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The point wouldn't be to threaten people into voting Republican. It would be to suppress turnout in blue precincts in purple states. There are a lot of US citizens who care more about not attracting the attention of hostile government authority figures than they do about voting.
Would Trump order ICE to run a major publicity campaign before the elections to say that they would be carrying out random immigration checks outside polling stations in Atlanta, Philadelphia etc? (State Republican parties have pulled this kind of stunt in the past) Actually carry out the checks? (probably not, although if it was Stephen Miller's call he would).
This is an interesting one. The key policy point here is that ICE should not be picking up illegal immigrants who came to their attention because they were victims or witnesses in criminal trials - otherwise you create bad incentives which undermine justice for US citizens and legal immigrants. But not arresting at courthouses is both over and underinclusive here - you do want to be able to arrest e.g. acquitted defendants, and you want a credible commitment not to arrest witnesses and victims outside the courthouse as well as inside it.
ICE should 100% be deporting illegals who pop up as witnesses. The entire point of ICE is to make it so illegals have no rights an self-deport.
I think the fear is that, if these witnesses do not show up, then the criminal they would have been testifying against will walk free, and potentially an American Citizen will be denied justice.
The problem is, we have let the problem go unaddressed for so long, no matter what we do there will be sympathetic people who have less than optimal outcomes. In aggregate I believe enforcing immigration law is the best action to take. There will be cases on the margin where someone gets screwed, but largely because of how big the problem got and how little we did to address it for decades, until it ballooned up past the point we could not ignore during Biden.
Agree. Trade-offs exists.
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