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Notes -
ICE can't arrest anyone efficiently when they're being obstructed and protested. Isn't that what you're asking for?
Because dragnet enforcement is very legally fraught when local officials won't cooperate by providing access to records, defendants, warrants, etc.
Like, I don't get it, you're asking why ICE can't act more moderately while supporting the very protests that are obstructing them from acting moderately! Why is my steak so overcooked, I only asked for it well done.
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.
But @Eleocharis wasn't even talking about the gentleness or lack thereof of the deportation process! The point is that the US specifically arranged for them to be shipped to the torture prison, as opposed to neutrally dumping them back in their home country and letting events take their course. "We shouldn't under any circumstances actively pay Bukele to put people in his torture prison" is pretty fucking different from "we shouldn't deport illegal immigrants back to El Salvador because Bukele might put some of them in the torture prison".
I thought their home country refused them, as would be sensible for known criminals
From what I remember from reading on Kilmar - when you apply for asylum, you generally also apply for 2 other forms of protection. One is based on torture, one is based on nonrefoulment (dont return peoole to dangerous counties). But basically when you apply for asylum, you can also say "dont return me to my home country becauase theyll torture me". And sometimes you are able to get orders to not be deported to a certain country, even while being denied asylum. Which basically means (until recently, maybe?) they get to stay. So it might be that as much as home country not taking them.
I think what was happening with both Kilmar and CERCOT was that Trump admin was basically playing hardball. People were getting a bunch of nonrefoulment type protections from being returned to their home country, the bar to get that was lower, and then they could more or less just stay. And trumps response was to say "ok, maybe we cant send you back to Venezuela, but instead we can send you to a third counry, like South Sudan or El Salvador." The chance of being sent to south sudan or rwanda or whereever would nuke incentives to apply for certain protections.
In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, he was sent back (deported) with a bunch of other El Salvadorans who were sent back to El Salvador. He had a nonrefoulment order that was not respected, which was a fuckup on the part of DHS. If they'd done it by the book he's likely have been detained in the US until the US came up with the Guatemala idea. The Venezuelans, as far as I can tell, were not deported -- they were sent to CECOT to be detained there (still titularly in US custody), seemingly as part of some sort of hardball the US was playing with Maduro, and after Maduro agreed to take them back they were sent from CECOT to Venezuela.
As for CECOT being a torture prison, who knows? There's stories from prisoners, but you could interview prisoners in any maximum security US prison and get similar ones. Some of them would likely even be true, because prison sucks, prisoners suck, and prison guards generally suck too.
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