I agree they are deadly serious, but to the parent commenter’s point, why wander the streets grabbing random people when they could go straight to the employers? They would have far more success targeting farms, construction sites, restaurant kitchens, etc.

The answer is the business owners are their constituents. They cannot afford to piss them off. If they lose their support the wheels will fall off this farcical performance.

I grew up in Florida, and I remember the sugar plantation “raids” they used to stage. They were a complete dog and pony show. They would announce them in advance so the plantations could hide most of their undocumented workers. Then they would round up just enough people for the photo op to prove they were being “tough on immigration.”

This is the same thing but on a grander and more dangerous scale.

> I guarantee you these guys are dead serious

Just because the grunts are dead serious doesn't mean the initiative is dead serious.

Even then, serious doesn't equal competent. They are still trying to deport Abrego Garcia. Spending millions in legal fees and transport to deport a single man is not pratical in the slightest.

The grunts are surely dead serious, but the bosses? Nah. If they were they'd be sending execs to prison. Anything less is pointless if you truly want to solve the problem.

They are serious now, but eventually Pournell’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy comes into play. Those who believe in the organization will take over from those who believe in the mission.

Note that the courts have split on the deployment of national guard troops so the issue is destined for the Supreme Court.

> Stephen Miller is genuinely anti-immigrant.

I don't know much about him but aren't his grand parents Belarusians who came over to the US?

Only works until that's no longer legal, see face coverage laws in various countries.

>when it's been tried before those assumptions failed, badly.

Turns out Americans don't want to move out to rural areas to be paid minimum wage to do hard farm labor. Who knew?

That's the only real upside to this gig economy. Their competition isn't just flipping burgers, but anyone who has a car that can sign up to an app to make some quick cash.

I think you'll find that ICE goes to cities, not to the tiny farm towns where most of the field workers stay at. Farmers don't want ICE screwing up harvests, and the admin wants a more visual approach that comes with focusing on cities like LA and Chicago, not places like Seville CA.

Nothing will backfire.

A Reuters poll on the White House demolitions had a 63% approval for one question and a 40% approval rating for another question - from Republican voters.

As long as there exists a content economy on the right that does’t have to pay their dues to reality, you will not stop a political machine which is based upon fantasy.

The only thing that will cut through the noise is a recession, because that cannot be spun. Even then - that would just be a speed bump; eventually the recession will pass.

Everyone is a conspiracy theorist now.

The point is that ICE has been given a mandate to ignore any notion of due process in their handling of immigrants, very visibly and officially. This allows them to deport anyone they want, including American citizens who get on the bad side of the regime, by just claiming that the person is an illegal immigrant and they don't have time for looking at silly papers like a birth certificate.

So ICE, is in fact being shaped into a secret police that can be used to punish anyone speaking against the regime, under the guise of being a brutal anti-immigration force.

Not to pull the Godwin lever, but the German SS went from being security guards to overseeing the entire national police force to running gas chambers in about 10-15 years. The function of an organization can change over time. The purpose of a system is what it does.

When a domestic law enforcement agency is spending 600% more year-over-year on weapons to point at people in frog costumes it's reasonable to wonder if that may reflect a de facto change in that organization.

Are you not an American? (Giving you the benefit of the doubt here)

In America, immigration enforcement is not a criminal issue but a civil issue. So the proper (as in, according to the laws and norms of the last many decades) and appropriate channels through which the enforcement of immigration is meant to be resolved is the courts. The current usage of ICE as a gestapo is literally illegal (it deprives "suspects" of due process and civil/human rights), in violation of Geneva conventions, and so on.

Furthermore even if we accept the blatantly immoral and illegal idea that federal agents should be able to break and enter into homes and kidnap, traumatize, and traffic people without the slightest pretense of legal justfiability (warrants etc), the fact is that they are not even attempting to choose people by any discernable metric other than their skin color. So it is objectively not about the enforcement of the law, it is about stochastic terrorism and ethnic cleansing, as that is the only thing their actions consistently demonstrate.

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying; ICE is an already-established organization meant for enforcing immigration law, but it's entirely possible that ICE is being/will be used as a secret police force to attack or dissuade political dissidents of the American right wing while claiming they are only enforcing immigration laws. Many American citizens have already been arrested and even deported by ICE, and the FBI has already been used to intimidate American citizens regarding their political speech. ICE is not supposed to be a secret police force, but it's certainly starting to become one.

