Comment by duxup 2 days ago
The whole story of telling ICE agents to just go out and find people on their own seems like a setup to empower the executive branch to have their own group of thugs. Without guidance they do what want outside the judicial system and sensible oversight / rules.
This seems to be a pattern in most non democratic countries...
>Like it's seriously Nazi shit. This is police with extreme powers. All they have to say is "We thought they were illegal" and nothing will happen.
This is barely any different from "we thought we smelled weed".
The problem isn't ICE. They are just todays's live action remake of the same story we've seen before.
The problem is that there is no punishment, no consequences for all those people who, regardless of if through malice or ignorance, let these precedents be made and stand.
Arguably the current situation is worse than the abuses of years past because unlike drug prosecution to which a cross section of society is subjected ICE's prosecution targets (mostly) non citizens who will simply be deported to little effect upon the citizens whereas the citizens had to live with the fallout from drug prosecutions.
It's very different. When a cop "thought he smelled weed," he still has to:
- detain you and tell you why he detained you
- get a prosecutor to press charges promptly, charges which have to be articulated in terms of specific statutes that your elected representatives wrote
- give you defense counsel to argue your case in court
- set a prompt court date to argue your case
- tell the public that you were put in jail, why, and the circumstances
- release those court docs to the public
- follow rules of evidence when presenting their case
There are abuses, but there are also a robust set of protections in place. If the cops thought they smelled weed in your car, and there was no weed in your car, you argue that in court, and it's really very likely that you will walk free. That outcome, for the most part, is why cops don't immediately put everyone with tattoos in jail.
This is very very different from the alternative, which is where a cop says he thinks your tattoo might look like MS-13, so you go to an offshore prison forever, with no visitation rights and no trial.
Those two outcomes are VERY different! For that reason, yes, the problem is ICE.
> Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now
It has been entertaining listening to the people at Reason Magazine lately. They have convinced themselves thoroughly that they're not actually racist authoritarians, so now that they're getting what they really want, but it's so diametrically opposed to what they say they believe, they have to contort themselves endlessly.
Do not expect any kind of help from those kinds of people. Their anti-authoritarianism is largely performative or reserved to their in-group. When it's not performative, it's just rich kids complaining they're not allowed do to whatever they want.
I’ve checked in on Reason from time to time and it’s scary. They’ll have an article accurately recognizing the threat and incompatibility with even remotely libertarian principles, and the comments are like “this boot tastes great!” or “not a problem as long as it happens to brown people”.
Their top immigration story right now is a great example: https://reason.com/2025/06/12/california-immigration-raids-a...
"I don't want to pay taxes or have firearms laws but I want to appear ideologically consistent."
>Another thing that is troubling is that immigration law is sort of a parallel system to normal criminal law. The rights for the accused are lesser and obligations for officers are more lax. The burden of proof is lower. It's easier to get warrants and the rules of evidence are more relaxed.
I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
>Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
It's fantastic that right libertarians have the opportunity to own me, a lib. The silver lining to all of this is all of the epic lib-owning that can be done as a result of the destruction of the rule of law. But, by my reading, traffic court and HOA fees were not cause of all of this. Right libertarians rightfully complained in 2001 when the DHS was formed; they again rightfully complained in the 2010's when Snowden blew the lid open on global surveillance. I would like to see them resist in a meaningful way here and now. Unfortunately it seems they are busy going to cryptocurrency conferences at Mar-a-Lago.
> I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
I think we saw what giving power to the "right guy" in the executive branch lead us. The thing that will stop us going down this road is, at this point, active resistance from local and state governments, private businesses and government contractors, and large multi-national corporations.
You need a lot of ICE, an absolutely staggering number of cops and jails, to deport twenty million people. It should be crystal clear by now that they will attempt to follow through with this promise, by whatever means necessary.
Ghoulish shit: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghan-ally-detained-by-ice-imm...
> "For more than three years I worked for the U.S. military back in my home country," Naser said in the video as the masked officers took him into custody. "I came here to make a better life. I didn't know this was going to happen like this for me."
There is no "right guy". The sooner you learn that the better.
> Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
Can you point me to some examples of people a decade ago running afoul of traffic or code enforcement, and being sent to an extrajudicial concentration camp for it?
But seriously, stop trying to be edgy with needlessly contrarian points. Stop gloating because us libertarians were talking about the trend of unaccountable government processes before it was popular. The dam breaking is not something to be celebrated, you're just adding fuel to the fire.
It's time to circle the wagons and defend our country together. True libertarians are not "keeping our mouths shut", but rather speaking out against the rapidly increasing government power. One cause, which we have to be mature and acknowledge, is the destruction of bureaucracy (which we've always disliked, but at least it moderated) in favor of unrestrained autocracy.
Out of the hundreds initially deported to El Salvador, "only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations." [1]
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-el-salvador-deporte...
