Comment by noduerme

Comment by noduerme 2 days ago

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I think a lot of people in the US are clinging to the hope that this type of friction, along with judicial decisions, will cause the process of removing our legal protections to stall out. I'm not optimistic that this is the case, because the party currently driving the federal incursion on private and state-held data is the one that until recently was opposed to things like national ID. Anything can be done in the name of protecting people from N, if you can get a majority to be afraid of N.

pfannkuchen a day ago

I don’t really get why people seem convinced that the government is removing protections for all citizens under a smokescreen of illegal immigration handling, as opposed to taking limited and temporary measures to deal with an unusual situation.

My current interpretation is that they are fear mongering about violence because they are actually way more racist than they admit publicly, and might want to remove more people than they were letting on initially.

So okay you can definitely disagree with that, and how you feel about it can definitely be influenced by how much you feel threatened (personally or network) and that’s valid.

But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do we think that the borders were opened intentionally to fabricate this “crisis”? If not, it would be such a huge coincidence, because there are a zillion reasons to be concerned about the demographic situation without needing to use it as a smokescreen, what are the odds that this problem organically appeared and then they happen to be able to take advantage of it?

Note that I’m not asserting that the borders weren’t opened intentionally to fabricate this problem to which they can react with a “solution”, that sounds exactly like something a government would do. I just don’t hear anyone saying that out loud, at least, and having personal network or moral values or whatever threatened and reacting to that just seems a lot more likely to me as a reason why people feel like the world is ending.

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  • RHSeeger a day ago

    > I don’t really get why people seem convinced that the government is removing protections for all citizens under a smokescreen of illegal immigration handling, as opposed to taking limited and temporary measures to deal with an unusual situation.

    Probably because the actions being taken are against people of every category; illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and naturally born citizens.

    As has been noted, _anyone_ not being entitled due process means _nobody_ is entitled to due process. Because then can kidnap you, claim you're "of a group not entitled to due process", and do whatever they want to you. And you can't push back because you're not in that group... because you need due process to do that.

    > But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general?

    At some point, you have to call a duck a duck. They're doing things that despotically authoritarian would do, over and over. They may or may not _think_ that's what their goal is, but it clearly is.

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    • pfannkuchen a day ago

      What actions are being taken against legal immigrants and naturally born citizens?

      Are you referring to getting arrested and released due to some suspicion (let’s say the suspicion is always fabricated for the sake of argument), or deported, or something else?

      On due process, if someone accidentally gets a free flight to a foreign country, that totally sucks and they should be paid compensation, but let’s not pretend that deportation is the same as what authoritarian regimes typically do. Have people disappeared off the face of the earth? I think the Germans of the ‘30s would have a very different reputation if they had simply attempted to deport all the Jews…

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      • dustractor a day ago

        > Have people disappeared off the face of the earth?

        It is established that hundreds of detainees from the July 2025 Alligator Alcatraz intake were unaccounted for in ICE’s online system by late August and reported as such through September 2025, with recurring reporting of about 800 with no online record and some 450 with unclear location data.

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      • komali2 a day ago

        > On due process, if someone accidentally gets a free flight to a foreign country, that totally sucks and they should be paid compensation, but let’s not pretend that deportation is the same as what authoritarian regimes typically do.

        Are you being facetious, or do you genuinely think so lightly of people being black bagged with no due process and deported to a random country that you'll joke about it being a "free flight?"

        Also, you seem to not be aware that deportation and "voluntary deportation (via various forms of pressure)" of Jewish people was the step Nazi Germany did before the concentration camps.

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      • mrguyorama 18 hours ago

        ICE themselves states that only 70% of the people they arrest are even illegal aliens. Only 44% have prior criminal records or pending accusations.

        Getting arrested with no valid cause doesn't "totally suck", it's a fundamental violation of the most basic rights of anyone living in a functioning country. As long as you can just pick up anyone you want, nobody has rights. You have a basic right to not be arrested for doing nothing wrong, and yet that's exactly what ICE is doing to tens of thousands of Americans.

        >I think the Germans of the ‘30s would have a very different reputation if they had simply attempted to deport all the Jews…

        Which is what they were literally doing. At first. But when you consider human beings as corrosive to your society, you will never be satisfied with just getting them out of your borders. The same people who treat prison rape as a good punishment for criminals will not be satisfied with illegal aliens just being removed, especially since they will "come back".

