Comment by mekdoonggi

Comment by mekdoonggi 5 days ago

63 replies

"Why would anyone be opposed to deporting criminals" is verbatim what I've read from conservative commenters.

That isn't the issue being discussed. This is illustrating that armed, masked goons as a political weapon is a pandora's box that will get turned against everyone, regardless of status. Some people just don't care about the violence in Minnesota because it isn't happening to them.

sowbug 5 days ago

Almost every major US criminal constitutional rights case started with an actual criminal, or at least someone unsavory. Miranda was a rapist. Gideon of Gideon v. Wainwright was a burglar. Brady of Brady v. Maryland was a robber and possibly a murderer. These cases helped form the foundation of what due process actually means in the United States. But contemporary discussion surely included a lot of commentary like "Why would anyone be opposed to prosecuting murders, rapists, and violent criminals?" And that commentary was just as irrelevant then as it is now.

It's not about whether the US deports criminals. It's about how we go about doing it.

gadders 5 days ago

Obama managed to deport more illegal immigrants than Trump. The difference is the local cities and states were working with ICE, rather than weaponising it to try and get a Democrat president.

Obama even gave Tom Homan a medal for his work.

  • seanmcdirmid 5 days ago

    You forget that Obama wasn’t an idiot and did everything above board. Sanctuary cities existed back then, federal agents still enforced immigration rules just without Gestapo-like sh*t stirring. Trump wanted to provoke Minneapolis with aggressive highly visible tactics, and he got what he wanted.

    • gadders 5 days ago

      [flagged]

      • seanmcdirmid 5 days ago

        That is ridiculous, Republicans are sending in poorly trained masked federal agents "en masse" into liberal, being as rough and visible as possible. That is the very definition of sh*t stirring. This is just what MAGA wanted: to beat up and shoot some libs.

      • ModernMech 5 days ago

        So you don’t think it has anything to do with the fact the federal government murdered two people in cold blood for all to see?

  • buellerbueller 5 days ago

    The difference is that the Obama version was done with due process, i.e. constitutionally.

sejje 5 days ago

[flagged]

  • sowbug 5 days ago

    In the US, the 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, which courts have interpreted again and again as requiring that punishment be proportionate to the conduct. Weems v. United States (1910), for example, struck down a 15-year hard-labor sentence for a man who engaged in criminal fraud.

    Do you think Alex Pretti or Renee Good deserved 15 years of hard labor for disobeying ICE? How about just five years? Because what actually happened was they were executed on the spot.

    There is no FAFO exception in the US Constitution.

    • sejje 5 days ago

      Cruel and unusual punishment is about sentencing, after a trial. These folks didn't go through a trial.

      No, I don't think either person deserved fifteen years of hard labor, or five years.

      What actually happened is not that they were executed on the spot, no.

      • lovich 5 days ago

        Oh, just spontaneously died then? You know if you play the video backwards it shows ICE applying lifesaving bullet removal techniques on Mr. Pretti and Mrs. Good

      • sowbug 5 days ago

        It's not a particularly strong argument that these agents didn't violate the 8th amendment because they violated the 6th amendment right to trial.

        • sejje 4 days ago

          You mean "you're right, saying the victim was cruelly and unusually punished isn't a good argument here."

          You've just presented a new argument.

          Many, many people are killed by LEO each year; how many are considered 6th amendment violations? (None. LEO is not out there "administering judgement", they are responding to deadly-force encounters, guns, etc)

  • datsci_est_2015 5 days ago

    We’re not sure what your point is. “Things of a similar nature have happened in the past” is not a particularly strong argument.

    > In every state of the US (and most countries), people disobeying law enforcement will die. If you want to live, you comply, and you fight in court.

    This is naked bootlicking. You only support it because you view it as “your team” or “your tribe” and do not feel threatened by it. Tables turn in time. Maybe you are not old or wise or well-read enough to recognize that.

    • sejje 5 days ago

      I don't view law enforcement as my team. But I do want the laws enforced.

      • goatlover 5 days ago

        ICE has been breaking a lot of laws in Minnesota and ignoring Constitutional rights. Neither of the shootings have been justified based on video evidence, and the administration has blatantly lied and engaged in covering for the agents involved so far.

      • simoncion 5 days ago

        > The violence in Minnesota--that is, law enforcement killing people who are not obeying them--is nothing new. Happens in every state every day.

        Sure, agreed.

        > ICE deporting people isn't new, either.

        Yeah, agreed.

        > What's new is the folks trying to stop federal agents from doing their jobs...

        Nah. Cops of all flavors have been lying (even under oath) about how they beat the shit out of (or assaulted with chemical weapons (or killed)) someone because "I was afraid for my life", "I was being obstructed during the discharge of my lawful duties", and similar for ages. That's nothing new.

        What is probably new is the scale of the deployments of killer cops. What's definitely new is the extent of the media coverage of the obviously-illegal-but-roughly-noone-will-be-punished actions of many of those cops.

        That these cops are injuring folks, stealing and breaking their property, kidnapping folks, and killing folks is one huge fucked-up thing. The other huge fucked-up thing is that approximately noone will ask "So, why aren't these cops immediately in jail awaiting trial? Why don't the courts think this is obviously illegal? What has gone wrong here?". Instead, this will generally be pinned on either the Trump Administration, or Trump personally... so once he's out of office, folks will go "Job's done!" and nothing will change to fix the underlying long-standing problem. [0]

        [0] Do carefully note: I'm absolutely not saying that the Trump Administration (or perhaps Trump, himself) is blameless. They absolutely are responsible for the flood of poorly-trained ICE officers who pretty clearly have orders to engage in domestic terrorism. I'm pointing out that these domestic terrorists absolutely should be immediately sent to jail for what they've done. Trump and the Trump Administration have pretty much nothing to do with the fact that USian cops can kidnap, brutalize, steal, and murder with almost complete impunity... that's a long-standing problem.

  • crawfordcomeaux 5 days ago

    Normalizing state-sanctioned extra-judicial murder along with a message of compliance? Maybe go find videos of where compliance got people killed because the fact is the slave catchers enjoy brutality and murder.

    • sejje 5 days ago

      I'm not normalizing it, it's already normalized. We have accepted this kind of policing forever.

      Nothing in Minnesota has changed the game, except masks maybe, since they're being doxxed.

      • ModernMech 5 days ago

        We have not accepted anything. Hence the protests. Maybe you have accepted it but you don’t speak for everyone.

      • goatlover 5 days ago

        Not since George Floyd and certainly not with masks.

  • qeternity 5 days ago

    > In every state of the US (and most countries), people disobeying law enforcement will die. If you want to live, you comply, and you fight in court.

    This is one of the worst takes I have ever seen, to the point that you must just be trolling.

    Disobeying law enforcement is not a death sentence. It is often not even illegal. Just because LEO shouts "I am giving you a lawful order" does not in fact make it a lawful order. And this certainly is not happening in most other countries.

    The desire to be part of the Trump Tribe has made people forget what actually made America great.

    • sejje 5 days ago

      If it's not a lawful order, you fight that in court. It's almost a free pass to get out of whatever you did.

      But what she was given was a lawful order. That's the one I'm talking about.

      I'm not a trump voter.

      • mekdoonggi 5 days ago

        How did you determine "what she was given was a lawful order" without a trial?

      • UncleMeat 5 days ago

        Can you show me how specifically you fight it in court when the person abusing you is a federal officer? Bivens is basically dead.

    • crawfordcomeaux 5 days ago

      Enslavement, genocide, domination, and extraction made it great. For those who forgot.

      What we're watching is the collapse of such an unsustainable approach.