[estearum]

ICE is actually routinely breaking both the letter and the spirit of the law. There are now dozens of videos of them harassing, intimidating, beating, or detaining people for exercising protected speech.

A spokesperson for DHS just last week openly said that they're allowed to arrest people based on "reasonable suspicion" which is unambiguously illegal.

[zahlman]

> There are now dozens of videos of them harassing, intimidating, beating, or detaining people for exercising protected speech.

Show me one. I have already seen countless claims of this sort, only to later line them up with video footage that clearly demonstrates that "exercising protected speech" was not the cause of action and that the response was clearly justified.

For example, freedom of speech does not allow one to block traffic for protest purposes, or blocking entrances to buildings, or preventing pedestrians from passing by on the sidewalk (https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_pdf_file/kyr_...). And it certainly does not allow violence against ICE officers or other citizens, both of which I've seen a fair bit of.

I have even seen multiple examples of protesters enacting their own Terry stops against people they suspect of being ICE agents.

> openly said that they're allowed to arrest people based on "reasonable suspicion" which is unambiguously illegal.

Show the quote, and show the relevant law.

----

Whoever flagged this comment while it's at +3, please feel free to explain how you think it's in any way counter to HN guidelines.

[ncr100]

Hi @zahlman - we are here to figure stuff out - less to demand answers to rhetorical questions! I'll respond to one of the concerns you share, that Ice 'beating' people for exercising protected speech - (which they are not to judge anyhow, they're Immigration not Police).

Being pushed down, from standing, in the street .. is that illegal for ICE to do .. when no enforcement action is underway?

E.g. protesters standing around, ICE marching forward for no discernable emergent law-enforcement (Law within their remit) reason, and then pushing a protester who's also in the same street-area, knocking them to the ground

Here is the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epsb6GzudWw (WARNING unwarranted battery)

- @ 12 seconds an ICE agent in camoflage and helmet violently knocks man standing, wearing an orange knit beanie, with a sign. Then the leader of ice .. with the crew cut, walks forward. As if it's a royal procession. This is in the middle of the street, outside their facility, with no ICE vehicles being impeded. Police are nearby.

So, there you go! Looking for your personal determination if that's lawful behavior by ICE.

[zahlman]

> Hi @zahlman - we are here to figure stuff out - less to demand answers to rhetorical questions!

Sorry for the delayed response. I put this aside and then of course more things happened.

I don't know who "we" are, but your questions sound very rhetorical despite this disclaimer.

It comes across that ICE are functionally being expected (because it would otherwise be impossible to do their job) to do double duty as riot police, which is presumably not part of their training.

----

1. Regarding the main question of "determination if that's lawful behaviour".

The most important objection here is that you establish physical force, and you make a case for protected speech, but you do not establish that the force is "for" (i.e., specifically in response to) the exercise of protected speech. The simple fact of making a free-speech statement at the time that you do something else wrong, does not excuse the other wrong. In this case, that wrong is physical obstruction. To the best of my knowledge, nothing happened to the protestor shown in the video at :33 with a subjectively very offensive sign (also reported on in many other sources) — which is as it should be, because that protester didn't cause a similar obstruction. (But I will note that when similar language is used online by right-wingers, it commonly is incorrectly called a "death threat" in an effort to suppress that speech.) You can also see that people who are more to the side, and who don't have the same kind of obstructive body language, are not dealt with as harshly.

I don't think an "enforcement action underway" is required, because the officers are on duty and still clearly have a vested interest in getting from point A to point B (even if point B is just their own facility — the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Henry_Whipple_Federal_B... if I understood correctly?), and it appears that protesters are physically attempting to prevent that from happening. The knocked-down man has his hands spread out and appears to be walking towards the line (although there is barely any context after the jump-cut to the incident).

You'll also notice that starting at 7:07, the producer of the video goes up and deliberately antagonizes someone with a "Police - Homeland Security" vest on, proposing the theory that the other agents in olive drab might "not have their papers". And nothing happens to him at all, as he exercises his protected free speech in a more or less responsible manner. This follows on from a segment where they're directly asking the agents for their papers (even as someone in the background shouts "You're supposed to be de-escalating!"). And again nothing bad happens.

