This seems to be a pattern in most non democratic countries...
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...?
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-el-salvador-deporte...
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.
> 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.
> "For more than three years I worked for the U.S. military back in my home country," Naser said in the video as the masked officers took him into custody. "I came here to make a better life. I didn't know this was going to happen like this for me."
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.
“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
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.
Their top immigration story right now is a great example: https://reason.com/2025/06/12/california-immigration-raids-a...
Deprioritising lawlessness against the will of the electorate is bad enough, but I'm talking about deliberate noncooperation policies, e.g. the California sanctuary laws. That's going much further than "focusing on" other things.
You’re arguing that your personal opinion is “the will of the electorate”. The policies directing local police to focus on crime affecting their communities instead of shadowing federal immigration enforcement weren’t imposed by an aliens, they were enacted by democratically elected representatives.
California’s sanctuary laws are the subject of considerable mythology but they had no effect on crime rates according to actual studies because they don’t prohibit cops from working with law enforcement for cases involving people who pose a risk to their communities. They can’t hold people without cause or use a parking ticket to get someone deported but there’s no problem cooperating with federal law enforcement to get rid of a robber, killer, rapist, etc. – the kind of people most of the electorate want enforcement focused on, not gardeners and farm workers.
https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/01/california-sanctuary-...
Elected at the state level, sure. But it was against the will of the national electorate and they knew it. Democracy means going along with popular decisions even if you disagree, not finding tricks to undermine what was nationally agreed because your corner of the country doesn't like it.
> the kind of people most of the electorate want enforcement focused on, not gardeners and farm workers.
Most of the electorate wants all illegal immigrants deported, not just the ones caught committing violent crimes.
Surveys have shown for many years that most people nationwide want a legal path to immigration for law-abiding workers. Sanctuary laws exist solely because a minority of the population has been able to game the Congressional structure to prevent immigration reform while also shielding the businesses which depend on cheap, exploitable workers from punishment.
I suspect that you would complain strenuously if the United States changed from a republic to the direct democracy you are arguing for in this case, or many others where unpopular policies are maintained due to the odd structure of our government.
A path, perhaps. Not carte blanche.
> Sanctuary laws exist solely because a minority of the population has been able to game the Congressional structure to prevent immigration reform while also shielding the businesses which depend on cheap, exploitable workers from punishment.
Nah. That's at most a convenient fig-leaf for their motivations.
> I suspect that you would complain strenuously if the United States changed from a republic to the direct democracy you are arguing for in this case, or many others where unpopular policies are maintained due to the odd structure of our government.
You suspect wrong. And I'm not saying there's no case where the government should decide they know better than the people, but when they oppose the will of the people they should do it openly and directly, not with procedural rules-lawyering and disingenuous "tee-hee we're not actually opposing the law we're just prioritising other laws" arguments.
I’m so tired of absolute nonsense like this being said by people who clearly know absolutely nothing about how this country works. Is this just barely disguised foreign agitation?
Immigration law isn't California state law, it's federal law, duly passed (and frankly any other approach would be crazy, unless you're proposing to introduce border checks between states). If the duly elected federal government felt it appropriate to leave the matter to the states, they would! If it was constitutionally inappropriate, the legislature would strike it down. States set their own laws on a lot of matters, but they don't get to opt out of federal laws they don't like.
Which law requires states to enforce Federal law? I'll save you the trouble of looking: It doesn't exist.
Cf. https://govfacts.org/explainer/understanding-federalism-vs-s...
As you seem to be ignorant of how government works in the USA.
This is the most extreme version of the anti-states rights argument and effectively claims the California legislature shouldn't exist.
You do realize that this entire discussion is about an American citizen and an elected official no less (and not the first one) arrested by "ICE" (we don't really know who those folks are because they won't identify themselves), right?
Are you that removed from reality that you can't parse the title of the discussion in which you are participating?
If it can happen to a brown person, it can happen to you - maybe have a little self interest, or perhaps consider how boring America would be without immigrants and black people - that's kinda where all our culture comes from, in our melting pot everything blends together.
So, what are your thoughts about ICE going after immigrants who think they're legal but didn't dot all the i's and cross all the t's on their paperwork? Because that is in the news as well.
It has swung, and they are *already paying* the price. That's the question.
> I can't blame the other side for sending in the goon squad to crack heads.
