[potato3732842]

Because it's always been happening. If they didn't already have this sort of abuse practiced they wouldn't be so good at it. The ACLU used to write basically the same exact pieces about the DEA

Maybe it's 10% or 20% more prevalent or worse, I can't say from my vantage point, but it's a difference of degree, not a categorical one. You read these stories and they read exactly like all the other stories of how all sorts of "criminals" have been abused by the system for years, especially when they have a political blank check to do do. Making it hard for people to get a lawyer, moving too fast for people to appeal anything or get outside scrutiny is exactly how these systems have always behaved when they feel like it.

Now it's ICE and not DEA or whatever but this is basically the level of abuse with which the authorities have always treated with.

It's nice that the public is paying attention now, but I have very little hope that it will actually lead to systemic changes.

[UmGuys]

It has not. We have never previously sent immigrants to foreign concentration camps. There were internment camps which were bad enough during the war, but we're now kidnapping people, sending them to El Salvador, and locking them up for life.

[queenkjuul]

People here really seem to like ignoring that part for some reason. That is a very real line that had not previously been crossed.

[freen]

Especially the part about “we imprisoned legal residents of the US in a foreign country without due process and now can’t do anything about it, even though the Supreme Court told us we have to return them to the USA, because, whoops, they are imprisoned in a foreign country!” bit.

[vkou]

Can't do anything to bring them back, yet keep sending more people there.

Here's a riddle for everyone. What do you call a prison where people go in without trial, never come out, and there's always room for more?

[BriggyDwiggs42]

Have they sent more?

[freen]

Yes. And will send more.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/homegrowns-trump-doubles-sen...

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Because it's always been happening.

I don't like this kind of response because it's basically kind of an assumption, and you don't really give any evidence for it.

On one hand, sure, abuses by people in positions of power have always happened, so if you're just making a general argument that enforcement authorities abuse power, I mean yeah, human nature.

But this article is making some specific points:

1. Those who were deported were given basically zero access to even talk to a lawyer, and that in at least one case a habeas corpus petition was deliberately avoided by deporting the family at 6 AM before courts opened.

2. Multiple US minor citizen children were deported.

So, no, without more evidence, I'm not willing to believe that it's just some minor increase of degree. While yes, I'm sure there have been abuses in the past, the current policy seems hellbent on deporting as many people as possible, due process be damned, and that was not the policy in previous years. I'd also highlight that the current President has said, explicitly, that deporting people without due process is his goal: https://truthout.org/articles/we-cannot-give-everyone-a-tria...

In other words, I don't believe this is just an aberrant, abusive exception to the policy. It very much seems like this is the policy now.

[pclmulqdq]

No, this kind of deportation and treatment of prisoners/detainees has been happening forever. This exact behavior has been happening forever, not just a general idea of malfeasance. The current attention on it smacks of politics in a way that is also very inhuman. Remember the "kids in cages" saga?

[hn_throwaway_99]

> No, this kind of deportation and treatment of prisoners/detainees has been happening forever.

Another assertion without any justification or data.

> Remember the "kids in cages" saga?

Yes, of course, and that's the point. There was huge outcry then, and that cruel policy was implemented by the same person responsible for this policy. It doesn't make sense to say "this has been happening forever" and then bring up an example from 2017-2020. We are all well aware of Trump's view on immigration and the rule of law. The whole point is that Trump's policies are a huge aberration from what any other administration, Republican or Democrat, has put forth in the past 50 years.

[giraffe_lady]

I almost completely agree with you here. But it is striking that they didn't need to create any new agencies to do this. All the parts of it were in place. They were in place already for trump to use the first time, and they were still in place when he got back into power.

Due process and transparency on border & immigration interactions has been alarmingly bad for a long time now. Has this never happened before, hidden inside this apparatus? I'm not confident of that. This is certainly different in its scale and ferocity. But I see where they are coming from too.

[margalabargala]

Much as I detest the current administration, the parent comment is correct. While things under both Trump administrations did get mildly worse than they were under his Democrat predecessors, they were plenty bad under Obama and Biden as well.

You're talking about bringing up examples from 2017-2020; it turns out, plenty of the examples that were brought up back then, were in fact from the Obama years. Example: https://apnews.com/article/a98f26f7c9424b44b7fa927ea1acd4d4

[hn_throwaway_99]

Let's look at your own link:

> The story featured photos taken by AP’s Ross D. Franklin at a center run by the Customs and Border Protection Agency in Nogales, Arizona. One photo shows two unidentified female detainees sleeping in a holding cell. The caption refers to U.S. efforts to process 47,000 unaccompanied children at the Nogales center and another one in Brownsville, Texas.

I don't know how else you're supposed to handle 47,000 unaccompanied children when there simply aren't the facilities to hold them all, e.g. in foster homes. I think that is fundamentally different than deporting US citizens.

