ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program
prospect.orgShould the federal government be tracking our interpersonal relationships?
Should an immigration officer be privy to the timing and manner of communications that I, a citizen, have with other citizens? Why?
Why should ICE be able to collect this information when domestic law enforcement generally has to show probable cause to a judge to gather similar information? Who decided to make ICE the country's supreme law enforcement agency?
Related, ICE is arresting citizens on fake immigration charges[1]. Some US citizens have been deported.
US citizens "can't" be deported, but ICE has supralegal powers. Should we have a law enforcement agency that is not bound by our laws? Why? What guardrails does it have if not law? Who defines those guardrails?
1 - https://projects.propublica.org/american-citizens-detained-d...
Only when the comprehensiveness of this 1984 is presented in an unflattering way like "we're gonna snoop on everything so ICE can round people up" (or an AI camera goes up on every street corner) do they even become uneasy.
But lets be clear - its US public that allowed this, over and over. Saner candidates were suppressed as not patriotic enough, entire worse than pointless wars were waged and millions died for nothing. Not US passport holders so I guess thats just an afterthought.
Dont expect rollback in your lifetime. We havent reached even the bottom yet, not with current voting mindset. Still this is what US population wants, I don't see >200 millions even just protesting.
https://www.newsweek.com/democratic-bill-abolish-ice-shut-do...
Ya, I am a fan of the coast guard... and I think we need the FAA/TSA to keep the planes running on time. And FEMA might be laughed at in some quarters but a federal disaster response is something we should have ahead of hurricane season.
No, what happens to the grouped-whole is not necessarily what happens to the parts.
You should rethink your position as it's not going to give you the electoral wins you think it will.
This part always pisses them off for some reason and any conversations around this cannot be had in a civil manner here without suppression. It's a real insult to people who spent years, sometimes decades, coming into a country legally.
The reason this "pisses off" us freedom loving people is we're sick of hearing your hyperbolic talking points repeated as if they have any bearing on the argument whatsoever, while you continue to glibly talk past the relevant criticism of how you're actually cheering on the destruction of our country.
A bunch of people crossing a border illegally can't destroy a country - just like how some planes being flown into office towers can't either. However, throwing our rights, values, and institutions in the trash as a "response" does.
But, I am not drawing a parallel for justification, here. Both can be wrong at the same time.
If you earnestly do take issue with both while correctly prioritizing the meta issue of Constitutional rights, I'm sorry that the fascists have poisoned the well on your immigration issue and burnt up its political capital.
I'm ambivalent about immigration myself, but suffer the exact same shitty dynamic from felon musk (et al) waxing dishonestly about individual liberty. Now when I make arguments in support of individual liberty, I need to include much more nuance and disclaiming to distance myself from the fascists' talking points, lest what I say be taken in support of their disingenuous rallying lies.
You know what does insult me? Members of the current administration demonizing people who did the same thing as they and their families do/did. I don't see ICE raiding Melania's penthouse for working illegally as a model or entering the country on a fraudulent visa (she was a "model" of no repute in her home country, for an agency whose largest claims to fame were involvement in prostitution and sex trafficking rings, not who they got on the cover of magazines. She certainly didn't meet, not even close, the bar of "who possesses extraordinary ability" or "who has a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement"). Or Elon, who worked, openly, and famously for startups while here on a non-employment authorizing student visa.
That insults and offends me. Not the common person eking out a life for themselves or their family.
Homeless people EVERWHERE doing the Fent lean, with no effective programs to fix the issues in sight. Ever increasing amounts of people that don't even speak the language, let alone participate in the culture. Don't forget the trash and filth everywhere, and boarded-up shops and housing.
I've been to multiple cities and suburbs on the west and east coast, in the midwest, and the south, and they all have these issues to varying degrees.
At a certain point, you have to ask yourself legitimately: What is the difference between walking outside in the US and some country like Afghanistan? The difference is becoming increasingly narrower.
This is a huge, wealthy country. There's plenty of room and economic opportunity. The undocumented are not the problem. They're scape goated.
But even setting all that aside, ICE and DHS need fundamental reform, so might as well abolish them and create new agencies with all new employees.
But, right wing must always lie.
This statistic is completely false. But you can use is as a good credibility filter. Media figures and politicians who make this claim are liars - stop believing what they say. You'll become much more well informed overnight.
An estimated 2-2.5 million immigrants were allowed to reside in the US as immigration cases were pending. Most came through ports of entry, some crossed "illegally" (a misdemeanor).
There were an estimated ~9 million apprehensions. This is the number they cite to mislead you. Apprehensions does not mean 9 million unique people, nor does it mean they all now reside in the US.
Most of those people were deported or ejected. And most of those were actually the same people trying to cross multiple times. An unintended consequence of Title 42 (the covid restrictions imposed during Trump term) was an explosion in repeat crossing attempts.
Formal deportation makes it a felony to return. Under Title 42 though people were just ejected without formal deportation and could try again without consequence. Cartels/Smugglers even started selling packages that involved multiple tries to cross the border.
They are the one acting in good faith rather than interpreting your statement literally, because your literal statement was absurd.
Your ignorance is also not my problem to solve.
Your ignorance is not our problem to solve.
So, what i should of asked is do you disagree with the immigration laws put forward in 1996? Do you believe that laws should be enforced?
Because abolishing ice is not the answer... Because now the responsibility of enforcement lies within the justice department. It seems what you seem to be saying is that our immigration law is too exclusive, and we need to give out citizenship freely, with all the benefits that comes along with that instead of deporting people and their families?
Edit: By the way... this shit comes in cycles.
The most common variant of the "abolish DHS" opinion simply holds that this re-org was unsuccessful and should be reverted.
