would try to do better, I would agree with you. But I see them doing exactly the opposite, do you disagree?
I believe that negative press attention is currently the only thing actually restraining them.
Restraining them from what? Were they unrestrained until they decided to go to Minnesota? Are they unrestrained in Mississippi where by most accounts they are going about their business without much incident? Where they have been unimpeded they don't seem to need much restraining. I have seen little convincing evidence that ICE has been operating particularly egregiously. There are many stories, but many are misleading when you look into the details. Some mistakes are inevitable, and the problem they are trying to put a dent in is very very big. If they didn't make some mistakes, then I'd know they weren't trying.
I don't like having federal agents out there asking people for their papers; I don't like the idea of having ICE run massive enforcement operations in American cities. I don't like any of it, and I am suspicious of all federal authority. I really would prefer a world where none of this was necessary. I probably would enjoy the company of the vigilantes more than the ICE agents. This is all a clusterfuck at least 30 years in the making, but we are where we are, and the Great Immigration Enforcement Defection cannot go unanswered, and it sucks. It risks major civil conflict that could, in the worst case scenario, spiral into the destruction of the entire union, but that risk is still better than the alternative.
Frankly, I am not sure ICE or the administration has anything to gain by admitting mistakes much less apologizing, because I don't think that would earn them any good faith or leniency. Both sides immediately stake out maximally extreme interpretations of events to see what they can get away with. When push back occurs, both sides quietly shift their arguments but never acknowledge changing their mind about anything. They're essentially bartering, trying to get the best "deal" that serves their interests and goals. Conceding ground on anything just gives your enemy an advantage. Reality is negotiable and truth is for dorks. The right has been learning from the left.
From, for example, deporting people directly to a foreign torture prison. I fully believe the decision-makers would still be doing things like that if not for negative press attention.
None of the things I initially listed can be characterised as mistakes. Sure, agents can make bad decisions in the heat of the moment, agents can be acting on bad information, whatever. But deporting people to CECOT is a policy, not a mistake. Somebody made the conscious decision to detain Ozturk over an op ed, and to continue to detain her long after it was clear she had done nothing wrong. High-ranking officials made the decision to refer to Good as a terrorist and Pretti as an assassin. Someone decided that 42 days was an appropriate training period for new ICE agents. Somebody made it policy that agents shouldn't wear uniforms, but should wear masks. Somebody decided that they were going to investigate Good's widow.
Those are the things that need to be owned up to to convince me that the administration wants to maintain the rule of law, human rights and so on. As far as I can tell they don't actually think those things are more important than mass deportation, so they will of course never be able to credibly convince me that they do.
This one specifically seems fine to me? It’s possible that she committed solicitation to commit a crime of violence by telling Renee, “drive baby drive,” while an ICE agent was in front of her car. Probably not, but you’d want to at least kick the tires and ask for an interview.
That's fair, probably shouldn't be in that list. It's clearly not being done in good faith though when they are not investigating the ice agents involved.
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