And yes, when it comes to Trump's first term, I don't really see anything wrong with keeping unaccompanied children in detention centers, at least temporarily. The much bigger issue I had was the specific policy of separating families.

[margalabargala]

Yes, I fully agree with everything you're saying.

My point is more that I'm not sure exactly how much of what ICE does can particularly be attributed to the administration, on account of the same sorts of stuff happening under every administration, and the waters getting muddied by things being presented in false contexts, which is what I was trying to show with the link I posted.

The family separation policy was horrible, but it was yet another piece of cruel dehumanization on the cruel dehumanization pile that was already there. Secretly revoking student visas and then snatching that person off the street by masked plainclothes officers like happened to Rumeysa Ozturk is cruel and awful, but also, the personnel who did that and their attitude did not appear overnight; ICE is has ICE has always been, and all that changes is the length of the leash given by the President.

What I object to is the implicit framing of what was happening pre-Trump as being fine and correct, and it's only what Trump is doing that's beyond the pale. But I am glad that it's opening people's eyes to what is happening and hope that by shining light on it, perhaps post-Trump we can move to something better than pre-Trump.

[reseasonable]

The treatment part has happened for decades, Las Hieleras is one of many examples. But the deporting citizens part hasn’t happened for about 70 years since Operation Wetback which was nearly an identical playbook of today.

Mass visa revocations happened about 50 years ago since the Iran Hostage Crisis. And a few other events over the 20th century reflect well with today like Japanese internment camps. CECOT out does Gitmo and Angel Island, but damn, we just do a lot of fascist and unjust stuff as a nation.

The 1880’s resulted in us switching our attention from Native Americans to immigrants and we never really let off the gas on that front.

[southernplaces7]

>I don't like this kind of response because it's basically kind of an assumption, and you don't really give any evidence for it.

Whether you like it or not, it has indeed been happening for a long time, and under multiple administrations from either party. If you're interested in the tragedy of it all enough to care, then go look these cases up instead of first accusing someone of lying because they might be smearing a politician that you preferred, and who isn't the current orangutan in the White House.

Trump's administration is notably and vocally hostile to illegal immigrants, to migrants and I suspect to immigrants in general, but it's mainly still using the tools and practices that have long since been refined by multiple federal agencies whenever opportunities for heavy-handedness presented themselves.

Because it's Trump's administration, and enough of the major media system is unsupportive of him (still, for now), the matter is gaining more attention. This attention is a good thing, but it shouldn't cloud one from considering the possibility that the bureaucratic defects and authoritarian inertia of federal policing exist beyond the confines of a single type of administration.

[hn_throwaway_99]

This is like the third or fourth response I've seen that keeps making the same assertion with no evidence to back up their position. So I'll be very clear on what I think is new and not just "more of the same":

1. The deliberate attempts to deny due process by scheduling deportations before filed writs can be responded to in court.

2. The deportation of US minor citizen children as a matter of policy.

If you have any evidence of the above by non-Trump administrations, again as a matter of policy, I'm all ears. Everything else is just "feels".

[southernplaces7]

>If you have any evidence of the above by non-Trump administrations, again as a matter of policy, I'm all ears. Everything else is just "feels".

I assume you know how to use the internet, so please go do a few searches, on Google or the search system of your choice, for the sake of informing yourself better. They're there, and if you care about the subject enough to make claims, you should be aware of wider history.

Illegal actions, whether by policy or by bureaucratic inertia towards authoritarian tendencies, have been the case under multiple previous administrations. Under Obama these were even (in a very different context) taken to the level of outright killing American citizens without due process via drone strike. Under Bush II, they involved very illegal and repeated acts of "extraordinary" rendition to black sites. There are more examples, many involving deportations.

Trump getting attention for things that have also been the case since before him poses the risk of making people think that it will all be okay if they just get rid of Trump, even if it's good that the attention is at least being given to this finally.

None of this is to defend the Trump administration or ICE. The cases documented in the link in this post are grotesque, and deserve the full force of censure by other branches of government and the public, and the media, but that doesn't excuse simplistic examinations of a wider injustice.

[MegaButts]

JFC if someone asks you multiple times for a source then provide a fucking source, instead of continuing to be an obnoxious holier-than-thou "do your own research you ignoramus" asshole.

You are so completely incompetent when it comes to discourse that I have to assume you are purposefully spreading misinformation. Either provide evidence or do everyone else the favor of shutting the fuck up you intolerable asshat.

[yuliyp]

I guess the question is how frequent it's been. A big part of Trumpism is taking sketchy practices that used to be exceptional and turning them into standard operating procedure, and then claiming "oh look others did this before"

I mean, look at Hillary Clinton's emails, extorting of lawfirms, big tech, etc, his ignoring of court orders, etc. All are things that you can look at and say "he's not the first to do this" and be completely correct, but completely missing the point that he's doing it waay more aggressively.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> extorting of lawfirms

When did that happen previously?