The entire experiment here is to bring the surveillance apparatus' of dictatorships to the US. They no doubt see the durability of these dictatorships and one-party states around the world and are drooling at the prospect of running it in the US.
ie: 25 years of Patriot Act renewal, Flock rollouts in liberal cities, Obama’s pursuit of Snowden and not the NSA itself
There is certainly liberal leadership concerned with our rights, just as there are conservatives, but they are the minority under both partisan umbrellas.
It is “don’t expect the Democrat party to save us when they come back into power at the Federal level. With regard to erosion of privacy rights, I don’t see a positive track record for them.
Please surface to me what I’m missing and I’m happy to change my mind.
It's the same core group of people controlling the centers of power in both parties for many years now, and it's not realistic to expect meaningful change for as long as they remain in power
Political leadership doesn't want civil discourse until it becomes a self-preservation concern for them, same with data centers.
So, yeh, red is certainly a different color than blue, but they are still two colors.
[0] Most things are decided long before SCOTUS involvement, and most courts are liberal-leaning.
[1] Republicans are far short of a supermajority in the Senate so nothing passes Congress without Democratic votes
[2] The White House is always singularly partisan by definition, what Democratic counterbalance you expect to see in a Republican White House, or vice versa?
If I take for granted that the waterline surveillance increases under previous administrations (and i do, i implicitly conceded it) then the only meaningful discussion is then on its magnitude.
So you tell me, are Republicans going further with this program than before? And furthermore, are Republican courts and Republican congresses going to curtail it at any point?
I already know my answers to this, but if i'm going to be criticized I think it should be against the meaningful alternative facing us where Republicans retain control of these branches.
Doesn't matter if the damage is already done. Raise dead doesn't exist in the real world. And the courts don't decide things. The executive has proven it will just ignore the courts.
> Republicans are far short of a supermajority in the Senate so nothing passes Congress without Democratic votes
First, this it 100% not true, and secondly, if you ignore congress, it doesn't matter. And once again, the damage is already done by the time congress gets around to it.
> The White House is always singularly partisan by definition, what Democratic counterbalance you expect to see in a Republican White House, or vice versa?
Expect? None. Hope for? Basic respect to the rule of law to start. But with pdf in the white house, all bets are off.
this isn't Europe, so if you make that claim, you have to define "liberal"
> Republicans are far short of a supermajority in the Senate so nothing passes Congress without Democratic votes
in fact that's not how it works! read up on reconciliation and how ICE got funded
> [2] The White House is always singularly partisan by definition, what Democratic counterbalance you expect to see in a Republican White House, or vice versa?
both sides that fucker, good and hard, better things aren't possible woo!
So let's not conflate the two, ok?
Until that's true, the 2nd amendment is meaningless when USAF can buy JDAMs and F35s and I, an American citizen, cannot.
Even if you could spend alike in aggregate, who maintains them? Where is the secondary military drilling people on tactics and/or strategy?
Nah, the 2nd never did what its proponents claimed, not even in the old days.
Still I think we’re saying the same thing: the founder’s arguments amount well regulated militias being a check on tyrannical government doesn’t land when the tyrannical government can just drone swarm the country into submission.
I'm not sure this is accurate. General Benjamin Butler bought and used private gatling guns. JP Morgan loaned a warship to the Navy. I am sure there are many other examples. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/h...
That becomes much less likely when they are allowed to become overly partisan. The officials who wield power lose the ability to distinguish between civic duty and the rule of law, and loyalty to the party itself.
Maybe the Republicans are worse, I don't particularly give a shit. They're both horrible and anti-American on this issue and nothing will change without systemic changes.
This is surveillance as part of a department that explicitly says it is not bound by US law or the Constitution.
All of that makes this program materially different than any other US domestic surveillance program or proposal of which I am aware.
...what?
6 : done with a finger
a digital rectal examination
Did you miss the Snowden reporting? How much do you think those programs cost? Whenever you hear someone’s political analysis contain “The Republicans…” “The Democrats…” you can be sure they have no grasp on how DC works.
" Whenever you hear someone’s political analysis contain “The Republicans…” “The Democrats…” you can be sure they have no grasp on how DC works. "
I'm not giving political analysis, retard. But you are clearly so smart and clever. Tell us all about the 'Snowden reporting' that president Obama personally proposed and executed. Not sure why he is reporting on himself but mister user seven numbers is sure to be a source of truth
They funded and instrumented it. “Go off king”? Are we 14 year olds on TikTok here?
You sound very angry, guess I got a little too close to home. The lady doth protest too much.
A DOJ with its ducks in a row would be charging this left and right.
Unless he pardons literally every ICE agent, a new administration can and certainly should levy all kinds of charges. That's one reason folks have been documenting so much about what's going on even if it can't be stopped right now.
Also, why do people think that Trump is so hurriedly building a new ballroom for the White House along with the bunker underneath? At some point it'll either be people giving in to Trump's administration or out-right civil war and that's why Trump wants a secure bunker and an armed militia (ICE) that is loyal just to Trump.
Even if people vote against Trump in sufficient numbers, he's not likely to accept that and leave.
However, if we look at the Nazi takeover of Germany, it seems that most people will just go along with it which certainly seems to be the case in the USA so far.
Source: I'm a naturalized citizen.
Naturalized citizens can be deported and their citizenship can be revoked in cases of violent crime or other immoral behavior. That information is provided when swearing in.
It's more accurate to say that US citizens who are law abiding and moral, or who are born in the US, can't be deported.
Also, with this administration, if you didn't dot an 'i' or cross a 't' somewhere in your paperwork, citizenship can be revoked.
Basically, if they catch you in any kind of lie. It's fraud.
Could be ex post facto and seemingly innocuous act unconnected to paperwork as well. You came in. Applied for asylum. Went through the process. And, finally, you were naturalized.
Only you traveled back to your hometown in your country of origin at some point. Before or after naturalization.
