Two teenagers just doing their jobs, dogpiled by roughly four adult men, beaten up and released hours later. One of them was just dropped off at the Walmart down the street, the other they released at the federal building they’re working out of.
I am confused here. If the law grants ICE (or whatever is the umbrella agency that ICE operates under) the power to detain to determine legality of the status, ICE does it, and then releases people back, the law works as intended, no?
I am confused what is the difference between this, and police who can detain a “tall man in black short and red hat” and 10 hours later (or whenever) release back due to new information, or mistake in ID?
I understand that we absolutely have to strive to zero of such cases, but operations at scale (like law enforcement) have zero chance to have no mistakes.
Replace "tall man in black short and red hat who may have committed a violent crime" with "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed," even if they have a valid government ID card and we arrive at the problem with ICE.
> "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed,"
There are two parts to it in my view.
First, sure, I understand where you are coming from. At the same time I find this argument a bit problematic because if the numbers on border crossings from South America are true, and majority of those that crossed through are from South and Central America, who do you think ICE is going to look for? Tall, blond, white people from Norway (and I am not saying that there are no people who are out of status from Norway)?
Second, while Trump and co claimed that they will go after "only after criminals", and ICE arrests a bunch of people who may be not criminals in the hardcore sense of killers, etc., but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well. I do not understand this -- if the person crossed the border, are they supposed to get a pass just because? Why?
They should do some actually police work. This kind of "Papers, please" approach to immigration enforcement is dystopian. If you genuinely feel that illegal immigration is a problem that needs to be fixed, attack it systemically. Go through government, business, and housing records, find people who aren't here legally, and then go detain them. Don't just round people up based on nothing but their ethnicity and make them prove their innocence to you. It's inherently unAmerican, at least according to the ideals we like to claim we have (even if our history often falls short of those ideals).
>but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well.
Then arrest those people who commit crimes. If these people are guilty of something, why is ICE the one rounding them up? Why isn't the FBI or local police? If this is all motivated by a desire for lower crime, why are we treating it as an immigration issue instead of a crime issue?
> They should do some actually police work. This kind of "Papers, please" approach to immigration enforcement is dystopian.
Why it’s dystopian? It’s literally how it’s done in other places as well.
I agree that the government has to go through and punish those who employ illegal immigrants too to disincentivize unauthorized employment, but it doesn’t have to be only one avenue.
> Why isn't the FBI or local police?
I do not know where you live, but lately crimes in the US in many jurisdictions are not prosecuted, and repeat offenders are not punished. Coupled with the fact that many cities forbid their local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration, I am not sure how can local police do anything.
If an illegal immigrant committed a crime it is a failure of both local LEO and immigration. It doesn’t have to be only one.
I think a couple of these points are getting mixed together.
On the “crimes aren’t prosecuted” issue: that’s a broader criminal justice question, not really an immigration one. Whether someone is a citizen, documented immigrant, or undocumented immigrant, the question of prosecution policy is the same. If people think prosecutors are being too lenient, that’s something to take up locally through elections, town halls, etc. Immigration status doesn’t really change that dynamic.
On sanctuary policies or limits on local cooperation with immigration enforcement: the argument many cities make isn’t “ignore crime,” it’s “local police should focus on crime.” When local law enforcement is seen as an arm of immigration enforcement, it can discourage victims or witnesses from reporting crimes at all. So the policy goal is usually public safety, not shielding criminal behavior.
And on the last point: I agree. if an undocumented immigrant commits a crime, sure, there can be both a criminal justice component and an immigration component. But it helps to be clear about what problem we’re actually trying to solve. If the concern is crime, then that’s primarily a policing and prosecution issue regardless of who commits it. If the concern is immigration system design, then we should look at whether data actually shows disproportionate criminality among immigrants before framing it as an immigration enforcement failure.
> Immigration status doesn’t really change that dynamic.
Yes and no. It raises the question of how this specific crime could have been prevented. And it is very hard to argue against that with proper border enforcement, there is a good chance that some crime would have never happened.
The issue of social justice driven prosecution, while not related to the act of entering without inspection, just amplifies all these cases, and mixes the problem of lack of immigration enforcement with poorly thought out policies about prosecution and punishment.
What problem are we trying to solve here? I agree that we need to have proper border enforcement. But deporting people because they got a traffic citation[1]? Am I supposed to feel safer from "dangerous immigrants" now?
We need to solve the problem of prosecution and punishment of crimes. And we need to solve the problem of improper border enforcement. But this ain't the way. This just seems like a huge waste of resources.
