Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

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"fake immigration charges" are what they apply to people born here, so that they can deport them. The charges are facially fake because a person born here cannot have immigrated here.

There is no such thing as a legitimate immigration charge levied against a person born in Chicago or Los Angeles. It's definitionally fake, even if ICE says otherwise. This is part of the reason they deport people before the courts can weigh in.

> "Some US citizens have been deported" is also a mischaracterization

You are simply wrong on this, as you admit in your next sentence. I wonder at the motive for knowingly something flagrantly incorrect, then admitting as much in the next sentence.

In any case, the link I provided includes links to cases where native-born US citizens have been illegally deported without due process. In one case, the prosecutor admitted that the deportations were illegal. But because ICE is supralegal and does not follow due process, those citizens never went before a judge before being deported.

The situation under which citizens have been detained have always been claimed to be for obstruction. I am not aware of a single case where an individual was detained for immigration charges who was not specifically targeted for enforcement, although since ICE is not public about this (and they cannot be in order to protect the accused) it is hard to say for sure.

The link recounts one case, the one I mentioned, Garcia, and the circumstances around his deportation are complex at best. No question that ICE was mistaken on the facts, but the situation was complex -- he had crossed the border into the US illegally; he did have a Mexican passport with a different spelling of his name. I am not aware of any others and the propublica does not cite any others. Please give names if you are aware of any.

My claim was that you mischaracterized the propublica article and I stand by it. You claimed that US citizens were being detained on fake immigration charges and this is not the case (Garcia was a mistake but the charges were not fake, they were just incorrect). You claimed that US citizens have been deported, and the article only provided a single example, which does not support the claim of "people", that being the plural of "person".

The Garcia case illustrates the various lies embedded in ICE. They say they target people with deportation orders, which is obviously false based on ICE statements and testimony in this and other cases.

It also highlights the importance of adherence to the due process guarantees of the Constitution; Garcia was deported before being allowed to prove his citizenship in court. A US citizen is allowed to have had a passport issued in another country; how else would a naturalized citizen have arrived in the US in the first place, except with a passport in their name? The main point here is the Constitution prescribes how all this is to be handled, and ICE does not want to do it that way so they don't. That's a huge problem here.

Anyway, you asked for names. I'll just pull from the ProPublica database. Most of these boil down to ICE habitually violating Constitutional due process. I'm omitting "obstruction" charges. This person:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/bronx-man-wrongfully-de...

These two people were deported on fake immigration charges, and then deported. Two individuals, "people," being the plural of "person." "Fake" charges, because people born here are not subject to immigration charges.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/03/12/orlando-born-twin...

This citizen was illegally arrested:

https://www.investigatemidwest.org/a-new-immigration-strateg...

I am going to pause here to remind you that citizens are not required to carry proof of citizenship. Even if they don't "look American." Many/most Americans do not own a picture ID that proves their citizenship. Fewer carry one. Most children do not have picture IDs at all.

And why should they? We are not required to do carry proof of citizenship, even if we are physically proximate to people who are not here legally. Which none of us generally know about the people near us. Outside of my family, I have only seen a handful of citizenship documents of other people I assume are citizens. I would not testify to anyone's citizenship outside of my family, whose citizenship documents I personally procured.

Here's a citizen being arrested because ICE agents did not like his accent. Again, a reminder that many citizens, even of those born here, have accents. That does not change their citizenship in any way or require them to carry proof of citizenship.

https://www.kptv.com/2026/01/18/border-patrol-agent-detains-...

Et cetera.

The first and third cases were not deportations. They were bogus obstruction detentions.

"how else would a naturalized citizen have arrived in the US in the first place, except with a passport in their name?" -- part of the complexity of the case, as I note, is that he did in fact enter illegally, smuggled across the border. He did not have to enter illegally; he could have simply presented his passport at any border crossing (or, lacking a passport, an affadavit), but nonetheless he did.

The second case was minor children. Known by ICE and immigration judges to be citizens. Deported deliberately to accompany their mother. This was in conflict with the mother's expressed wish for them to remain with other relatives. At no point were the children charged with any sort of immigration crime, fake or otherwise.

I agree that American citizens are not required to carry proof of citizenship and agree that they should not be required to present papers to prove citizenship.

But you are describing a world that does not exist. No US citizens are being deported mistakenly (Garcia being the lone exception). Notably, this has not always been the case -- under previous administrations there have been numerous cases of citizens being deported, but in the Trump administrations this has not been the case (with the exception of Garcia). We are not living in a nightmarish dystopia.

You initially wanted to nitpick my characterization of ICE illegally deporting US citizens, even going so far as to define plural. Now you say it was just those two (which I found in under 5 minutes), certainly there were no others.

You wanted to nitpick my characterization of ICE arresting US citizens of fake immigration charges. Now you characterize ICE as making up bogus "obstruction" charges to arrest US citizens. I'm not sure it matters what fake (or, I'll use the synonym you prefer: "bogus") charge goes on the sheet. By nitpicking, you've conceded that there should be masked secret police harassing US citizens over whom they have no jurisdiction.

You are not willing to engage with the core problem issue that I have raised repeatedly, which is that ICE engages in Constitutional violations as a standard operating procedure. For that reason, I'm out.

Read my first reply again and tell me who is nitpicking.

Don't fall into the conspiracy theory trap. ICE can be bad even if they aren't demonic agents of evil. When you believe dramatic but untrue and easily disproven things your world view is going to continue to disconnect from reality.

> The second case was minor children. Known by ICE and immigration judges to be citizens. Deported deliberately to accompany their mother. This was in conflict with the mother's expressed wish for them to remain with other relatives. At no point were the children charged with any sort of immigration crime, fake or otherwise.