Boom.
They got you. That's fraud.
Everyone needs to stay extra careful going forward.
Say more about this. You are hinting at a kind of conditional citizenship that I do not believe exists under US law.
Are you suggesting that there is a class of citizens who did not commit fraud on their naturalization paperwork, yet who are barred from travel to countries that other citizens are able to travel to?
* The US passport lists your place of birth, barring you from entry into certain other countries, if you were born in countries they don't agree with.
* Your citizenship can be revoked and you can be deported as we discussed above.
* You cannot be elected to certain offices.
This is not a restriction placed by the US government, is it?
There really should be a time limit on revocation.
re: offices, it's just President & VP that are (Constitutionally) off the table, right?
Yes it is. The passport is not a permission slip for leaving. It's a letter authored by the US government on behalf of a citizen requesting their safe passage into another country [1]. When the US requests one person's safe passage they write "spit on this guy", but another doesn't get that negative language.
Country of origin is a constitutionally protected class. If my passport meaningfully and functionally differs from yours, based on that classification, then it stands to reason that my civil rights are being violated.
[1]: "The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection." -Text of the US Passport
The fraud a migrant may have committed, should the US be able to prove it, is lying on their asylum request when they said they would be, for instance, killed if they ever go back to their country of origin.
Obviously if you show up at your country of origin with a US passport asking to be let in, it casts serious doubt as to the veracity of the assertion that you will be killed if you ever go back to your country of origin.
Here's the thing, the US has to prove it. Which previous administrations never bothered to go to the trouble of doing. However, this administration is pouring over travel records, airline passenger manifests, cell phone and text message data, etc etc. They've taken to pursuing these cases.
All that to say this, now is not the time to believe there is some legal trickety-trick you can use to get around these issues. Your passport would mean nothing in the case that the Trump-Vance MAGA boys prove fraud, because you would have been shown to have used fraudulent statements to attain that passport.
So to any immigrants out there, please, please, please, don't play games with these people. Because they are not playing games with you. Be very careful to keep your story, (the one you told immigration), and your actions consistent. At minimum until such time as Trump leaves office. But in my opinion, you should probably just strive for consistency from here on out. Because MAGA can be elected back into power at any time convenient even if they lose the next few elections.
And if they get elected again, when they come back, you can bet everything you own that they will be digging through that data from the time they were out of power.
My commentary is to advocate for staying factual. It doesn't help anyone's cause to charge the conversation with sort of true information, out of context, and mixed with a lot of opinion and emotion.
Panic isn't helpful. Understanding the reality of the circumstances is. I think we can all agree on that.
US citizens cannot be deported.
Naturalized citizens cannot be deported for crimes they commit after they became citizens.
Naturalized citizens who obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means can have their citizenship revoked. Then, they are not citizens and can be deported.
US citizens cannot be deported.
(There should be a time limit on revocation after which citizenship becomes permanent and irrevocable.)
The government should only get a finite period of time to press the issue. (Like with most crimes.)
* https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship
More context:
* https://vertexlegal.org/what-causes-american-citizen-lose-ci...
Since he is the face of the Republican party, voters understand they are evaluating his decisions and performance since 2024, and will be voting accordingly.
"Some US citizens have been deported" is also a mischaracterization. Aside from minor children of deported parents, the only case where an American citizen was deported was Brian Morales Garcia.
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 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".
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.
"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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
You know what's funny, everything you said is valid, but, I've never seen this much outrage over flock cameras on here or on most tech forums. It's actually the opposite. Somehow spying is ok if they like the company.
A lot of users here have vocally admitted that having Flock cameras was okay because they were a HOA member and it gave them security of some sort and they had "nothing to hide"
Another example was Anthropic getting caught stenographically marking requests[1] and Anthropic's response when they got caught was simply "it was just an experiment" and everyone on here said it's okay.
> Why? What guardrails does it have if not law? Who defines those guardrails?
I wish we asked this question to all our favorite tech companies too, this being a tech forum and all.
[1] https://thereallo.dev/blog/claude-code-prompt-steganography
I have entirely the opposite impression of HN - I feel like I hear a huge amount of (rightful) resistance to that kind of surveillance.
Are we on the same platform? Search Flock on HN, below are the top results
Stop Flock
Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves
This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers
US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera
YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras
Flock CEO calls Deflock a “terrorist organization” (2025) [video]
I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program
Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed
An interactive map of Flock Cams
Flock and Cyble Inc. weaponize “cybercrime” takedowns to silence critics
Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera
Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
Flock Hardcoded the Password for America's Surveillance Infrastructure 53 Times
Your source does not establish this. "arresting" and "detaining" objectively do not mean the same thing; and the detentions described are clearly based on a good-faith belief that the subject either is not legally permitted to be in the country or is unlawfully interfering with immigration enforcement.
Where citizens have been arrested, it is not for "immigration charges" at all, but for obstruction of justice. These arrests are based on more than "probable cause"; they based on it literally observably happening right in front of the officers.
The law empowers them to make arrests in these cases, in exactly the same way that ordinary city cops are empowered to arrest people who disobey lawful orders, attempt to flee from detention, attempt to physically intervene in the arrest of someone else, etc. This is exactly as expected, because they are legally recognized as federal LEO.
The spin in this article is incredible:
> Top DHS officials, including former Secretary Kristi Noem, went further, claiming that filming ICE agents was interfering with arrests.
This is disingenuous. The problem is not "filming" ICE agents. The problem is standing in places that physically obstruct the act of arrest while holding up your cell phone. It's notable how, in videos of contentious incidents, we commonly see many people recording on cell phones in responsible ways, who are completely left alone.
Moving on:
> Some US citizens have been deported.
No; at most they evidence that people claiming to be citizens have been deported.