        We've been through all this before. We literally signed treaties with Native Americans, but letting them have all this land just wasn't acceptable because they were "savages" that don't deserve it, and weren't being as useful with it as we would be!

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      • matthewmacleod a day ago

        Of course this is where it starts. If you ever find yourself in the situation of saying “at least it’s not as bad as Nazi Germany” then you’re probably not heading in a good direction.

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        • andrepd a day ago

          While being mistaken about what Nazi Germany did (they did not, in fact, start gassing people in 1933; it began precisely with deportations).

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      • andrepd a day ago

        > if someone accidentally gets a free flight to a foreign country

        It's practically a vacation, you're right. I really don't know what they're complaining about /s

        > think the Germans of the ‘30s would have a very different reputation if they had simply attempted to deport all the Jews...

        There's no way you've just written that. I urgently suggest you to pick a history book.

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        • pfannkuchen 21 hours ago

          There is quite a lot of daylight between “something to complain about” and “authoritarian regime”. I never said they had “nothing to complain about”.

          I’m not trying to convince anyone that there isn’t authoritarian regime behavior happening. I am just trying to figure out what people are talking about when they refer to that as if it is happening.

          I am using “Germans of the ‘30s” as a euphemism. Obviously I know the timeline of what happened, you are just misinterpreting as an opportunistic drama nitpick. Whether the misinterpretation is happening consciously or subconsciously, I don’t know.

          If the “Germans of the ‘30s” had only ever done deportations, which they did do, i.e. had they stopped there, we would not view them in the same way. Ergo, if the current regime stops with deportations, which we have no evidence to show that they won’t, then there is nothing to suggest that they will end up behaving in an authoritarian way, because further massive steps are required to get there. And besides, the current American regime has tremendously more legal justification for these deportations than the Nazis had for the Jews deportation. The Nazis presumably had to change German law to even deport the Jews. No change of law is required here, because it is perfectly congruent with the existing legal framework (and was done consistently for decades prior to this administration, just more quietly and I guess in smaller numbers).

          It’s weird how slippery slope arguments are only valid in public discourse when it comes to the Nazis, and in that case it’s so valid it is just taken as a fact. Just because someone is doing something that can be squinted at to look like something that happened prior to a genocide, does not mean that it will lead to genocide. The ad absurdum version of this line of thinking would suggest banning vegetarianism or painting, as genocidal mania soon followed.

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    • UberFly a day ago

      You may personally have an issue with federal law enforcement detaining people who are in the US illegally, but nobody is being "kidnapped".

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      • matthewmacleod a day ago

        A citizen being rounded up by the state and bundled off to a foreign country illegally and with no process is absolutely kidnapping regardless of how much you want to pretend otherwise.

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  • komali2 a day ago

    > what are the odds that this problem organically appeared and then they happen to be able to take advantage of it?

    Quite low. Borders weren't open to fabricate an excuse to engage in authoritarianism - the excuse was simply fabricate, whole-cloth, with no basis in reality to justify it.

    There is no immigration problem in the USA. Large portions of the American economy are dependent on immigration, documented or otherwise. Immigrants, documented or otherwise, commit less crimes per-capita than USA citizens.

    So, the current government is using immigration as a flash-point to get themselves elected, and as an ongoing distraction away from their failure to address their other platform (affordability). Getting to be more authoritarian is the stated goal, based on the plan outlined in "Project 2025."

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    • throaway123213 a day ago

      Illegal immigration is a problem whether you want to admit or or not. Just allow the amount of legal immigrants needed. Saying illegal immigration is not a problem is just as much of a smokescreen as saying immigrants are "the" problem.

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      • komali2 a day ago

        Ah, well if it's a problem, it should be trivially easy for you to illustrate how exactly it's a problem, using hard facts and numbers. I earnestly invite you to do so!

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    • pfannkuchen a day ago

      > There is no immigration problem in the USA

      Well this is a controversial statement. Many people have thought there was an immigration problem in the USA since well before Trump entered politics.

      If I pretend to believe that there is definitely no immigration problem, though, then I agree with you. But like I said, that is a controversial statement.

      Would you believe that the people who support this just do believe there is an immigration problem? People are allowed to care about things other than the economy and crime stats, by the way.

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      • komali2 a day ago

        > Would you believe that the people who support this just do believe there is an immigration problem?

