[elsonrodriguez]

I wanted to play devil's advocate here, but unfortunately did find an example of a "politically disapproved position" in frumple's post history:

"The deportations will continue regardless of the tantrums of the hysterical and mentally ill."

Which ironically is similar to some "1939 Germany" views.

[frumplestlatz]

Are you claiming that enforcing existing 2026 U.S. immigration law -- developed through decades of bipartisan agreement and consistent with policies in other liberal democracies -- is in any way comparable to 1939 Germany and their systematic murder of millions?

That comparison is precisely the problem: it distorts history, inflates moral claims, and shuts down serious discussion.

This is also largely the standard level of rhetoric on Bluesky, which is fine -- but manufactured consensus on a heavily moderated platform is not the same thing as factual or moral authority.

[elsonrodriguez]

Even if the current state of immigration policy was forged in a bipartisan agreement(it wasn't), it would be inhumane and I would condemn it.

Fortunately the Republicans, specifically Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, can be shown to have a record of dehumanizing people to the point of cruelty.

As far as anyone could tell they were behind the effort to separate children from their families, and the decision to intentionally destroy records, and prevent the recording of data, which ultimately left over a thousand children orphaned to this very day.

I know someone in CBP who volunteered to try help sort that situation out, ready to get on a plane, paying out of pocket, and they were told to stand down by leadership.

The republican-led executive branch wanted to inflict pain despite the law, and despite "policy".

And now those same people (Homan and Miller) are behind the door-to-door raids, asking people for their papers, building detention centers(even though we're supposed to be sending them back home...), and targeting political enemies.

Obama managed to deport 3 million people without this excess use of cruelty, civil rights violations, manpower, or money.

This is something else.

This level of hatred towards the other is the type of seed that may or may not grow into a holocaust. It's understandable if some people want to kill it before it sprouts by drawing obvious parallels.

[frumplestlatz]

This is a category error. Immigration enforcement -- even when abusive or unlawful, which is not a concession I make -- is not genocide. Invoking 1939 Germany collapses distinctions that matter.

Holocaust analogies based on unsupported anecdote and asserted intent aren’t analysis; they’re unfalsifiable rhetorical escalations designed to end debate. If every disliked policy is treated as a "seed" of genocide, as is now common, the term loses meaning and becomes an empty rhetorical weapon. Argue specific actions with evidence and standards, or don’t -- but stop inflating unfalsifiable moral claims to the point where serious critique is impossible.

> Even if the current state of immigration policy was forged in a bipartisan agreement(it wasn't), it would be inhumane and I would condemn it.

We haven’t passed a comprehensive immigration law since 1986, and the enforcement framework in use today arises from bipartisan legislation passed in 1986, major subsequent revisions in 1996, and layers of later executive discretion exercised by administrations of both parties. We had four years of functionally non-existent enforcement, and while I cannot ascribe motive, the natural outcome was to make later enforcement incredibly difficult -- a consequence that is now plainly visible.

If you think those laws are unjust, argue that -- but don’t pretend this is some novel or uniquely partisan creation.

[elsonrodriguez]

> but don’t pretend this is some novel or uniquely partisan creation.

There is no need to pretend. The specific excesses I mentioned are Republican actions. The Democrat failures do not excuse the illegal and immoral Republican cruelty.

[frumplestlatz]

You are assuming priors that you have not argued, much less proven.

[nate_meurer]

What do you mean by "Democrat failures"? The Democratic party doesn't believe Biden's immigration policy was a failure, and in fact the official party position seems to be that Biden didn't open the border enough. Democrat politicians have committed to more of the same, and dozens of cities and states controlled by progressives have put sanctuary policies in place that almost completely forbid immigration control of any kind.

Help me out here. Its not clear to me what the Left considers a failure.

[nate_meurer]

I don't think the Obama comparison is very useful. Trump faces a vastly more difficult problem than Obama did. For most of his presidency, Obama simply continued the Operation Streamline era policies that he inherited from Bush. He didn't have to clean up after a previous administration that had completely lost control of the border, allowing somewhere between ten and forty million immigrants through. And Obama didn't have to contend with dozens of states and cities declaring themselves sanctuaries, completely off limits to meaningful immigration enforcement, even of criminal migrants.

My own state promptly made it illegal for local law enforcement to cooperate with border patrol or immigration enforcement agents in any circumstance.

So now, if we want our country to have meaningful borders, immigration enforcement has to be done the hard way, and it shouldn't be surprising that Kristi Noem's clown show is showing signs of clusterfuckery. It's actually surprising that things have gone as well as they have.

[elsonrodriguez]

Your argument is ultimately that it’s ok to ignore the constitution, civil rights, and human decency because it’s time to do things “the hard way”.

[frumplestlatz]

That’s not what was argued. “The hard way” refers to institutional difficulty, not illegality — specifically, enforcing federal law in the face of state non-compliance and sanctuary policies.

Difficulty does not equal unconstitutionality. If you think the measures required violate specific constitutional provisions or civil-rights protections, name them and explain how.

Otherwise, this is an empty moral reframe that clumsily sidesteps concrete claims about enforcement feasibility and changed conditions.

[slater]

> He didn't have to clean up after a previous administration

every dem president has to clean up after a republican president

[frumplestlatz]

That’s a slogan, not an argument. The point being made -- and made well, deserving of consideration -- was about institutional conditions (sanctuary laws, state non-cooperation, scale of inflows) that simply didn’t exist during Obama’s early years, regardless of party.

[nate_meurer]

When is comes to immigration in particular, that simply isn't true. As I alluded to in my comment, Obama inherited Bush's Operation Streamline immigration regime, which was running like a Swiss watch in comparison to the mess we have now. Over the course of his two terms, Obama squandered his inheritance as the progressives encroached. By election season in 2015, the progressive model was being embraced by mainstream Democrats, and was pretty plainly admitting to open-borders aspirations. In my opinion, this more than anything handed Trump his first election victory. If there was one thing that could convince the normies that we need a border wall-- whether literal or symbolic-- it was the sudden realization that the Left was serious about open borders and unlimited immigration.

And of course, not to be outdone by Obama, Joe Biden managed to lose control of the border in a manner that has no precedent in American history, once again handing Trump an easy victory. It's like they wanted to lose another election.

To grasp how radically the Democrat party has moved left on immigration, recall that Obama and Hillary Clinton ran against each other on strict immigration enforcement. Here's my favorite Hillary quote from a 2008 campaign speech:

> "If they’ve committed a crime, deport them, no questions asked. They’re gone. If they’re working and law-abiding, we should say here are the conditions for you staying: You have to pay a stiff fine because you came here illegally, you have to pay back taxes, you have to try to learn English, and you have to wait in line."

[philipallstar]

1939 Germany wanted to do the invading, not combat it.

[elsonrodriguez]

Are you trying to imply that Germany didn't deport anybody in 1939?