Your source does not name a single person who a) they can prove to be a US citizen on publicly available information and b) has been deported.
> but ICE has supralegal powers.
No, they do not. Their powers are enumerated in statute, in particular 8 USC 1357.
ProPublica is putting an obvious spin on the facts and it spirals out of control in discussions like this one. It is a real game of broken telephone.
You claim:
> This is disingenuous. The problem is not "filming" ICE agents.
Except here we have it straight from the dog-shooter’s mouth:
> Kristi Noem said, "Violence is anything that threatens them and their safety, so it is doxing them, it's videotaping them where they're at when they're out on operations, encouraging other people to come […]
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-administration-say...
Moving on. You claim:
> No; at most they evidence that people claiming to be citizens have been deported.
And a five second google query yields:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/09/06/us-cit...
I would recommend you try and detach from your currently-held beliefs and re-evaluate these events through a more empathetic and constitutional lens.
Charges dropped against protestor once video footage emerged of arrest:
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/12/assault-charge-dism...
Unprovoked excessive force against a veteran at an ICE protest:
https://www.kptv.com/2025/08/28/portland-man-sues-dhs-after-...
This was a rumor based on a misunderstanding and has since been debunked. It was Yandex search crawler traffic that was reduced.
We do plenty of manipulation and divide-and-conquer on ourselves, which is heavily documented at least since the Cold War. No need to blame it all on outsiders, although certainly some of that is present as well.
Many times within EU russian 'diplomats' were caught giving pesky bribes to weak bureaucrats (ie 500 euro for some state secrets)
Forgive me, but hacker news is the only social media I participate in. Is this a pretty commonly held sentiment? Like are other social media users commenting on this trend? Any news articles? Thanks
You can't really understand a hypocrite by taking their public utterances at face value.
Never underestimate how much most Americans will gladly shit on their freedoms if they're told it will hurt someone slightly different than them.
But no we're like "oh so we have one candidate that wants to adjust the budget to fund some libraries and this other one that wants to build concentration camps and imprison transgendered people. Alright, let's allow both on the ballot"
Being a violent hateful ignorant bigot isn't a qualifying condition for administering civic life.
But let me guess, that'd be bad because you meant "criminalization of speech I don't agree with", not "criminalization of 'hate speech'".
in fact it sounds uncannily similar to what a bunch of organizations in USSR were doing to citizens, like NKVD and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka
I'm sure Trump has had plenty of input from Putin about all this. Even if he's not formally an "asset", it's more a case of shared goals.
And if you think: "Why would they want to do that?", consider that even something stupid like someone misinterpreting a gesture or working for a competitor of a company the regime currently favours can get you there.
They don't need to, because the US has a finely honed system of railroading.
They push captured migrants through the system to deportation via a "rocket docket" and our rubber stamp justice system.
The system being discussed simply allows them to lay their hands on more migrants to feed that existing quick deportation pipeline.
It's worse than disappearing people. Disappearing people implies they need to hide what they're doing from an objectionable public. Clearly, the people currently in power are blessed with a constituency they don't need to hide from.
It's also really unhelpful to act like deportation under any* circumstances is WORSE than enforced disappearance, which generally involves murder and anonymous disposal of remains. I don't like how we're treating migrants and I believe that immigration is one of our greatest advantages over countries that reject it. I can still maintain enough objectivity to tell the difference between disgustingly harsh "push vs pull" tactics and organized mass murder.
You can't sit back here and be upset that Trump decides to selectively enforce the law in the ways he sees fit while approving of the exact behavior when there's a different executive.
This is why the problem of executive power exists, people only care when they disagree and actively approve when they agree.
I dont make judgements about what a problem is based on whether a law says it is. You should be experiencing the world outside the framework of imaginerary legal constructs.
If America tends to create laws that are antithetical to common sense and goodness, maybe its the problem. Maybe we need to do away with the whole system, not patch it.
I think you've misjudged me, I think Biden, and Trump should be sharing the same jail cell. I dont approve of basically any US politician, they're all morally corrupt and outright evil.
That isn't the root of the problem at all. The root of the problem is we have certain laws that, under some administrations, are barely enforced. Then, under another administration, there are a large group of people who have been flouting the law because it wasn't being enforced.
You've now created huge class of people who have very tenous legal status, based on the whims of the executive. That's the problem.
US immigration laws are some of the most relaxed in the world. There's plenty of debate on whether that should change or not (and how). But circumventing the legislative process might make you feel good about the immediate problem but it creates a side effect of having an underclass of non-citizens that live under constant threat of deportation and have limited access to social programs.
The only judgement I've made of you is that you seem to think not enforcing the law based on personal feelings is right and you've only confirmed that.
In a democracy, the law isn't just some words on papers, it represents the collective moral judgement of the voting population. It is inherently antithetical to democracy to ignore laws you don't agree with.
> Maybe we need to do away with the whole system, not patch it.
Pretty ironic considering this entire situation is caused by people ignoring the system rather than patching it.
I mean if I can choose, I want my tax money spent on making Americans healthier, but I don't get to choose. ICE has $70B to spend, this is just 1/700. I'm sure they will do more before next congress trying to crawl back their money.
You can say no.
If everyone who was allowed to vote actually voted, I think there's a reasonably high chance we'd have better politicians. As it stands, there's this pretend "virtue" from a bunch of pseudo-intellectual morons who think they're cool by abstaining from their right to vote, and dedicate a lot of time trying to convince people that their votes don't matter.
Cynicism is always tempting but ultimately lazy; if they votes didn't matter then there wouldn't be politicians wasting their time trying to make it hard or impossible for you to vote.
The Serbians did that for two years straight, until their government resigned and called for new elections. Look at videos from a protest: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1jc29fk/breathtakin...
