Comment by mlsu

Comment by mlsu 2 days ago

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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...?

duxup 2 days ago

Agreed, ICE seems like a natural org to begin extra legal actions with, fewer limits, you just claim you're doing immigration things and put the accused on a more oppressive track.

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  • chneu 2 days ago

    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.

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    • potato3732842 2 days ago

      >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.

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      • mlsu a day ago

        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.

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hansjorg 2 days ago

> 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.

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  • acdha 2 days ago

    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...

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  • cosmicgadget 2 days ago

    "I don't want to pay taxes or have firearms laws but I want to appear ideologically consistent."

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    • pixl97 2 days ago

      "I don't want the law to apply to me... now as for you"

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potato3732842 2 days ago

>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.

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  • mlsu 2 days ago

    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.

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    • Smoosh 2 days ago

      What people don’t seem to ask is, what will all of those enforcement officers do once they have deported a sufficient number of people such that the task becomes more difficult?

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    • potato3732842 a day ago

      There is no "right guy". The sooner you learn that the better.

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  • mindslight 2 days ago

    > 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.

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    • jzebedee 2 days ago

      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...

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      • mindslight 2 days ago

        I think you misread my sentence out of the context of the overall argument? I edited it to add "a decade ago" to be clearer.

        If I'm correctly interpreting what you said - yes, I agree that presently some people end up running afoul of traffic enforcement, which causes them to run afoul of immigration, which causes them to end up in the concentration camp.

        But the larger argument is contrasting the longer-existing authoritarian/autocratic dynamics of code/traffic enforcers versus the more recent development of autocratic immigration enforcers.

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        • jzebedee 2 days ago

          Thanks, I read it as saying that people weren't being deported to concentration camps over minor crimes or traffic offenses. I'm certainly not disagreeing with you about our descent into fascism.

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  • ajb 2 days ago

    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.

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sjsdaiuasgdia 2 days ago

> 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

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  • pyuser583 2 days ago

    Lyndon Johnson spent his entire life in government service, building a larger and larger state. The only pocket picking he knew was taxation.

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_DeadFred_ a day ago

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.

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