Even when it's your own head? Given the complexity of the system, it's implausible that any immigrant, including you (or I in Germany) have done everything perfectly. But it's worse than that, as people in the USA are currently facing removal for writing things on the internet which are theoretically constitutionally protected free speech.
And that's without any discussion about why nobody in power did anything about what Biden's admin said was about 11 million undocumented migrants:
The reason being the US economy, and of main importance the food supply, actually depends on their labour — depending on how fast they get removed, the USA would be looking a 50% supply cut in perishable hand-picked crops and dairy (if done instantly) to a mere 20% price inflation (if done over a few years). Similar for construction industry, but that's less critical than, you know, eating.
Yes and no. It's polarised, far too polarised. I hope we can deescalate and reach some reasonable middle ground. But that's going to require a lot of concessions from the left that I don't see any hint of willingness to make.
> it's worse than that, as people in the USA are currently facing removal for writing things on the internet which are theoretically constitutionally protected free speech.
Meh, that's a big nothingburger. Noncitizens have never had constitutional rights or at least not for decades. I don't like it but let's not pretend this is some radical change.
That's the first I've heard of it. Everyone else is saying it covers everyone in the USA, including the courts who ruled that kicking people out for blogging was unconstitutional and ordering the release of the people the US government had arrested: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.564...
and: https://time.com/7284578/judge-orders-release-of-rumeysa-ozt...
But again, as you've not answered the "Even when it's your own head?" part, I remind you that you earlier wrote:
> I'm an immigrant and a minority myself, not that people like you ever actually care about supporting people like me.
I had assumed you were living in the USA, until checking your github account, so now I assume you're in Japan.
Please, imagine it is your own head that is the target of, in your own words, "the goon squad to crack heads".
What's happening today in the USA can happen anywhere, including where you live. (And where I live, but around here you can trip and fall over Stolperstein to be reminded of that latter part).
People care about constitutional rights when it suits their politics, but unreasonable searches at the border have been standard for decades, under multiple administrations from both parties.
> Please, imagine it is your own head that is the target of, in your own words, "the goon squad to crack heads".
> What's happening today in the USA can happen anywhere, including where you live.
As an immigrant I don't have any rights, I can't even vote. Like it or not, that's part of the tradeoff.
But being realistic, I feel a lot safer, in part because Japan has quite strict immigration enforcement. It doesn't (yet, touch wood) have the US' dramatic polarisation and two-party split; rather there is a strong social consensus and a strong rule of law. And having seen how much crime and antisocial behaviour many of my fellow immigrants are responsible for, I'd far rather have that than the alternative. Yes, I don't want to be on the end of the riot squad getting sent in. But I think the best way to avoid that is to not get to the state of affairs where it makes sense to send in the riot squad.
That's like saying vigilantism is defensible.
I don't care if these "officers" (in quotes as we don't know who they are) are doing God's work, if they are 1) refusing to show proof that they are indeed officers and 2) have legal warrants for an arrest, and 3) provide those they arrest with due process, then they are acting outside the law
When traditional law enforcement fails to the point that the rule of law completely breaks down, vigilantism becomes defensible.
> I don't care if these "officers" (in quotes as we don't know who they are) are doing God's work, if they are 1) refusing to show proof that they are indeed officers and 2) have legal warrants for an arrest, and 3) provide those they arrest with due process, then they are acting outside the law
ICE has the legal authority to arrest without warrants in many cases. I don't like it, but this is the flipsides of decades of insisting that illegal immigration isn't a crime and illegal immigrants aren't criminals.
pretty hard to argue that the rule of law as completely broken down in the US
> ICE has the legal authority to arrest without warrants in many cases
yeah, you're probably right about that though I think it's more "some" cases than "many" (they can't enter your house to search for someone without a warrant); due process still holds though
the main reason why immigration law has not been enforced is because a large number of US businesses (farms, factories, etc.) depend on those illegal immigrants as their workforce
if you really wanted to enforce immigration law you would shut down businesses who employ illegals -- which would also stem the tide of people coming into the US -- but that hasn't been done because immigrants -- regardless of their official status -- are a net positive for the US economy
I'm all for that (although California seemingly isn't, given that they make it illegal for those businesses to use e-Verify in most cases). I don't see any contradiction between doing that and continuing regular immigration enforcement. I certainly don't see how you can argue that we should stop regular immigration enforcement until we've done this new thing.