If a much poorer country with (for now!) much worse repression can do it, what's your excuse, Americans?
Politics isn't just the ballot box every couple of years. Politics is always and everywhere.
That is, of course, the minimal thing, but I think we'd have way better elections if people just used this fundamental right.
[1] Yes yes I know about disenfranchisement for felonies and the like, you don't need to lecture me.
There were larger protests at ICE concentration camps but ICE made it clear that they'd use deadly force to disperse them. From the Left, the worry was that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act to suspend elections, deploy the military, etc.
I will be voting, like I always have, but I live in a state where that's easy to do. This administration is testing the limits of what people will put up with.
And what did you do about it? Probably the same as the rest of us.. nothing that actually matters.
We have no power except a vote. Our country is too big (physically) to effectively protest. Our wealth distribution is too large. Our social safety nets are laughable. People can't even take time off work to protest, or if they just didn't show up they can be fired without recourse.
Our country and government is basically built for the people having no actual power. We are at the mercy of the ultra rich that control everything and a large majority of all of our "elected" officials.
* Which US citizens have been abducted and by who? Which have been killed?
* Which US citizens found themselves in US detention centers (without lawful arrest) ?
* Which US citizens were placed in other countries without judicial review?
As far as I can tell:
No US citizens have been deported. No US citizens have been detained after evidence of their citizenship has been produced, which is a fast process in practice (taking a few hours), and has affected a few hundred people in total swept up during larger enforcement operations. The worst examples I can find are "At least 36 citizens were held at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or family." No US citizens have died in detention, nor been killed. In detention, deaths have risen on previous years, but are due to existing medical issues being untreated rather than anyone being killed.
But for just a taste, here's a propublica article on the matter.
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
It's unclear how that number could be "0" if there's any immigration enforcement at all. That is: supposing a person is likely to be present without authorisation in the country, and is unable to offer any evidence of citizenship, then what?
It seems this is an incredibly small number for such a large operation, ie., the worst case treatment of US citizens appears to be 36 held for a day.
Could this be improved? Presumably.
Its unclear how other than requiring the process to be perfect, and without any error at all, that the number could be much lower.
And such a requirement is, in practice, impossible. So requiring the number to be 0 is to require there to be no immigration enforcement at all.
Personally, I don't care if "enforcement" happens at all, though I don't expect you to care about that for the same reason you don't care about your neighbors.
What I do think is that if it was your mom that bad things were happening to, you'd have a different position on what "acceptable errors" look like.
The big difference here is that I care about my neighbors just as would care about my mother. You don't, and that's fine. Maybe you can get Grok to grow you a prothstetic soul or something.
Then don't arrest them and send them to a concentration camp would be a great start. The onus should be on the arresting officer to have a reasonable suspicion that the person in question is in the US without proper authorization (with reasonable suspicion being a pretty high bar, much higher than it currently is).
We have a court system. ICE even has their own special extra-judicial court system. There is absolutely zero need to proactively be disappearing people just because some guy who's only training is that Family Guy meme decided that this particular brown person needs to have their life destroyed.
Also, these detention centers are horrific and something history will not judge kindly, especially given that "the cruelty is the point" seems to be the guiding light for the folks building them.
36 US citizens being incorrectly and illegally arrested is 36 too many. Period. End of story.
Demand better of our government, not "eh, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet."
My question is: suppose they have such suspicion.
> 36 US citizens being incorrectly and illegally arrested is 36 too many. Period. End of story.
This doesnt really make any sense. Since you want to say that the process of immigration enforcement must be designed to never make a mistake that places a US citizen in detention for any amount of time, i assume that your real goal is to end all immigration enforcement.
It would be better if you said that, rather than laundered your view thru a claim about the possibility and necessity of perfect enforcement.
Then they should be able to articulate it. Instead in the few cases where they do, it's laughable, at best (or would be laughable if it didn't come with a non-zero risk of extradition to a third world prison in a failed central African state).
OK, fair enough. By this logic, those Jan 6th protesters who placed themselves between police and buildings/crowds such that they were injured/killed/etc. by the police -- those people get to cancel a federal election. For, if we cannot have elections without people dying, then presumably there should be none?
Being responsible for telling otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants that they need to leave is not a violent job, thus they don't need to be armed.
You don't need to murder someone to remove a heckler, especially one that you have zero jurisdiction over.
And what if you do?
Are you saying that you cannot conceive of a situation in which a person who disagrees with immigration law would deliberately place themselves in a position in which the only way of removing them from a enforcement situation is killing them?
This is strange given the number of domestic terrorism incidents. Consider, for example, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/8-convicted-of-terrorism...
> A demonstrator who shot and wounded a police officer outside a Texas immigration center
There is no case, to my knowledge, of ICE killing anyone who hasnt voluntarily placed themselves in the middle of an enforcement situation. And more so, there are many uncontroversial cases of the attempted murder of ICE officers (see, eg. the above).
The problem with your position is that it hands complete control over the existence of the immigration system to those who are willing to engage in domestic terrorism. I assume this isnt an accident, and you're well aware that "violence" here isnt "required" -- but it is caused by activists whose political project is to use violence against ICE officers.
Giving domestic terrorists a veto over government legislation is presumably not a position you wish to defend. Or if it is, be aware that quite a lot of historical domestic terrorism was right wing, and under the same principles, so it would be again.
It is not a capital offense to interfere with the duties of law enforcement officer in the united states. It's a jailable offense worth up to about a year in prison unless you use a weapon. So "they were in the way" is abso-fucking-lutely not a reason to murder someone.
At no point in time did Alex Pretti nor Renee Good represent any direct danger to the ICE agents who murdered them. ICE agents killed Americans, in cold blood, because they knew they could get away with it. If I have to choose between a bunch of people quietly minding their own business who happen to be missing some paperwork, and a gang of blood thirsty hicks galavanting around the country brutalizing people, I'm going to pick the peaceful ones every time.