You're ignoring some pretty crucial evidence about this administration, which is that:

A) They're building more prisons specifically to fill with immigrants

B) Sentencing trends don't really affect immigrants who are denied due process.

It's not "completely false."

> South Korean companies have been mostly relying on short-term visas or a visa waiver program called the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, to send workers needed to launch manufacturing sites and handle other setup tasks, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years.

It sounds to me like they had relied on a grey area. The most obvious conclusion is that pressure from the top down in ICE caused their agents to "hunt around" and look for "big arrests." When political pressure from South Korea mounted they had to reverse themselves.

>> Because Hyundai was not hiring 500 illegals, that is completely false.

The entire article you posted just referenced short term visas after the raid and said nothing other than the nationals who were arrested were flown home. The article spent less than a sentence with what OP posted:

The announcement came weeks after South Korea flew home more than 300 of its nationals who had been detained in a massive immigration raid at a battery factory being built on Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant campus near Savannah, Georgia.

From September when the raid happened:

"This was not an immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses," Steve Schrank, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlanta, said at a news conference on Friday.

"This has been a multi-month criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews gathered documents and presented that evidence... in order to obtain a judicial search warrant," Schrank added.

He said it was "the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of homeland security investigations".

"These [workers] are people that came through with Biden. They came through illegally."

Some 475 people who were in the country illegally or working unlawfully were detained in the operation, immigration officials said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6xe5d6103o

>> frozen water gang

>> the current admin and the frozen water gang

Why do you have a problem using the term ICE??

Sure… but your point could neatly support my hypothesis, so I’m not sure I understand the distinction.

Republicans don’t need to crow about states’ rights right now because they have an even bigger stick with which to oppress minorities.

What is the quote from?

Wait. Aren't the libertarians pretty much for global free trade and unlimited immigration? I'm sensing some cognitive dissonance here.

That Trump is a cult leader and his followers are the cult followers? And that the following won't go away if the leader doesn't go?

Isn’t the problem that Trump is now doing what he promised? He campaigned on tariffs and deportations (and a decade ago, building a White House ballroom).

In the world we could assess this completely and with perfect accuracy, you're spot on that that'd be all that we need!

In the current world, though, due process exists because there are sometimes messy and fuzzy details that need evaluation. For instance, the date of an immigration court hearing might be delayed, or an applicant may be granted an extension. An immigrant may have received incorrect information and missed the proper steps through no fault of their own. If immigration enforcement skips due process but is working on even slightly outdated information, we're trashing the rights of people who may be following the process properly.

In the cases where an immigrant is clearly here illegally and there are no extenuating circumstances, deportation is already the thing that the current due-process does.

> Why would someone who has not committed a crime and is not accused of a crime need a court case?

Criminal court is only one type of use-case for the legal system, there are loads of other ones. The phrase "Civil court" refers to scenarios where no one has committed a crime and no one is accused of a crime, and these represent the majority of court cases.

When someone is allegedly an il_legal_ immigrant, they are present but allegedly violating immigration _laws_.

That is to say, such a person has been accused of a crime.

Due process in the constitution guarantees that individuals (including non-citizens facing deportation) have the opportunity to defend themselves in court against such accusations.

What do you think the process to check whether someone is an illegal immigrant is? It needs to leave a paper trail, and provide someone the opportunity to prove that they're a citizen or here legally.

Maybe a court case?

While you are correct in stating that an article III court generally is not required, the due process for immigrants, even those not present legally, is more complicated than just "check paperwork for legal status, act immediately". While in some cases expedited removal bypass the normal process, if a deportation is contested, due process still generally entails access to a hearing before an immigration judge (article II judge).

Reality isnt ever "Heres one datapoint, trend confirmed".

Maybe the point was to show that (any) laws are just an instrument to justify oppression of one class by another class?

It's this kind of Redditesque "I know what you think better than you do" rudeness that HN was meant to avoid.

Don’t you have a coast guard?

This is a skill issue.

I think the job analysis is overly simplistic. The reality is that worker migration from poorer countries to richer ones is a huge low wage problem. Instead of allowing low-skilled labor to pay better in order to attract workers who expect better conditions, you keep the wages fixed and import workers for whom even the bad life you're offering is better than their current life.

