[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