Alas, I've spent to much time typing out reasoned responses to a Fascist.
ICE have guns because the people they are aiming to deport are often violent and have guns themselves. Apprehending a person without permission to be in the country is an inherently dangerous activity because without the use of any force at all, none would comply with the request to leave. That request has already been issued.
I don't know what you think large-scale child slavery operations are like, but you'd want the people detaining those involved to have guns I imagine. Likewise, sits of law enforcement operations are not places that you can protest -- the act of "disrupting" criminal enforcement procedures is itself a crime -- for obvious reasons. You cannot just murder someone, then every time an officer comes to arrest you, arrange for your neighbors to "protest" an arrest.
Political protest is a crime when "protestors" commit crimes. All protestors you've mentioned were committing crimes as soon as they entered an enforcement operations, that's called obstruction.
> reasoned responses to a Fascist.
You havent offered any reasons at all. You're using emotionally escalating language which justifies arbitrary violent action by people you agree with, in order to disrupt activities of the state which have a many-decades long bipartisian popular democratic mandate; and have been going on in the present form, for decades. You're seeking to justify the use of domestic terrorism to undermine the legitimacy of democratically legitimated government policies because you disagree with them.
Deporting a person to their country of origin is not a punishment. They are citizens of the country they are being returned to. At any given time 70-80% of pretty much all western states agree with a much harsher immigration enforcement that is ever actually enacted by states themselves. Mass immigration has always taken place against the democratic wishes of vast majorities of people. The removal of people without permission to be here, to the place they have permission to be, is not an attack on that person.
By emotionally white-washing acts of domestic terrorism you are creating a situation in which "protestors" are encouraged to get themselves killed in actions against the state. You do not have a hecker's veto on immigration policy, and nothing you do will give you one. The attitude you are taking here i just getting people killed LARPing matyrs for people who, in the end, are not being punished, theyre being deported.
In the US, we believe people are innocent until proven guilty. The way this number can be 0 is by ICE and CBP doing the bare minimum investigation "Is this person here legally" before arresting, not after.
There are, of course, situations that make that particularly difficult to determine, for example at home birth and homeschooling. But that's a burden for the state to resolve, not the individual.
> supposing a person is likely to be present without authorisation in the country, and is unable to offer any evidence of citizenship, then what?
It's not their burden to show citizenship or authorization. Before being arrested the state should have gone through a process "Is this person a citizen? where do they work? Do they have an SSN? Do they have school records or is there a birth certificate?" These are all tasks for the state to do before arresting someone.
> It seems this is an incredibly small number for such a large operation,
1. It's entirely too large, particularly because citizenship can be determined before arresting.
2. This is only what has been found by journalists, not the sum total of illegal arrests. Like I said, ICE is specifically trying to obfuscate their operations (the article mentions it) specifically to get around thing like FOIA requests to see how often these false arrests happen.
> Could this be improved?
There's almost no way it couldn't be improved.
> These are all tasks for the state to do before arresting someone.
There were certainly done in the case of these 36. That isnt the issue. The issue is that there are some non-zero pool of US citizens, who associate with non-US citizens illegally in the country, who cannot readily prove their citizenship. Since they are present with illegal immigrants, and are reasonably suspected of being one, they are reasonably detained.
> There's almost no way it couldn't be improved.
This indicates you aren't aware of the issues involved.
No one thinks its a good thing for US citizens to be mistakenly detained. The onus is on people who agree that there should be some level of immigration enforcement to explain how a perfect process avoids 100% of all such cases.
If you dont want immigration enforcement, that's a clearer position. Then the question is: what does the US owe to non-citizens who have build nothing, and paid nothing? If the answer is "nothing" you've got a lot of homelesssness, medical, etc. issues to address --- if your answer is "something" then you've got 8bn people on the planet, and the question is: how much?
Yes it absolutely does. Cops need more than just a hunch before they can arrest someone. They need clear articulable evidence that the person they are arresting more than likely committed a crime. That's what the 4th amendment protects.
For obvious reasons, we don't just allow cops to go out and arrest people on no grounds. Only ICE seems to get that benefit.
> There were certainly done in the case of these 36.
No it wasn't, they wouldn't be arrested if it was done before.
> who associate with non-US citizens illegally in the country
We have the freedom of association (1st amendment and NAACP v. Alabama). There's no such thing as "illegal association".
> This indicates you aren't aware of the issues involved.
Oh I'm aware that there are a number of racist people who want mass deportation and don't care who gets swept up in it. The problem they have is you can't do mass deportation and due process, which is why ICE has abandoned due process. So, people like yourself defend that abrogation because you like the thought of a few more mexicans being thrown into CECOT.
We can stop pretending that's not the "issues involved".
At this point, I dont think i'm talking to a person offering arguments in good faith. Nothing you've said advances or clarifies how such a procedure could be enacted, and your replies are simply restatements of your assumption.
If you think this is bad faith, fine. I think you just don't have a strong retort other than "I don't like that idea".
I don't think that such a thing is possible, for any effective enforcement procedure. I think all effective procedures of any kind, which exist in the real world, have an error rate. And error rates, for any real procedure, are never zero. And all government policy, which incidentally here arises from overwhelming democratic support, exists in the real world.
If you want to say A) "the only permissible enforcement procedure is one which is error free" and B) "such an enforcement procedure is possible" then I deny both premises. If you are saying something else: what's your allowed error rate?
My arguments against A, B i've already given. To accept A is to say that the government has arbitrarily high costs for either: 1) perfect enforcement or no borders: ie., if such a perfect procedure is possible, its costs are arbitrarily high (how does one in every possible case, spend arbitarily long amount of time, in arbitary situations, determining if a person is a US citzien? flawlessly ); or 2) if it isn't, then a borderless country which raises taxes and has social systems thereby awards all people within travel distance benefits from these.