On what grounds were those children deported? They were US citizens who had family who were US citizens, whose parents have, in some cases assigned guardianship to said families.

Why were they deported? Citizens who as you say, were not charged with any sort of immigration crime.

Why were they deported? Farcical deportation hearings with 2 year olds (and in one case, an 11 month old in a car seat) "defending themselves" "pro se" against ICE lawyers arguing for deportation over again, as you acknowledge: US citizens, not charged with a crime. Because however much Trump would not like it to be (and for positively hilarious irony, Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka all benefited from it), birthright citizenship is still a thing, and neither a post on Truth Social or an EO override the Constitution.

They were deported because their parents were deported and they accompanied them.

In most cases where this occurs this is the parents' preference (this is also the official DHS policy). In several cases (propublica says about a dozen out of the approximately 11,000 citizen children detained during deportation proceedings against their parents) it has been disputed that this was the preference.

Whether this is administrative error or individual malice or institutional malice is unknown. Even in the worst case this does not seem to be a policy since it has occurred in a tiny minority of the total cases.

In all of these cases, the children are free to reenter the country and remain; they are citizens. This is obviously not ideal; there are various lawsuits in progress to compensate the families for the cost and trauma of the removal. But this is not a widespread campaign to kick out citizen children of illegal immigrants.

In several comments in this discussion alone -you- have made a statement, and when someone builds on it, -you- have walked it back and said "well, we don't know that".

Like this.

You:

> Deported deliberately to accompany their mother. This was in conflict with the mother's expressed wish for them to remain with other relatives.

When I replied, and added further context, then you walk it back.

> They were deported because their parents were deported and they accompanied them. In most cases where this occurs this is the parents' preference

Well, in this case, it wasn't. As you yourself acknowledge.

Except then you change your acknowledgment to:

> it has been disputed that this was the preference

> Whether this is administrative error or individual malice or institutional malice

No, it's pretty clear that in this case its both individual and institutional malice, given that attorneys for the extended family were there, as well as attorneys for the deported parents.

And in some of these cases the federal judge has recognized all this and DHS has said "fuck it, we're going to walk right out of this courtroom and straight to the airport, try to stop us".

Which has led to nationally televised news incidents where judges have given extraordinary emergency orders to turn deportation charter flights around, and DHS has still said "nah, we're not going to do that, judge".

But what do you expect when one of the leaders of that organization spent most of his "leadership" cosplaying as a literal fucking SS officer?

> In all of these cases, the children are free to reenter the country and remain; they are citizens

LOL. In some of those cases, the children are 11 months old. Their parents have been deported. They have been deported. How are they getting in again? And you'd have to have an optimism that is thoroughly detached from the reality that led to them being deported in the first place to think that, regardless of Constitutional rights, there's not a non-zero risk of CBP at the border denying entry. They were never meant to be deported, what makes you think they'll be let back in? Their rights? Their right to not be forcibly deported was summarily ignored, why will this one be treated as sacrosanct?

"Obviously not ideal" you say. No shit. And then you act, throughout the thread, like the only possible alternative is "no laws/no enforcement, of anything, in any way". What?

The crux of my point is that things are not as bad as the OP is pretending they are. To a literally insane degree.

Any process has some level of mistakes; ICE is operating at a level of mistakes that is remarkably _LOW_ given the complexity of the issues it is facing.

The level is LOW, not high.

If institutional malice is to blame, then why did we only get a bad outcome a dozen times out of the ~11,000 times that they've encountered the situation (minors detained with illegal immigrant parents)?

If ICE agents are all SS officers determined to deport anyone with an accent or the wrong color skin, including citizens, why has this only happened ONE TIME! ONE TIME! ONE TIME! Out of the literally nearly a million deportations. ONE SINGLE TIME.

What are we even talking about here?

> Any process has some level of mistakes; ICE is operating at a level of mistakes that is remarkably _LOW_ given the complexity of the issues it is facing.

Nobody (except maybe ICE leadership) knows how many mistakes they've made since 2024, because Republicans have removed every bit of oversight they could. You cannot reasonably assume to know about all their mistakes, since the administration has been repeatedly caught covering their tracks.

You also cannot reasonably assume that every mistake is being publicized, because a) we're talking about people who are less likely to have contacts in the US willing to go to the media, and b) the administration has demonstrated their open disregard for the law, so anyone going against them has to fear being treated like Garcia and co.

The main place where ICE has removed oversight has been when they have detained people; they don't document clearly whether the detention was for immigration or suspected immigration offenses or more general obstruction offenses. After the fact, they split these claims, saying that all detentions not resulting in immigration enforcement were just "obstruction" all along. So we have no idea how often they are detaining people because they think that they are illegal, but, on finding out that they are legally present or citizens, claim that it was obstruction all along.

I think we're in agreement here that the administration has pushed to limit accountability and auditing, and ICE and ERO and DHS and Border Control have all been using this to make themselves look like they are much more well-intentioned than they likely are. Where we differ is that you think they are successful at this, that they are portrayed as competent and earnest despite the reality. Whereas I see that they have been vilified to an almost insane degree in almost every media outlet that I have exposure to.

But the thing that they can't lie about, that they can't cover up, is deportations, because these are big news and everyone knows it, and false and improper deportations are a huge deal and have been every time they have surfaced. That you think there are more cases that have not been chased down by lawyers hungering for a lawsuit and NGOs champing at the bit to try to bring these people forward is disconnected from reality to a degree that I can't comprehend.

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