And just another thought -- when non-white US citizens such as myself, my relatives, my in-laws, feel the need to carry their passports on them to prove citizenship and even then are fearful of being roughhoused and detained for no reason, the system is obviously broken. Or, maybe it's working exactly as intended.
Crime? I concede that if someone is illegal and they get stopped by law enforcement then I understand if they need to be deported. They are, after all, here illegally. The veteran from my previous comment should not have been deported after having served our nation honorably, but that is a one-off.
My point is that we have people at the top levels of government and corporation who have associated with a known sex trafficker. We have crimes literally right in front of our faces. Why are we spending resources on building a secret police of masked thugs who are basically doing whatever they want however they want, to deport people hanging outside of Home Depot?
Again, what problem are we trying to solve here? Are we just looking for people to deport, or are we trying to reduce crime? If we are looking for people to deport, then they should just say that instead of pretending like they are going after violent criminals and gangbangers, but then deporting gardeners.
If we are trying to reduce crime, there's some obvious places to start, and it isn't at the local Home Depot.
> Crime? I concede that if someone is illegal and they get stopped by law enforcement then I understand if they need to be deported. They are, after all, here illegally.
I am not sure I understand your position. If someone in the country illegally, then unless they commit a crime, or stopped by law enforcement, they should not be deported?
> The veteran from my previous comment should not have been deported after having served our nation honorably, but that is a one-off.
I’ve read the story in your link, and something is off. The person in question came to the country legally (not clear what it means in terms of his immigration status — maybe he came on a tourist visa, and then overstayed? Student visa -> overstay/fall out of status?) in 1975. At some point served in the army, which again was possible during some periods of time between 1975 and 2007 (perhaps even later), honorably discharged. Then, after some questionable things (not necessarily crimes, circa 2007) something went sideways, and lead to order of removal in 2014. The guy is old, and from a humanitarian perspective, IMO, he should not get deported. I still do not understand why he did not naturalize, but it is irrelevant at the moment.
> My point is that we have people at the top levels of government and corporation who have associated with a known sex trafficker. We have crimes literally right in front of our faces. Why are we spending resources on building a secret police of masked thugs who are basically doing whatever they want however they want, to deport people hanging outside of Home Depot?
> Again, what problem are we trying to solve here? Are we just looking for people to deport, or are we trying to reduce crime? If we are looking for people to deport, then they should just say that instead of pretending like they are going after violent criminals and gangbangers, but then deporting gardeners.
Why there should be a focus on only one? I mean, if you are doing an investigation into drug trafficking, make an arrest, and then discover that one of the arrestees is also committed another crime. Would you charge this person with the newly discovered crime, or not?
> If someone in the country illegally, then unless they commit a crime, or stopped by law enforcement, they should not be deported?
Sure, I can see why they should be deported. I don't think it's necessarily a good reason to be deported, but I concede that if you're illegal and get caught doing something you should not have done, then there's grounds for deportation. Like Al Capone got caught because he didn't do his taxes.
> from a humanitarian perspective, IMO, he should not get deported
That's interesting. Where do you draw the line?
> I mean, if you are doing an investigation into drug trafficking, make an arrest, and then discover that one of the arrestees is also committed another crime. Would you charge this person with the newly discovered crime, or not?
Sure, and there's tons of precedent for this (see Al Capone). But this isn't what's happening. ICE is not investigating crimes. There's purposely looking for people to deport, and employing filthy tactics to do this.
Again, if the tactics they're using causes US citizens to carry their own documentation, there's something seriously wrong.
> if you're illegal and get caught doing something you should not have done, then there's grounds for deportation.
So, the act of crossing the border without permission is fine?
> That's interesting. Where do you draw the line?
I draw the line in this particular case (and I have not spent time to learn more about his legal troubles, but assuming it was an honest mistake and he was careless w.r.t. hiring proper legal help to know implications on his immigration status) that this person served in the military and had a permanent residency that he lost due to a plea + his age, then yeah.
However, a random person crossing the border? No, they should be deported, and it does not matter if they are black, brown, or a tall Scandinavian blond.
> There's purposely looking for people to deport
Isn't it the whole purpose of the agency? Are there countries with functioning governments that have no ICE-like agency that is responsible to find and deport illegal immigrants?
> Again, if the tactics they're using causes US citizens to carry their own documentation, there's something seriously wrong.
I agree. That being said, I would think we have to examine how we got to this point, and I am not sure the answers and the conclusions would be good for both sides of the isle.
> So, the act of crossing the border without permission is fine?
Sure. If you're seeking asylum, why not go to the country that has a statue that says "send me your poor, huddled masses?"
> Isn't it the whole purpose of the agency? Are there countries with functioning governments that have no ICE-like agency that is responsible to find and deport illegal immigrants?
