What's Palantir's federal contracts valued at like 900 million this year alone, seem's more like IBM selling counting machines if you know what I mean.
The point about ICE’s actions and attitude coloring the public’s perception of all law enforcement is spot on. I would expect legit law enforcement to protect us from such thuggery, but instead they stand by and do nothing, or worse, actively assist.
ACAB was a thing long before anyone heard of ICE, as well as the "defund the police" movement after the George Floyd protests. The public's perception of law enforcement was already low, and rightly so.
There was some pushback from your average liberal because they thought that it was too extreme, that we needed some folks to protect us and enforce the laws. But with what's going on with ICE, I'm seeing even some of the staunchest whitest liberals finally realize that law enforcement simply cannot be trusted ever, and for good reason. The only people still arguing otherwise are either the old, wealthy democrats sitting on their asses as people get beaten in the streets or the would-be fascists barely keeping the mask on.
As a European, it’s fairly easy to spot fascism. I fear Americans are less tuned to that as back then it didn’t happen directly in their backyards as it did here. The parallels of how Hitler came to and consolidated power are off the charts. What I find particularly interesting is the role of new media and technology in both cases: back then it was radio and TV and propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl; today it’s social media, AI and propagandists like Elon Musk. Nazis weren’t some devil-obsessed demons, they were regular people driven to the worst of their humanity by evil ideology and the government that explicitly orchestrated and demanded it. In the end, it took tens of millions of people to fix that; I fear the bill might come even higher this time
Latinos and blacks, plus (as with the Nazis) homosexuals and anybody they can call a "communist".
Jews are safe for the moment, but I wouldn't count on it forever. Netanyahu will not be in charge of Israel much longer. The new government will still want to be a US ally but is nowhere near as close to Trump and opposes a lot of the policies Netanyahu endorses.
I didn't see anything in there about working with the judicial system to ensure due process. Identifying and apprehending people is a bad thing when there is no due process.
It is the "they are terror group kind of like Gestapo" part. It is the "murder and then celebrate murder" part. The "kidnap people, beat them, throw them out" part. It is the "run out of the car, kidnap citizen" part. It is the "throw flashbang and teargas on law obeying people" part. It is the "blind a legal protester". With honorable mention of beating a female woman for going to doctor.
It is also the "their violence is staggering" and "they operations have no respect to law" and "they actually intentionally terrorize citizens too" parts.
All mentioned in article and well documented at this point.
I think that the fact that both Biden and Obama were finding and deporting illegal immigrants in record numbers and there wasn't this kind of outcry indicates that it's not the law itself that people are angry about. It's the cruel, brutal, poorly-targeted, and lawless tactics that are currently being used that are the problem.
It’s misleading to treat record deportations as evidence of restriction. Both Obama and Biden presided over record illegal inflows, and deportations rose largely because the pool of removable people grew faster than enforcement capacity. Inflow dominated outflow, and policy choices further reduced future removability, so net illegal presence increased despite high deportation counts.
That's unrelated to the point that I was making. My point is that they were engaging in record deportations without causing a great deal of upset, and that indicates that it's not the enforcement of the law that people are objecting to now, it's the manner of the enforcement.
This seems like an attempt to avoid the argument rather than engage with it, because creating an imaginary world which we currently don't live in has nothing to do with the reality we're currently dealing with.
The reality being that one informs the other. I know people that would agree in regular situations that we need some enforcement of immigration law. But this is not a regular situation, and when you have an agency tasked with 'enforcing' immigration law who is not enforcing the law at all and in fact violating the law, people question why said immigration laws and agency exists in the first place.
> If ICE were doing exactly what its mandate says on paper (enforcing immigration law and deporting people who are in the country illegally) would you still say the same thing?
They are not doing what the mandate says on the paper. So, the question is moot. If the "paper" said, "ICE is allowed to use arbitrary force and abuse" I would still call them Gestapo, because Gestapo was also legal.
> It seems that critics oppose the law itself, but then frame the argument as “ICE is bad because it breaks the law,” rather than acknowledging that the real disagreement is over whether those laws should exist at all.
This is bad faith claim. It is possible to disagree about multiple things at the same time. It is possible to disagree about the law. And simultaneously find ICE completely morally depraved and violent, just as their defenders.
In fact, one can agree about the law and still think that government force killing people and being violent against opposition is a bad thing.
So very openly: I think that stealing from shops should be illegal. I think that police beating people for stealing would be wrong and murdering people who oppose the "beat people who steal" law also wrong.
There's nothing bad faith here, it was a simple question.
Sounds like you aren't even sure whether the law is good or bad "[I don't care what the paper says]". You hate ice because they seem like they're Gestapo. Then maybe next time, don't appeal to the law to argue "ICE is illegal"?
What's Palantir's federal contracts valued at like 900 million this year alone, seem's more like IBM selling counting machines if you know what I mean.
And for those that don't, OP is referencing that IBM sold counting machines to Hitler's Third Reich.
The point about ICE’s actions and attitude coloring the public’s perception of all law enforcement is spot on. I would expect legit law enforcement to protect us from such thuggery, but instead they stand by and do nothing, or worse, actively assist.