They have one incident of physical force (shown on two separate occasions) being used in the entire video, which is clearly cut down from a lot more footage, interviewing a crowd full of people holding inflammatory signage; and they have themselves directly approaching officers and talking to them; the only person getting knocked to the ground is the one who clearly did something beyond simply speaking freely.

Conclusion: If the man in the beanie were being pushed "for exercising protected speech", you would expect many other things to have happened in this video that didn't actually happen. If, on the other hand, he is being pushed for physically obstructing officers who are making a show of their right to not be physically obstructed, you would expect to see pretty much what you actually do see. This is not a good way of doing things (the right way is "you're under arrest for obstruction of justice", and physical force only if arrest is resisted), but I don't see a 1A violation. (The video presenters also appear at times to be trying to make something out of the agents exercising their own 1A rights by "filming and laughing". It's also fun watching them interview masked protesters about why they think the agents are masked, but I digress.)

----

2. Regarding other quibbles with your comment.

When you say "they're Immigration not Police" you are factually incorrect (and so are Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, and possibly other Minnesota officials when they make similar arguments). ICE agents qualify as federal LEO; this is extremely well established and any number of readily-searched sources will explain this. They are even explicitly given power of arrest in federal statute (in particular https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357), which in limited circumstances extend as far as arresting US citizens without a warrant.

It doesn't make any sense to refer to the agents' dress as "camouflage". It doesn't have any particular pattern, camouflage of this sort would make no sense in an urban environment, and there is really no question that everyone can clearly see the agents. As you say, "as if it's a royal procession"; they are not in the slightest attempting to hide their presence.

You say "with no ICE vehicles being impeded" as if to imply that there is no obstruction to the officers, but this is not a valid argument. The officers are still physically impeded if they are walking and someone blocks their walking path.

This is the same sort of rhetorical game that was played when NYT asserted that Jonathan Ross was not "run over" by Renee Good, and then others treated the NYT analysis as proof that he was not struck by the vehicle at all.

To be clear, there is abundant evidence that Ross was in fact struck by the SUV. You can see it in the angle NYT is analyzing; they went through frame by frame to make it look as if Ross' feet are planted beside the vehicle at some point, but that's just where they happened to be as he tried to regain his balance. In the footage from behind the SUV you can clearly see him stumble and try to regain balance. This is also consistent with how his own cell phone footage goes way off target slightly before the shoot, because he no longer has the control needed to keep his left hand pointed at the vehicle. And it would be rather difficult to get a bullet hole in the front windshield like the one shown, firing right-handed, if the vehicle had fully cleared him. And while hospital records haven't been released as far as I can determine, there's good evidence that he was indeed checked out at hospital. ("Internal bleeding" technically could describe a bruise, which would be within the sort of puffery expected of the Trump administration.) And then there's the fact that a CNN analyst agreed early on that he was struck, and later they interviewed Good's former father-in-law and he also agreed.

[mothballed]

I've been held ~24 hours by DHS under RAS, it is definitely a thing near the border where they don't need PC to jail you. They put me in jail but I was never under arrest, I later got my federal arrest record and there was nothing. Maybe that was what they were referring to?

Jailing citizens with no warrant nor PC was happening to me under Biden so it's not new either.

[estearum]

Correct you can be detained based on reasonable suspicion. You cannot be arrested on it. The difference might seem subtle, but 1) it's not, and 2) it certainly shouldn't be to actual DHS officials. It's literally in the text of the Constitution.

And yes, near the border has had shaky Constitutional protections for a long time. To suggest it's "not new" to expand that shakiness across the entire nation, eliminate time constraints on it, then scale up the "immigration" enforcement arm 100x is just laughable though. Of course it's new! It's new in scope, scale, and intensity. That makes it new!

[hn_throwaway_99]

What is RAS?

[mothballed]

Reasonable articulable suspicion. In my case, an imaginary dog "alerted" an unnamed handler. So that gave them RAS to strip me naked, be jailed, and be made to poop in front of them to ensure there were no drugs that came out.

Contacted several lawyers, nothing to be done, no chance of fighting it. Girl that tried before me, lost.

[ncr100]

Gross!