        Yes, of course I believe that there's people who believe there's an immigration problem.

        > People are allowed to care about things other than the economy and crime stats, by the way.

        What sort of problems would one believe can arise from immigration that aren't related to the economy or public safety?

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    • trimethylpurine a day ago

      What is it about being a US citizen that increases criminality? Shouldn't we expect that crime comes down as the US has been a leader in immigration, considering immigrants commit less crime? Has crime come down in Europe as it became a leader?

      I've been trying to make sense of the statistics. Interested to hear any explanation that can reconcile these contrasting observations.

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      • bitfis a day ago

        Generally it seems to be more related that if you are an immigrant, you more likely try to keep your heads down. This comes from a video about immigration in sweden. For which the first generation of immigrants want to contribute to society in most cases, while the second generation seems to be more open to crime. The second generation does of course has then the citizenship and are not considered to be immigrants anymore. But this does does not need to correlate with immigration and culture per se, but also can have todo about second generations being badly integrated and/or having less oportunities then other citizens. Just seems citizens generally accept less shit from the government then immigrants do.

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  • noduerme a day ago

    >> why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general

    You stated this very well.

    But I do think it's a ruse. I don't have a problem with enforcing the law on illegal immigration.[0] But I do think the deployment of National Guard and in some cases Marines on American streets, allegedly to disperse anti-ICE protests, is a long game to make sure that there will be no judicial obstacles in the way if MAGA loses the 2028 election fair and square, cries foul that the election was stolen, decides to send in their own slate of electors, and faces nationwide protests.

    I live in Portland. I see the ridiculous cosplay of protesters outside the ICE detention facility. I see the absurdity of deploying troops to face off against them. If these clowns can be used as a casus belli to declare war and use the US military against the civilian population, then it will be no stretch to do so when a large portion of the population rises up to demand a proper electoral count in 2028. That's the scenario I see when I see the willy-nilly, unnecessary use of federalized troops on American soil.

    And for the record, I'm a registered Republican and mostly libertarian.

    [0] I am not anti-immigration, and I don't view immigration as a "demographic problem". I don't care what race people are as long as they are coming here for the right reasons and want to integrate and be productive members of our society. I was also an illegal immigrant in Europe for years. I accept the fact that countries have the right to decide who they want to accept as citizens, and that breaking those rules may damage your ability to become a citizen of the country you want to be accepted into. And that going there illegally may carry certain risks.

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    • mikkupikku a day ago

      > "If these clowns can be used as a casus belli to declare war and use the US military against the civilian population, then..."

      That hasn't happened though. Deploying the national guard to stare down and maybe tear gas some clownish protestors is pretty typical stuff, not a civil war.

      By the way, I was in Seattle when the CHAZ stuff was happening and saw firsthand how both sides of the media were lying about the reality on the ground. Half the media wanted me to believe it was a violent insurrection and the other half wanted me to believe it was just a family friendly Woodstock situation. Reality as I observed it: it was just a bunch of losers huffing spray paint fumes, with the police hanging back a few blocks letting them make fools of themselves. I saw no violence, I wasn't stopped at an armed checkpoint by AK-47 wielding masked rebels like Fox News promised (I didn't seriously expect that, lmao.)

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      • komali2 15 hours ago

        Well then it sounds like there's no reason to send the national guard in at all, and that it's quite wasteful to do so. So why are they sending in the national guard?

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  • wkat4242 a day ago

    > But why do we think that they are using this as a ruse to like become despotically authoritarian in general? Do we think that the borders were opened intentionally to fabricate this “crisis”?

    Maybe because many things Trump does and says are blatant lies and shameless despotic authoritarian ones? Ignoring courts, ignoring the constitution especially the first amendment, using his office for personal gain. I don't think I have to give examples because they're just too many. Only last week he pardoned a convicted drug dealer who was Hondurese president while planning to invade Venezuela and "just killing people" because of drugs for which there isn't even any evidence. It was just the last of many (including silk road captain Ross Ulbricht). Anyway that's just one of the recent things.

    And the borders were never actually open. It's really hard to migrate to the US and the illegals do all the work the Americans won't do for almost nothing.

    The real problem with public safety is the huge income gaps, leading to disenfranchised ghettos with festering organised crime gangs. A lot of them might be immigrants but many are born Americans. The thing they have in common that they are poor and have no upward opportunities.

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