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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Okay I'll bite. Here's my issues with some of your points.

Uhh, if someone ICE suspects is an illegal alien doesn't have ID, how is ICE to verify they aren't a US citizen without ever detaining them? Just "trust me, bro"?

ICE isn't in the business of detaining every person they encounter without identification. This rule presumably wouldn't apply to people detained for e.g. obstructing law enforcement - just to people detained as part of immigration enforcement. In which case ICE should have some idea who they are before detaining them.

What, like in the middle of a contested arrest? To every protestor who asks? (and if you think they won't DDOS enforcement that way, you haven't been paying attention)

Why isn't this a problem for every other type of law enforcement? You're trying to conjure up an absurd situation that in practice would not be an issue. You simply have to have reasonable guidelines for when ICE agents are required to give their badge number and when they aren't.

Apparently the only way they're allowed to determine someone is illegal is being told by a higher power.

Or by, I dunno, investigation? Properly legislated, this is simply preventing profiling, which is discrimination and should be illegal.

The second might be reasonable if applied to everything. As a special pleading to protect leftist protestors, it's unreasonable.

Great, Republicans should make it apply to everything.

These demands are only unreasonable if you assume the least charitable implementation, rather than treating them as what they are - the first round of negotiations.

Why isn't this a problem for every other type of law enforcement? You're trying to conjure up an absurd situation that in practice would not be an issue. You simply have to have reasonable guidelines for when ICE agents are required to give their badge number and when they aren't.

Okay, this immediately makes me think this would be a problem. Because every single time I've heard "that will never, ever happen, don't be absurd", guess what? It happens.

You honestly think the same people who are handing out whistles, co-ordinating groups, and driving around after ICE vehicles won't find some way to be nuisances on this? Really? The people screaming abuse, recording video, and passing around handy tips as to what is and is not legal (even if that is totally wrong)?

You have a much higher opinion of the reasonableness and law-abiding nature of the activists than I do.

As I mentioned elsewhere, protestors are literally already doing this. They are accosting suspected ICE personnel and demanding their identification. So what exactly are you afraid is going to happen?

Besides, the original claim was that this is 'completely unreasonable'. The only person being unreasonable is Nybbler, acting as if a policy change would occur with literally zero guidance, that protestors could 'hack the system' by DDoSing agents during an arrest, like it's a video game and they can chain-stun them.

Watch my brilliant policy mind at work... "ICE does not have to identify themselves during an active arrest." Or how about this one... "ICE only has to provide a badge number to someone they are detaining or officially interacting with."

The point of this proposal, in case it didn't occur to you, is so that people can hold individual officers to account when they misbehave. This is an obvious good.

this is simply preventing profiling, which is discrimination and should be illegal.

I have no idea what this is meant to mean. Is it unreasonable to assume that a Hispanic person who doesn't speak English very well is vastly more likely to be an illegal immigrant than a white person with a pronounced American accent?

Who cares about 'vastly more likely'? We don't arrest people for being 'likely' to commit a crime. This is basic stuff, I can't believe I have to explain it.

Who cares about 'vastly more likely'?

People who care about actually stopping the thing in question. It's a huge point of data that we're supposed to ignore, what, just because it gives you warm and fuzzy anti-racist feelings and you don't care about immigration enforcement anyway?

We don't arrest people for being 'likely' to commit a crime.

We actually do arrest people for having 'likely' committed a crime. That's what "probable cause" is. And as @LotsRegret points out, we sometimes do detain people on an even lesser standard even if we think they haven't committed a crime yet (the original "articulable suspicion" case, Terry v. Ohio was about a robber casing a target, IIRC)

We don't arrest people for being 'likely' to commit a crime.

It isn't required to arrest someone, you can detain them pending investigation as long as you have reasonable articulatable suspicion, then you can arrest them with probable cause.

In which case ICE should have some idea who they are before detaining them.

The "atrocities" this is supposed to stop are cases where US citizens who did not provide ID and were believed to be an illegal alien that ICE was looking for were arrested and detained until they were identified. This would allow any actual alien to avoid detention by refusing to identify themselves.

What, like in the middle of a contested arrest? To every protestor who asks? (and if you think they won't DDOS enforcement that way, you haven't been paying attention)

Why isn't this a problem for every other type of law enforcement?

Because they're not required to tell their badge number and last name to anyone who asks.

You're trying to conjure up an absurd situation that in practice would not be an issue.

Sure it would. Protestors would go up to ICE agents and ask their badge number, over and over again, just so they could film it when the ICE agent quit answering because he had something else to do.

These demands are only unreasonable if you assume the least charitable implementation, rather than treating them as what they are - the first round of negotiations.

The least charitable implementation is what to expect.

This would allow any actual alien to avoid detention by refusing to identify themselves.

I can see how, again, you could imagine a poorly worded rule that would have this consequence. But any reasonable implementation would provide the necessary protections so that before someone is locked up in a detention center, ICE would be required to do due diligence on the person. Obviously anyone, US citizen or not, who refuses to give their name would not be protected by this. How could you imagine it otherwise? But there are cases where a US citizen told ICE who they were but were still arrested and taken to a detention center, and had to call a lawyer to get out. That's obviously unacceptable!

Because they're not required to tell their badge number and last name to anyone who asks.

Protestors would go up to ICE agents and ask their badge number, over and over again, just so they could film it when the ICE agent quit answering because he had something else to do.

Again, any reasonable implementation - in fact scratch that, literally any implementation - would provide guidance on when and where ICE agents need to identify themselves. Seriously, how do you imagine this stuff works? Not to mention, your horror situation doesn't even rely on the new rule, protestors literally already do this!

Yes, now protestors can ask ICE agents for their ID, but if the ICE agents don't give it, they've done nothing wrong. If they were required to give it, protestors could and would do exactly as I said, and the agents or ICE itself would be in trouble if they didn't answer.

Or by, I dunno, investigation? Properly legislated, this is simply preventing profiling, which is discrimination and should be illegal.

Profiling obviously works, when we abolish it cops can't stop teenagers in the hood while we all pretend it's fine that the TSA gives extra pat-downs to grandma. You profile everyone relentlessly every day of your life, it's drawing patterns from observations, it's how cognition works. Throw infinite quantities of money down a blackhole because AI keeps profiling and the principled anti-racists say it shouldn't be allowed to do that. I think this attitude is anti-civilization, if we have to jump through hoops to act on information everyone obviously knows is reasonable, what are we even doing here? We know where the illegal immigrants are coming from, we know what they probably look like. Sorry for anyone mistakenly detained for five minutes while ICE works through the exceptions, it's a minor inconvenience we promise, until the lawyers get involved. Along similar lines, we can't kill criminals anymore, because activists made the death penalty so expensive, so now they say we should just get rid of it entirely. No thanks, let's profile all the illegal immigrants so we can deport them faster and have a country again, I can put up with a little racism in the process.

If you were a Spanish-speaking Hispanic citizen you would feel differently. If you were routinely stopped by ICE until you could prove your citizenship, solely on the grounds of what you look like, you'd be rightly furious.

ICE should not be rounding up people who look like they could maybe be illegal and demanding papers from them. That's insane! And blatantly illegal! You cannot detain someone on the grounds of 'looking Hispanic in public'.

There's a huge difference between you treating someone differently based on assumptions you make from their appearance, and law enforcement openly targeting people for the same. It's a totally different standard.