I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
The mechanism that is not working right now is not the presidency - it's congress. You could have Trump still in charge, but if congress were opposed to his actions - even to the extent of just repulsing his usurpation of powers he's not supposed to have - he would be a lame duck. And in fact a president on their own can't revert all this, they need congress to pass laws.
What this means is that it could end as soon as 2026. But this possibility will not last forever; if Trump succeeds in putting in place commanders in the army and police who are personally loyal to him in spite of the laws, then restoring the Republic will take many years.
> Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now?
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
I mean all ICE would really have to do is get people to agree to a TOS and in the USA that's good enough for you to now be forced into a parallel (quasi)legal system. The government already has this TOS in the form of plea deals which include giving up your constitutional rights.
Trump wants to declare martial law, he is trying to incite a reasonable enough response, the courts won't challenge him, he wants riots to be bad enough that upon his issuing the Exec Order, everyone just accepts/abides by his new king powers and obeys him like one.
Most democratic countries don't have decades of regular law enforcement refusing to enforce democratically agreed immigration law, which is what has made this defensible.
You are only fine if everyone is fine.
If it can happen to a brown person, it can happen to you - maybe have a little self interest, or perhaps consider how boring America would be without immigrants and black people - that's kinda where all our culture comes from, in our melting pot everything blends together.
You appear to be arguing that law enforcement focusing on dangers to their communities and not doing someone else’s job instead is bad. It’s exactly hard to find examples of cops who investigated real crimes and pulled ICE in when they realized the perp wasn’t here legally.
> You appear to be arguing that law enforcement focusing on dangers to their communities and not doing someone else’s job instead is bad.
Deprioritising lawlessness against the will of the electorate is bad enough, but I'm talking about deliberate noncooperation policies, e.g. the California sanctuary laws. That's going much further than "focusing on" other things.
> Deprioritising lawlessness against the will of the electorate is bad enough
You’re arguing that your personal opinion is “the will of the electorate”. The policies directing local police to focus on crime affecting their communities instead of shadowing federal immigration enforcement weren’t imposed by an aliens, they were enacted by democratically elected representatives.
California’s sanctuary laws are the subject of considerable mythology but they had no effect on crime rates according to actual studies because they don’t prohibit cops from working with law enforcement for cases involving people who pose a risk to their communities. They can’t hold people without cause or use a parking ticket to get someone deported but there’s no problem cooperating with federal law enforcement to get rid of a robber, killer, rapist, etc. – the kind of people most of the electorate want enforcement focused on, not gardeners and farm workers.
https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/01/california-sanctuary-...
> refusing to enforce democratically agreed immigration law
the main reason why immigration law has not been enforced is because a large number of US businesses (farms, factories, etc.) depend on those illegal immigrants as their workforce
if you really wanted to enforce immigration law you would shut down businesses who employ illegals -- which would also stem the tide of people coming into the US -- but that hasn't been done because immigrants -- regardless of their official status -- are a net positive for the US economy
> if you really wanted to enforce immigration law you would shut down businesses who employ illegals
I'm all for that (although California seemingly isn't, given that they make it illegal for those businesses to use e-Verify in most cases). I don't see any contradiction between doing that and continuing regular immigration enforcement. I certainly don't see how you can argue that we should stop regular immigration enforcement until we've done this new thing.
> made this defensible
That's like saying vigilantism is defensible.
I don't care if these "officers" (in quotes as we don't know who they are) are doing God's work, if they are 1) refusing to show proof that they are indeed officers and 2) have legal warrants for an arrest, and 3) provide those they arrest with due process, then they are acting outside the law
> That's like saying vigilantism is defensible.
When traditional law enforcement fails to the point that the rule of law completely breaks down, vigilantism becomes defensible.
> I don't care if these "officers" (in quotes as we don't know who they are) are doing God's work, if they are 1) refusing to show proof that they are indeed officers and 2) have legal warrants for an arrest, and 3) provide those they arrest with due process, then they are acting outside the law
ICE has the legal authority to arrest without warrants in many cases. I don't like it, but this is the flipsides of decades of insisting that illegal immigration isn't a crime and illegal immigrants aren't criminals.
> the rule of law completely breaks down
pretty hard to argue that the rule of law as completely broken down in the US
> ICE has the legal authority to arrest without warrants in many cases
yeah, you're probably right about that though I think it's more "some" cases than "many" (they can't enter your house to search for someone without a warrant); due process still holds though
Another thing that is troubling is that immigration law is sort of a parallel system to normal criminal law. The rights for the accused are lesser and obligations for officers are more lax. The burden of proof is lower. It's easier to get warrants and the rules of evidence are more relaxed.
There is a parallel authoritarian system being built up, starting with the creation of DHS in 2001 and ending god knows where. The massive expansion of ICE should ring alarm bells for everyone. This power grab does not end. It will expand and continue.
Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?