As for B) this follows, a priori, from a claim that all real-world processes have error rates. To be more specific: immigration enforcement is a social process involving: people, human judgement, a wide vareity of unusual situations, and so on. At each stage there are signficant rates of error which follow from this.
Incorrect. Immigration enforcement at the border is exactly where I'd expect immigration enforcement to temporarily detain US citizens while they check documents. We aren't talking about simple detaining, which doesn't involve putting people in cuffs and transporting them to immigration facilities, that's an arrest.
Outside of border enforcement, no, there should never be a reason why immigration detains a US citizen. About the only time for that is when they are checking to see if they are the person they are searching for. There is no way you can determine the citizenship status of someone simply by looking at them or listening to them. People that get citizenship status keep their looks and their accents. That means that ICE must do the legwork that they aren't doing and investigate before arresting. And by investigate, I mean more than just "A lot of mexicans are working on that house over there, let's arrest them and see whose a citizen".
> for any effective enforcement procedure.
You mean for mass deportations, which I agree, it's not feasible to do a home depot or farm raid. But they shouldn't be doing that anyways. The assumption that everyone in an area has no residency status is a bad one that arrests innocent citizens.
> A) "the only permissible enforcement procedure is one which is error free" and B) "such an enforcement procedure is possible"
This is a false dichotomy. There's a huge sea between "we make as few mistakes as possible" and what this administration is doing which is arresting everyone that looks a little mexican. My position is that the administration should be putting in a lot more effort to limit false arrests, including checking immigration status BEFORE detaining or arresting someone. They clearly are not doing that. The burden should not be on the person being arrested to prove they are a citizen, that's exactly backwards.
You have made a bad faith "all or nothing" argument while also misrepresenting my stated position. And again, you've not addressed a single one of my points.
> what this administration is doing which is arresting everyone that looks a little mexican
If they were doing that, how could there only be 36 cases?
Again, you arent even engaging with the reality of the situation.
As stated before, that's 36 cases found by propublica last year. We don't know how many US citizens ICE has arrested because they aren't tracking that number.
As for "that's not happening". You literally just need to google it, there's hundreds of videos and articles of ICE arresting people for looking mexican [1] [2] [3]. In fact, that resulted in a supreme court shadow docket ruling allowing the practice to continue [4].
> Again, you arent even engaging with the reality of the situation.
Yeah, I am. The reality of the situation is we have federal thugs arresting people based on looks, sometimes multiple times. [5] The argument that this is simply normal immigration enforcement is laughable. None of this is normal or desirable.
[1] https://ktla.com/video/video-captures-ice-agents-tackling-da...
[2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-15/home-dep...
[3] https://hoodline.com/2026/09/ice-detains-10-day-laborers-at-...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop
[5] https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-leo-garcia-ve...
See how you've moved the goalpost. Now it's not "these aren't happening" it's "Well, a lot of mexicans work that job and a good number of them are probably illegal".
It's not reasonable to believe every mexican walking in or around home depot is illegal. That's just racist.
This is a prime example of lazy thinking and ICE not spending their vast resources just doing minimal investigatory work. If they weren't so hell bent on dressing up like fat narcos, they could do some actual police work before hand and figure out who actually is illegal and who isn't instead of just arresting everyone based on racist prejudices.
People are being needlessly detained/arrested because their tactics are awful and inefficient. Given their general incompetence I'm truly unable to tell if that's a feature not a bug or they're just that bad at EVERYTHING.
No. Just follow the law[0]:
(a) Issuance. If the complaint or one or more affidavits filed with the
complaint establish probable cause to believe that an offense has been
committed and that the defendant committed it, the judge must issue an arrest
warrant to an officer authorized to execute it.
So, you assert that at least 36 American citizens (as well as many thousands of non-citizens who, despite the rhetoric of some, are afforded constitutional rights by their presence in the US, but I digress) have had their constitutional rights violated by government agencies.
>It seems this is an incredibly small number for such a large operation, ie., the worst case treatment of US citizens appears to be 36 held for a day.
That strongly implies that you believe that given the scope of "such a large operation" that number is acceptable. If 36 is acceptable, how about 50? 100? 19,000? Where do you draw the line at the number of violations of constitutional rights are acceptable? That's not a rhetorical question.
I say it should be zero, as all Federal agents are required to take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. How many Federal agents shredding the Constitution is acceptable to you? I again say zero, and criminal charges should be brought against any and all who break their oath.
What say you? Again, not a rhetorical question.
did you speak out?
because those of us who marched in the streets and got tear gassed in front of ICE facilities did speak out
and brave souls like Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed for speaking out
If this administration was even half as fascist as they claimed it was, they obviously wouldn't be able to make such comments publicly, but such a fact is lost on them.
If that ends up being the case, then you're talking a reality where American citizens become the target of warrantless domestic surveillance, using data collected by the NSA. Every phone call, e-mail, text message, DM, group chat; anything a person has ever said or done in their digital lives going back years.
It's worse now with AI, because human effort is no longer required to read intercept transcripts or conversations. Instantaneous surfacing of dirt/leverage.
Now the submission has been flagged off the main page. Imagine that.
As opposed to “we are the law” ICE.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
It’s frustrating seeing people’s genuine questions being mocked.
I really do hope that in the future this strategy will stop being necessary, or that we can at least restore the norms against it. But I'm not going to unilaterally disarm.
Anarcho-capitalists and religious fundamentalists are the only two philosophies I've been able to find that fit, and most people do not consider themselves either one of those. So there must be some more reasoned support for Grump, right? Nobody thinks they are a villain, so there must be some constructive values behind it, right? But every time I try to have a good faith argument, it always boils down to hypocrisy. I appeal to the exact same values the Grumpists appeal to, but I get crickets or "that's not important". Except the whole point of values is that we apply them universally, not selectively, right? Yet still nothing ever clicks.
