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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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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.

ICE can't arrest anyone efficiently when they're being obstructed and protested. Isn't that what you're asking for?

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.

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.

so now ICE can't deport illegal immigrants back to El Salvador because Bukele will put some in jail?

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.

Venezuelans, some of whom had not been accused of any crime and were in the middle of asylum cases, were deported to El Salvador

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.

I don't know why we accept asylum seekers at all

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.

And the faster we can dismantle this absurd system and start deporting the people abusing it the better.

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.

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.

Yes but it was contingent on a good faith application and used in a world with far more poverty and random bloodshed. Decades of concept drift, deliberate gaming of the system and the inherent tendency of a judicial system to continuously swing more permissive as cases accumulate have then produced the current metagame.

The vast majority of these asylum applications are simply contigent on the processing timeline being so long (due to the sheer weight of frivolous applications) that you can easily apply without any real expectation of actually getting it then frolic around randomly whilst you wait. This is playing out consistently across essentially all developed Western democracies

This really seems like a case where you should petition your elected representatives to change the laws. If our legislators actually started legislating that would help a lot with the current power struggles between the judicial and executive branches, and maybe having their constituents getting on their case for failing to legislate would help with that.

Yes but inevitably like all issues of this nature the stack of asylum seekers will be sifted until a small core of genuine and/or sympathetic applications will be surfaced then the entire narrative will be forced to pivot around them despite massive grift outside of it. Plus Trump's team is already running into random vigilante judges in farflung circuit courts attempting to adjust whatever they pass.

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