I can't answer that. But as a brown tourist to foreign nations I can say I've never ever been stopped and asked if I had my documents in those countries, except of course at the point of crossing (airport etc).
But as to the whole purpose of the agency? My question again is, what is the purpose of the agency? If the purpose is to just remove more illegals then I'd say it's not really doing a stellar job; Biden's administration did more deportations without resolving to scare tactics: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/trump-biden-immigrants...
But I pose to you this question — why not just add more resources to expedite the asylum process, rather than ruthlessly deporting and separating families and kids?
I am confused why you want to debate and make excuses for an agency that sent an innocent man to torture prison for all the months it took for the courts to get him back. Honestly. The complete inhumanity of some people.
Just a handful of examples from last year. As a resident of Minneapolis I can assure you it is much, much worse than these few examples.
Are you not familiar with Liam Conejo Ramos? Or Kilmar Abrego Garcia? Just two other high profile cases, but this is far more prevalent than any reporting has outlined. Three of Liam’s classmates were also “mistakenly” shipped to Texas and returned. At least one of his classmates, a documented asylum seeker like the rest, is still in Dilley.
I think you are a bad person who wants to sit around and talk about this as if it’s some sort of abstract philosophy and not a situation where actual human beings’ lives and health and bodies are being ruined by thugs paid for by my tax dollars. You are a bad person.
From everything we are seeing, the tools are not actually that capable. Their main function is not their stated function of spying/knowing a lot about people. Their main function is to dehumanize people.
When you use a computer to tell you who to target, it makes it easy for your brain to never consider that person as a human being at all. They are a target. An object.
Their stated capabilities are lies, marketing, and a smokescreen for their true purpose.
This is Lavender v2, and I’m sure others could name additional predecessors. Systems rife with errors but the validity isn’t the point; the system is.
you know, I feel like we don't actually do that so much these days. It's simply too likely that the receiving party is going to take you at face value or make up their own deeper meaning.
Take irony / sarcasm / satire. They're pretty dead compared to what they used to be. I can recall a time when just about everything had subtext, but now you kind of have to play it straight. You can't respond to a racist with sarcasm because anyone listening will just think you agree with them.
It's Poe's law across the board. World news brought to you by Not The Onion(tm).
> You can't respond to a racist with sarcasm because anyone listening will just think you agree with them.
You absolutely can, if you are actually dealing with people listening, because sarcasm is signalled with (among other things) tone (the other things include the listeners contextual knowledge of the speaker.)
You can't do it online, in text, where the audience is mostly strangers who would have to actively dig into your history to get any contextual sense of you as a speaker, because text doesn't carry tone, and the other cues are missing, too.
And by “you can’t”, I mean “you absolutely can, but you have to be aware of the limitations of the medium and take care to use the available tools to substitute for the missing signalling channels”.
It's a matter of degree. You're right, of course, but there was a time not so long ago when such things were ubiquitous - even on the internet. Once upon a time, even the darkest corners like 4chan were actually kind of tongue-in-cheek. Then it slowly dawned on everyone that there were a bunch of people there who weren't kidding, and things kind of went to pot.
In a reversal of the aphorism; those were more complex times. I miss them.
It’s not even really a problem of the Internet necessarily; it’s rather a symptom of the growing political divide in Western society. Things are “simple” now because we’ve reached the point where nuanced discussion is pointless. In Europe you can be jailed for going against the Accepted Opinions™, and we’re seeing a rise in politically motivated attacks. There is no logical solution to emotionally backed rhetoric like we’ve seen with the Turtle Island terrorists; you can’t debate ethics with someone who wants you dead.
By their own words they were going to commit terrorism. That, logically, makes them terrorists. They were found, on film, to be making and experimenting with illegal explosives, and they were found to own even more materials. If you have trustworthy evidence that this is all fabrication—evidence that doesn’t exist in your mind—then I’d be more than happy to see it.
And if you’re saying all of this because you agree with them and their actions, at least have the courage to state you support terrorism directly.
> Once upon a time, even the darkest corners like 4chan were actually kind of tongue-in-cheek.
I distinctly remember both the invention of q-anon and the idea of Trump as a presidential candidate happening on 4chan as a we're-all-in-on-it joke, until true believers started showing up and thinking we believed too. Not a joke anymore...
