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Comment by ndespres | Hacker News Reader

Both can be true. I do believe anyone supporting the administration's efforts on immigration and many other issues, and anyone working to assist ICE in these efforts, etc to be acting unethically.

I think there is such thing as an ethical Ideal, and my own ethics are an attempt to get as close to the ideal as possible. I like to think that they don't exist in a vacuum.

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Is it unethical to follow law? Is it ethical to break a law you personally don’t agree with? The whole way society works is that we all agreed to follow the system even if we don’t always agree with that it says all the time. You can say whatever you want about it freely. When it’s real naughty we’re supposed to end it.

Selective enforcement of the law is actually unethical. If you don’t like it, you need to work to change it. Saying something is unethical just because you don’t like it is not rational. Moritality is personal, ethics are societal. Maybe your morals state open borders should be a thing, but our shared ethics don’t.

In this case, immigration law is messed up in both directions. Why do you feel like you feel like you should judge the side following the rules? Are the people who support the people following the law unethical too?

I don't believe selective enforcement of the law is unethical, if enforcement of the law would be immoral. However, criminalization of acceptable behaviour with an aim to selectively enforce it for some other motive may be immoral. E.g. if you wanted to imprison a particular race, so criminalised something acceptable which everyone does, and more aggressively policed that race.

It depends as Seward said "There is a higher law than the Constitution"

And Soldiers are legally obliged to not obey illegal orders

I have no idea how people can believe this kind of thing. The law is not in anyway ethical. Most of our law was handed down to us by monarchs and slavers. Almost no one agreed to it. We get a performative charade once every couple years which pretends everyone has agency in changing it. People who actually try to make real change, however, are usually murdered or locked up and forgotten.

How do you feel about identity theft? Is it ethical to take measures to reduce identity theft? Note that ICE is very strongly involved in reducing identity theft.

How do you feel about a living wage? Is it ethical to take action against people who cause wages to fall below a living wage? Note that wages go up when ICE removes people who are pushing wages down.

How do you feel about unemployment for black Americans? Is it ethical to help them by making more jobs available? ICE does that.

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