Of course, this doesn't mean that allowing 0 immigration in is the right solution, or preventing immigrants from working. And I should also point out that, generally, US leaders have the least amount of problem with this aspect of immigration - even now, Trump has instructed ICE not to go for deporting agricultural and tourism workers in any mass numbers.

>the "crisis" is entirely manufactured.

It sure is, the US government has been underfunding the judicial body responsible for adjudicating asylum claims for years and years. As a result there are indeed people here in status limbo.

Wether or not they should be granted some kind of residency is kind of irrelevant, politicians are happy for this to be a problem they can use.

Even now, they aren’t increasing the rate of process, they’re just blowing the cash on mass surveillance.

Employed privilege. Lots of folks would like to work in construction but haven’t been able to for a while. I know several that retired early in poverty.

I would appreciate a job in construction or at a restaurant for example. Teenagers would benefit from such jobs as well. Not available.

Your absolute assertions are myopic at best.

I observe the following. ICE has not caused a huge step change in people leaving the country. If you look at the stats since Reagan (https://infographicsite.com/infographic/deportations-under-u...), it wanders up and down and is (imo) complicated.

What has changed is the “messaging” around the topic. This is very common with the Trump administration. When all is said and done, when exceptions are made/bought, and the courts and others get involved, it ends up not being much of a needle move. BUT, what is different every time is the messaging. And I have come to believe, that is what the actual goal is to some degree. The real goal is to send a message to people who are immigrants OR (and this is important) look like immigrants. It’s a message of “remember your place” and “be grateful you get to be here”. It’s the same type of tactics that gets sent to Asian communities, black communities, women, etc.

I am white. I am a male. I am 55. I oscillate between despondently sad and disgusted.

What's your definition of "unfamiliar"? I just want people vetted before they're allowed into my house to live along-side my family? Is that unreasonable?

That's not how food prices works.

High housing prices is a complex mix of underbuilding due to zoning laws, companies buying up housing stock to rent, and (a few years ago) very low interest rates. One thing that is _not_ a factor is immigrants, because they are at the bottom of the social pile and usually can't get mortgages to buy houses.

> That food at the grocery store costs more than it did a few years ago?

> the more people there are, here, the higher those prices will be bid upwards

Who do you think is picking most of that food? And if the wages for those jobs went up to an American living wage, what do you think would happen to the price of food even with a bit lower demand?

I know it's all too easy and comforting to throw out knee-jerk comments cheerleading for government power, but at least try applying some basic analysis to what you write.

When ICE raided Tyson Chicken (a few years ago), multiple workers provided documentation from Tyson telling them how to stay under the radar and how to fill out paperwork if they were undocumented. There's definitely a very large effort in undocumented labor... and little interest in rocking the boat of those employers.

Not really, but an entire society full of them is unappealing to me

A nation of legal or illegal immigrants? Should any us have a say in which we prefer?

>Should a visitor to a country enjoy the right to explicitly espouse opposition to that country without any negative consequence?

What I imagine is the biggest, most obvious crack in this argument, is that "the country" includes people who support every side of most issues, especially the question of how many Palestinians Israel will be allowed to kill before they're made to stop it. Arresting tourists that espouse a particular view represents once force within the US dominating another within the US.

I would think the Bill of Rights applies equally to citizens or non-citizens. That includes the First Amendment. That includes the right to freedom of speech and expression of opposition to whatever he or she desires. The freedom of speech is part of the 'truths' that are self-evident. And almost every time, the Congress tried to restrict these rights, they were struck by the courts. This isn't about demolishing the state, as communists would want to do. This isn't about changing the constitutional order, as any totalitarian party would have to do. This is about a right of a person to express his or her opinion without repercussions.

"This case -- perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court -- squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ‘No law’ means ‘no law.’ The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence. … No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike.”

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.282...

I wouldn't argue that they have less First Amendment protections because, as previously described, everybody within the US has the same First Amendment protections. I think that phrasing is both misleading and dangerous.

You're just describing crimes and specific consequences of those crimes that would apply to people in certain circumstances (being a visa holder means you can be deported). Criticizing, for example, the President of United States or holding a particular political viewpoint is (currently) not a crime regardless of your citizenship, residency, or visa status.

As for the border, you can be denied entry for any reason at the whim of the border agent so none of this applies to that at all.