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Comment by kortilla | Hacker News Reader

Planes crash constantly by that argument as well. Anecdotes are not data. If you’re going to make a claim about something “constantly” happening, provide some stats.

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The article I linked reports 1500 citizens were held for some period of time on federal detainers or in immigration detention centers over a 9 year period.

One is too many. Constantly for something like this, kidnapping a citizen and holding him without charges or due process is pretty much all the time... this is what the troops supposedly die for, freedom.

One is too many, but one is also not constantly

See other comments: this happens regularly, and these victims are frequently held for weeks at a time without access to attorneys or being charged. That is a consistent pattern of violating the US constitution - it is not possible to enforce immigration policy in the way some people want to without violating the constitution.

I don't disagree, the comment I was responding to originally just said "one is too many". All I was saying is that one is certainly too many, but that doesn't mean you can use an anecdote to indicate that something happens regularly. Others have provided stats which actually do show that this happens regularly, which is great.

It's not possible to enforce immigration policy the way some other people want without violating human rights.

Ugh wow my grammar there was an absolute train wreck

>Those data show that from 2007 through July of last year, 693 U.S. citizens were held in local jails on federal detainers — in other words, at the request of immigration officials. And 818 more Americans were held in immigration detention centers during that same time frame, according to data obtained through a separate FOIA request by Northwestern University professor Jacqueline Stevens and analyzed by NPR.

For how long? That 693 number is going to include people who are caught smuggling/trafficking/etc. However, that number seems low to include that, so what is it a count of?

1500 over 9 years is less than how many people die in airline crashes. Both are terrible and there is no reason not to improve it.

But it’s hardly a crisis that requires any kind of drastic overhaul.

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