> I distinctly remember both the invention of q-anon and the idea of Trump as a presidential candidate happening on 4chan as a we're-all-in-on-it joke
4chan was created in 2003. Trump's first bid for the Presidency was an attempt at the Reform Party nomination dropped early in the primary season—in 2000, the one cycle when that party had access to federal matching funds but wasn't effectively a vehicle for H. Ross Perot. Another Trump bid was a recurring topic of discussion in serious, if speculative, contexts ever since (and, for that matter, the idea of a Trump presidential run had been even before the first bid, back to the 1980s, as I recall.) It certainly is not an idea that first emerged as a 4chan joke.
You're right, there's absolutely no sarcasm ever seen on the internet or anywhere else. These days if you say something sarcastic they throw you in jail!
I had a coworker who kept up a blog about random purchases she’d made, where she would earn some money via affiliate links. I thought it was horrendously boring and weird, and the money made was basically pocket change, but she seemed to enjoy it. You might be surprised, people write about all sorts of things.
People used to do it early internet before affiliate marketing really took it over. Certainly it was more genuine and products were bemoaned for their compromises in one dimension as much as praised for their performance in another. Everything is a glowing review now and comparisons are therefore meaningless.
There certainly is a huge army of people ready to spout this sort of nonsense in response to anyone talking about doing anything.
Hard to know what percentage of these folks are trying to assuage their own guilt and what percentage are state actors. Russia and Israel are very chronically online, and it behooves us internet citizens to keep that in mind.
I think it’s a reason. It’s certainly demoralizing. Plagiarism sucks and feels bad. If I were to google something and see the AI overview parroting my blog post, sort of almost kind of paraphrasing my words and shoving the link to my actual blog off the phone screen entirely, I think I would personally travel to google headquarters and start swinging a baseball bat.
But… For starters, plagiarism has always been an issue. Even before the internet. Look at Tesla, or Rosalind Franklin. It was an issue on the internet before LLMs showed up. It’s always been trivially easy to copy and paste digital information, and with a little bit of programming to do so at scale. Those weird SEO wordpress blogs with their aggregated/stolen content have been around forever. The web was choked full of plagiarized garbage years before chatgpt was an option or even an idea.
Also consider that the AI machine takes a lot more than your stolen creative output to run. It needs tons of electricity poured into expensive equipment. It’s not clear whether the “stolen data + expensive scientists + expensive graphics cards + metric shittons of electricity” side of the equation is ever going to equal “monthly rate people will pay for access to sort of ok almost sometimes accurate information (a service which has been on offer for free for roughly 2 years and is easy to find for free depending on the company/model/use case)” let alone be lower than it. The plagiarism is not profitable and hopefully unsustainable.
And let’s sit on “access to sort of ok almost accurate information” for a second here. Because I’m pretty sure people looking for this and people looking for a blog written by a real human person who they can build a (parasocial perhaps but still) relationship with and send emails to and follow for more related content are entirely separate demographics. Blog traffic has dropped off because Facebook, Instagram, etc. It was those massive sites, not LLMs, that gutted that part of the internet.
Going back to sustainability, legal challenges to the plagiarism machines do still exist and have traction. The more creators, more bloggers and artists and programmers and more of anyone sharing their stuff online, the more people we have with a very vested stake in ending the plagiarism free for all.
I say get in there, get creating, and get up to some lobbying on the side for good measure. Don’t sit back and let a handful of spoiled nerds and obscenely wealthy old people ruin the joy of creating and sharing things. Maybe drop in more references to baseball bats to make your output less palatable to the monster. I don’t know.
> If I were to google something and see the AI overview parroting my blog post, sort of almost kind of paraphrasing my words and shoving the link to my actual blog off the phone screen entirely, I think I would personally travel to google headquarters and start swinging a baseball bat.
This is the only sensible reaction to the abuses that huge tech companies are dumping onto society.
I do agree half heartedly with what you are saying. Making our own stuff and seeking out human-made stuff is more important than ever
It's just demoralizing because it is now also more difficult than ever. It should be the norm, not the exception imo and to me the future looks bleak and soulless.
You have more hope than I do. I view this as futile. I am more and more convinced the only way to combat this capitalist, AI-fueled dystopia being pushed on us is with violence, and I think that is the absolute worse possible thing
I'm not calling for revolution. I don't want violence. I just don't see any real way forward for humanity in a post AI world. I think this is one of the worst things that we could have ever invented
We cannot coordinate large scale positive change without connecting genuinely with each other.
I don’t think violence is necessary. The common people have access to many levers of power, we only need to overcome lack of coordination and awareness.
But violence is an important part of our history. It is human nature and it serves a purpose. I won’t shy away from it.
This happened at the Target I shop at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/ice-immigrat...
Two teenagers just doing their jobs, dogpiled by roughly four adult men, beaten up and released hours later. One of them was just dropped off at the Walmart down the street, the other they released at the federal building they’re working out of.
reply