[southernplaces7]

I actually mentioned this same worry in a previous comment on this post thread, and I don't think that i'm missing the point about Trump doing certain things in way more aggressive and possibly new ways. It's something that should be cause for lots of worry.

However, as I explained above, the deportations of citizens are nothing new and though it's good that they now receive attention, they should be viewed from the wider context of decades of federal overreach and authoritarian practices by certain agencies.

my other comment similar to what you mention https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803664

[hartator]

Yes, nothing much changed law-wise.

No due process at the borders is a shame both now and before, but hopefully this time there is a willingness to change things. Probably not at the next swing of power.

[whimsicalism]

It is genuinely an extremely difficult challenge to manage illegal crossings if every individual must be processed through the full U.S. legal system which has massive resourcing and backlog problems (3m+ cases).

Voters across the political spectrum have made it unmistakably clear — in poll after poll — that they are deeply dissatisfied with the current rate of illegal and asylum-seeking entries.

Is there a morally permissible way to enact their will?

[0x5f3759df-i]

Immigration courts are already separate from the rest of the legal system so the implication here is wrong.

Going too slow for you? Hire more immigration judges, which are executive employees not full article 3 judges.

Voters across the political spectrum have made it clear in poll after poll the last few weeks that they do not approve of the way this administration is grabbing whoever they can and shipping them out of the country without any check or verification that they are deporting the right people.

If the administration can declare you an illegal immigrant with no due process they can ship anyone they want out of the country. They could grab you off the street, ship you to and El Salvador torture prison intentionally or by mistake (as they have already admitted to) and there’s nothing you can do about it.

[shadowgovt]

Purely hypothetically, blue sky solution space?

If the law exceeds the government's ability to enforce it, relax it. It's de facto relaxed because of the lack of fundamental resources to enforce it... Put the reality on paper.

Stop treating the southern border as a war zone and reopen it. It used to be more open. It was, in fact, more open in that magical America great period that MAGA ostensibly seems to be nostalgic for. Not only did the country survive the openness, it flourished.

If the law is too hard to enforce, have less of it. Lower scrutiny. Hand out day passes. Welcome The stranger with a smile and a friendly wave.

[Terr_]

In fact, that process is why deportation courts exist: The theory goes that you're not really punishing anyone, you're just sending them straight back out the door they just came through, therefore, a lower intensity of process is acceptable.

However that rationale becomes evil nonsense the moment a government starts "deporting" arrivals into a damned concentration camp, or back into the hands of people that want to kill them, seizing their property, separating them from their children, etc. since all of that is obviously punitive.

[unethical_ban]

Admit that the current and past efforts to keep people out and quickly deport people failed. And then set up reliable systems of verifying people's citizenship before they can get a job and quickly deport those who should be deported.

Make it easier to work here legally in the US like it used to be in the 90s, and threaten CEOs with jail time if their companies have a pattern of hiring ineligible workers.

And let's be clear, a lot of this border security "crisis" is rooted in racism and Fox news alarmism. The GOP likes having the problem because it keeps the base angry.

[LorenPechtel]

Rampant identity theft. And if you try to hold them accountable you'll make legal immigrants unable to get a job.

Until we have identity theft under control strict checks on employers are a bad idea.

[amanaplanacanal]

Congress could increase funding for the courts enough so that they could do their job. But that would go against the Republican quest for smaller government and lower taxes.

[vlovich123]

This quest is a fig leaf. The expansion of the government has proceeded equally under both presidents. The republicans just choose to spend the budget on other things and are less willing to raise taxes to fund things. The current tariffs are an interesting PR workaround.

[LorenPechtel]

Something to consider: The Republicans have *deliberately* starved the system as a means of delaying granting asylum. They caused the problem!

[UncleMeat]

Too bad.

A world where the government gets to say "well it is annoying and expensive to follow the law give people rights so we just won't" is a horror show.

If the people really want a world where people are denied legal process then they can build the popular support for a constitutional amendment. Until then, the government is going to have to pay for this shit.

And we did have a legislative effort to reduce the number of illegal border crossings. Trump scuttled it.

[ty6853]

My guy will do better with the power they never destroy.

[EasyMark]

Not the same thing. They are rushing people onto planes before the have any hope of seeing a judge, not documenting anything other than "we say so", and sometimes even sending deportees off to prisons well known for mistreatment and even torture of prisoners in El Salvador. This isn't even close to the same thing.

[grafmax]

I think you’re overlooking the fact that our world - and the U.S. in particular - is sinking deeper and deeper into a deep crisis. No one knows exactly where this crisis will lead, but one thing is clear: everything around us is undergoing systematic change. And if you care about that, now is the time to get involved, because it’s during the moments of crisis that societies change.