The only model I can come up with is that they actually don't care about values. The only use the movement has for values is to trick people in moments of weakness. The movement is pure spite and wanting to see people get hurt, and they really don't care how bad "their own" country is getting hurt in the process. When the bill comes due from all this destruction, even when it's apparent that the needle didn't move on any of the things they claimed to care about, they will just whine and pin it on whomever the democrat/globalist/woke monster of the week is at the time. It's ultimately a loser's coping philosophy for not being able to come to terms with their own weakness, rationalized and propagated through social media to draw in fellow losers. And unfortunately there is a critical mass to take us down with them, so that is what they are going to do.
[0] I actually credit UR for starting my journey from right libertarian to centrist libertarian
Ever tried arguing with crazy mad woman, to be a bit blunt, with some pesky facts and rational discussion? This is whats happening, and we see similar stuff (albeit far from primitive levels of US currently) in Europe too. Le Pen in France, ADF in Germany, if those turn to next russian puppets EU is done for.
US population has already been split into pretty toxic us-vs-them camp, thats psychological subversion 101 and has been done way before russians chipped in generously.
But when the topics are lifted into the realm of textual communication, you would think there would be some room to examine and critique them, and there just isn't. Not necessary from an opposing progressive view (although some of these critiques are certainly valid), but rather just on their own merits of what they hope to achieve!
This is a huge problem because the actions that the anger is (helping to) drive are completely self-defeating with regards to the conditions creating the anger. Our economy. Domestic industry. Immigration. Government accountability. All of these things will be left markedly worse by Grump 2. Will there be any sort of self reflection to realize this? Doubtful, rather they'll just pin it all on the next straw bogeyman. "I take no responsibility at all".
About the only hope we have is this piece of shit who brings out the worst in us croaks over dead, and there isn't a contender with enough of a longstanding cult following and uncanny ability to charm people with confabulating word salad to replace him.
If you really want their viewpoint, plenty of sob stories at https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/hot/
You will have to know someone personally or read sites that don't just reflect back your existing world view.
Good luck.
They never address the meat of the issue, it's always some sensationalist whataboutism. In this case, what about all the illegal immigration. Big scary urgent threat! No time to think about civil liberties! No time to consider the restrictions on the government written into its very charter! Oh but don't you know Democrats did bad stuff too!
I'm most certainly willing to update my views, and my characterization. But they would have to engage with the actual points being made, and they never do.
They are getting warm and fuzzy in their echo chambers and unfiltered reality rarely comes to them.
I wish I had some solution, but apart from having Thanos glove and with a snap increase IQ of lower 50% of the population by 30 points, or similarly bioengineered nano virus, I dont.
I've tried numerous times to penetrate this membrane of dumb emotional shit but its all negative emotions and insecurities down the hole, us-vs-them and similar, no facts, just trivial to abuse shit. Good moral honest guys always had it much harder there than manipulating sociopaths.
They were legal, every last one of them. They were under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). There was no "law and order" justification to object to their presence. Didn't stop the GOP from going after them. Trump and Vance viciously attacked them with the full support of the conservative media. The administration repealed their TPS protection, turning people who had done no wrong into fugitives.
This is about race. Always has been. When they run out of "illegals", they'll turn people into "illegals". When they run out of immigrants entirely, they'll overturn the 14th Amendment and start stripping citizenship from native-born Americans of the wrong color. They've already tried just that, and three motherfuckers on the Supreme Court voted to let them.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
For me personally, the conditions should be as safe or safer than the current conditions under which a person resides before considering removal of protective status, or else it would be cruel and inhumane to move them (to worse conditions).
I think preventing unnecessary human suffering should be the number one concern, do you not?
> So the country is too dangerous because of the people? Why would we want people from one of the most dangerous places in the world in our country?
So it turns our you weren't "just asking questions" in good faith, but rather pushing the standard progressively-louder dog whistles. It always boils down to the collectivism of handwaving about "those people", doesn't it?
At this point I not longer give any credence to arguments about "immigration". There are legitimate criticisms to be made for sure, but they're utterly minuscule relative to this revanchist movement to destroy what little Constitutional liberties we have left.
The infra we are building for our future dictator is awesome.
Whatever functions we need can be rebuilt from scratch later. But this is a rebuild moment, not a refactor moment.
They will have the power to at very least lay off every person involved. But will they? Probably not (your point). Trump (illegally) shut down the DOE and USAID by simply firing everyone employed there.
look at the longevity of the Patriot Act - once in place ("because of X!") it's extremely difficult to kill as all kinds of forces work against killing it and it's easy to scare the public about "what will happen if it's not there"
Pastor Martin Niemoller
Let's add some levity to the situation, and here's the link: https://youtu.be/EJR1H5tf5wE?si=lGJ7_L0IN31WNMKE
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
"Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I wish we had a functional congress that was actually motivated to do their job.
https://citizensimpeachment.com/active-impeachments/
All of the impeachment resolutions are dying in committee, too.
Tell that to Ilhan Omar[0], Letitia James[1]. James Comey[2], Renee Goode[3], Alex Pretti[4] and countless others.
How does that boot leather taste, friend?
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/12/ilhan-omar-home-rai...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Letitia_James
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_James_Comey
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good
Be specific. What actions? And what are appropriate consequences for such undefined "actions"?
Don't be vague, friend. If you have an argument to make, then make it. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time.
ICE is against the law. Here's some videos of them doing illegal things.
https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio...
> after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed.
> The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death.
> In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him.
> In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.
I've just accepted it over the years, it's a natural consequence of the Nerd Reich.