Seems like it's worthy of being publicized. Sincerely .. as a point of protest.

E.g. "Do you want your children to be forced to poop in front of grown men, as many times as they want her to, and for there to be No Law Against This? Democracy..use it." Or something better?

Accompanied by a video illustrating a naked person pooping in front of satisfied Federal agents, and then a scene with a lawyer saying, "there's nothing you can do to fight having that done to you, lady."

It feels like USA needs a re-think around concentration of power in the Federal side of our government.

[overfeed]

SCOTUS has deemed Kavanaugh stops to be legal, i.e. you can be stopped on the basis of your apparent ethnicity alone

[zahlman]

Kavanaugh's concurrence (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf) literally says the opposite:

> To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors. Id., at 887.

[jakelazaroff]

Sure, but the intent and effect is to give cops more leeway in using perceived ethnicity as a factor. In the full passage, he explicitly says that given the prevalence in LA of undocumented immigrants from Latin America working in particular jobs, local police are permitted to detain such workers who appear Latine (i.e. to racially profile them).

A fuller quote:

> To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States ... Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and "considerably short" of the preponderance of the evidence standard ... Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances ... Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court's case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a "relevant factor" when considered along with other salient factors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop?wprov=sfti1#Sup...

[THX1137]

Yeah, you would need more than just ethnicity. You can read the Justice's examples directly in the case. Being or looking Mexican on a parking lot may be enough to justify a Kavanaugh stop, but just being Mexican or looking Mexican on it's own is not enough.

[lovich]

Well since I can do all of those things without being stopped due to my race, it appears that being Mexican would be the sole determining reason

[actionfromafar]

"Parking while looking Mexican."

"Looking Mexican in LA."

Mm... I can smell them Freedom Fries.

[defrost]

There's also being Native American in America: https://narf.org/narf-statement-ice/

[estearum]

You can be stopped on reasonable suspicion, which Kavanaugh expanded (and he seems to have immediately realized his name is permanently besmirched).

But they definitely cannot arrest people based on reasonable suspicion. Anyone speaking on behalf of DHS should know the difference.

[zahlman]

Kavanaugh's concurrence does not "expand" reasonable suspicion. It explains that a combination of factors including "apparent race or ethnicity" may cause reasonable suspicion. Which, in fact, as a basic matter of probabilistic reasoning, given the other information in https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf, it might.

And an important part of the decision is that (emphasis his):

> Plaintiffs’ standing theory is especially deficient in this case because immigration officers also use their experience to stop suspected illegal immigrants based on a variety of factors. So even if the Government had a policy of making stops based on the factors prohibited by the District Court, immigration officers might not rely only on those factors if and when they stop plaintiffs in the future.

and to affirm existing understanding of reasonable suspicion:

> Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and “considerably short” of the preponderance of the evidence standard. Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 274. Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 885, n. 10; Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 273. Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. Cf. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 884–885 (listing “[a]ny number of factors” that contribute to reasonable suspicion of illegal presence).

(In other words, he clearly lays out the reasons why such a "combination of factors" may create reasonable suspicion, per precedent.)

As for Kavanaugh "realizing" any such thing, I can't fathom why you think so. This is the same guy who has been very visibly protested by activists of a similar stripe from the beginning.

[estearum]

Sure: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a443_new_kkg1....

Footnote on Page 7, written by Kavanaugh mere weeks after the Perdomo decision, says the opposite: "the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity... “[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race”"

So is race a consideration or is it not? He says here that it's well-established that the Constitution prevents it.

Or did he just throw in that sentence as a complete non-sequitur, unrelated to the immediately preceding sentences?

[zahlman]

There is no contradiction between your quote and my quotes.

They cannot make the stop "based on" that sole factor.

It may become part of "the totality of the circumstances" that "contribute to" reasonable suspicion.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=46685060.

[estearum]

Kavanaugh literally says that it's well-established that race cannot be a consideration in the application of law.

You (and Kavanaugh a few weeks prior) are saying that it can be.

That's a contradiction.

[shimman]

Why people act surprised that an institution that was literally made to uphold the interests of the elite and is extremely undemocratic continues to act undemocratic?

You have to stop thinking these institutions are worth protecting when they have been the impediment to any progress this country has made.