ACAB was a thing long before anyone heard of ICE, as well as the "defund the police" movement after the George Floyd protests. The public's perception of law enforcement was already low, and rightly so.
There was some pushback from your average liberal because they thought that it was too extreme, that we needed some folks to protect us and enforce the laws. But with what's going on with ICE, I'm seeing even some of the staunchest whitest liberals finally realize that law enforcement simply cannot be trusted ever, and for good reason. The only people still arguing otherwise are either the old, wealthy democrats sitting on their asses as people get beaten in the streets or the would-be fascists barely keeping the mask on.
[dead]
As a European, it’s fairly easy to spot fascism. I fear Americans are less tuned to that as back then it didn’t happen directly in their backyards as it did here. The parallels of how Hitler came to and consolidated power are off the charts. What I find particularly interesting is the role of new media and technology in both cases: back then it was radio and TV and propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl; today it’s social media, AI and propagandists like Elon Musk. Nazis weren’t some devil-obsessed demons, they were regular people driven to the worst of their humanity by evil ideology and the government that explicitly orchestrated and demanded it. In the end, it took tens of millions of people to fix that; I fear the bill might come even higher this time
Americans who haven't figured it out need to ask a German about that salute.
So who are they going to attack this time, the Jews again? Donald Trump and Beniamin Benjamin Netanyahu look like best friends.
Latinos and blacks, plus (as with the Nazis) homosexuals and anybody they can call a "communist".
Jews are safe for the moment, but I wouldn't count on it forever. Netanyahu will not be in charge of Israel much longer. The new government will still want to be a US ally but is nowhere near as close to Trump and opposes a lot of the policies Netanyahu endorses.
The screenshots of internal documents show positive results:
"[...] resulted in 6 stash houses being identified"
"[resulted in the] identification of 135 stash houses"
"692 apprehensions"
Collab with FBI, USBP...
etc., etc.
I don't see how this is supposed to look bad for ICE. It actually makes them look good.
I didn't see anything in there about working with the judicial system to ensure due process. Identifying and apprehending people is a bad thing when there is no due process.
What metric do you want to judge ICE by if not their number of apprehensions, stash houses raided, etc.?
People incorrectly apprehended, assaulted, or killed seems like it might be a value you want in that equation.
It is the "they are terror group kind of like Gestapo" part. It is the "murder and then celebrate murder" part. The "kidnap people, beat them, throw them out" part. It is the "run out of the car, kidnap citizen" part. It is the "throw flashbang and teargas on law obeying people" part. It is the "blind a legal protester". With honorable mention of beating a female woman for going to doctor.
It is also the "their violence is staggering" and "they operations have no respect to law" and "they actually intentionally terrorize citizens too" parts.
All mentioned in article and well documented at this point.
[flagged]
> It seems that critics oppose the law itself
I think that the fact that both Biden and Obama were finding and deporting illegal immigrants in record numbers and there wasn't this kind of outcry indicates that it's not the law itself that people are angry about. It's the cruel, brutal, poorly-targeted, and lawless tactics that are currently being used that are the problem.
It’s misleading to treat record deportations as evidence of restriction. Both Obama and Biden presided over record illegal inflows, and deportations rose largely because the pool of removable people grew faster than enforcement capacity. Inflow dominated outflow, and policy choices further reduced future removability, so net illegal presence increased despite high deportation counts.
That's unrelated to the point that I was making. My point is that they were engaging in record deportations without causing a great deal of upset, and that indicates that it's not the enforcement of the law that people are objecting to now, it's the manner of the enforcement.
This seems like an attempt to avoid the argument rather than engage with it, because creating an imaginary world which we currently don't live in has nothing to do with the reality we're currently dealing with.
The reality being that one informs the other. I know people that would agree in regular situations that we need some enforcement of immigration law. But this is not a regular situation, and when you have an agency tasked with 'enforcing' immigration law who is not enforcing the law at all and in fact violating the law, people question why said immigration laws and agency exists in the first place.
It's a hypothetical question, but it is not useless.
You have to admit some connection between the law and the reality.
Is it necessary for the law to be changed, or is it ICE?
> If ICE were doing exactly what its mandate says on paper (enforcing immigration law and deporting people who are in the country illegally) would you still say the same thing?
They are not doing what the mandate says on the paper. So, the question is moot. If the "paper" said, "ICE is allowed to use arbitrary force and abuse" I would still call them Gestapo, because Gestapo was also legal.
> It seems that critics oppose the law itself, but then frame the argument as “ICE is bad because it breaks the law,” rather than acknowledging that the real disagreement is over whether those laws should exist at all.
This is bad faith claim. It is possible to disagree about multiple things at the same time. It is possible to disagree about the law. And simultaneously find ICE completely morally depraved and violent, just as their defenders.
In fact, one can agree about the law and still think that government force killing people and being violent against opposition is a bad thing.
So very openly: I think that stealing from shops should be illegal. I think that police beating people for stealing would be wrong and murdering people who oppose the "beat people who steal" law also wrong.
There's nothing bad faith here, it was a simple question.
Sounds like you aren't even sure whether the law is good or bad "[I don't care what the paper says]". You hate ice because they seem like they're Gestapo. Then maybe next time, don't appeal to the law to argue "ICE is illegal"?