[abustamam]

Replace "tall man in black short and red hat who may have committed a violent crime" with "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed," even if they have a valid government ID card and we arrive at the problem with ICE.

[reliabilityguy]

> "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed,"

There are two parts to it in my view.

First, sure, I understand where you are coming from. At the same time I find this argument a bit problematic because if the numbers on border crossings from South America are true, and majority of those that crossed through are from South and Central America, who do you think ICE is going to look for? Tall, blond, white people from Norway (and I am not saying that there are no people who are out of status from Norway)?

Second, while Trump and co claimed that they will go after "only after criminals", and ICE arrests a bunch of people who may be not criminals in the hardcore sense of killers, etc., but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well. I do not understand this -- if the person crossed the border, are they supposed to get a pass just because? Why?

[slg]

>who do you think ICE is going to look for?

They should do some actually police work. This kind of "Papers, please" approach to immigration enforcement is dystopian. If you genuinely feel that illegal immigration is a problem that needs to be fixed, attack it systemically. Go through government, business, and housing records, find people who aren't here legally, and then go detain them. Don't just round people up based on nothing but their ethnicity and make them prove their innocence to you. It's inherently unAmerican, at least according to the ideals we like to claim we have (even if our history often falls short of those ideals).

>but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well.

Then arrest those people who commit crimes. If these people are guilty of something, why is ICE the one rounding them up? Why isn't the FBI or local police? If this is all motivated by a desire for lower crime, why are we treating it as an immigration issue instead of a crime issue?

[reliabilityguy]

> They should do some actually police work. This kind of "Papers, please" approach to immigration enforcement is dystopian.

Why it’s dystopian? It’s literally how it’s done in other places as well.

I agree that the government has to go through and punish those who employ illegal immigrants too to disincentivize unauthorized employment, but it doesn’t have to be only one avenue.

> Why isn't the FBI or local police?

I do not know where you live, but lately crimes in the US in many jurisdictions are not prosecuted, and repeat offenders are not punished. Coupled with the fact that many cities forbid their local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration, I am not sure how can local police do anything.

If an illegal immigrant committed a crime it is a failure of both local LEO and immigration. It doesn’t have to be only one.

[abustamam]

I think a couple of these points are getting mixed together.

On the “crimes aren’t prosecuted” issue: that’s a broader criminal justice question, not really an immigration one. Whether someone is a citizen, documented immigrant, or undocumented immigrant, the question of prosecution policy is the same. If people think prosecutors are being too lenient, that’s something to take up locally through elections, town halls, etc. Immigration status doesn’t really change that dynamic.

On sanctuary policies or limits on local cooperation with immigration enforcement: the argument many cities make isn’t “ignore crime,” it’s “local police should focus on crime.” When local law enforcement is seen as an arm of immigration enforcement, it can discourage victims or witnesses from reporting crimes at all. So the policy goal is usually public safety, not shielding criminal behavior.

And on the last point: I agree. if an undocumented immigrant commits a crime, sure, there can be both a criminal justice component and an immigration component. But it helps to be clear about what problem we’re actually trying to solve. If the concern is crime, then that’s primarily a policing and prosecution issue regardless of who commits it. If the concern is immigration system design, then we should look at whether data actually shows disproportionate criminality among immigrants before framing it as an immigration enforcement failure.

[reliabilityguy]

> Immigration status doesn’t really change that dynamic.

Yes and no. It raises the question of how this specific crime could have been prevented. And it is very hard to argue against that with proper border enforcement, there is a good chance that some crime would have never happened.

The issue of social justice driven prosecution, while not related to the act of entering without inspection, just amplifies all these cases, and mixes the problem of lack of immigration enforcement with poorly thought out policies about prosecution and punishment.

[abustamam]

What problem are we trying to solve here? I agree that we need to have proper border enforcement. But deporting people because they got a traffic citation[1]? Am I supposed to feel safer from "dangerous immigrants" now?

We need to solve the problem of prosecution and punishment of crimes. And we need to solve the problem of improper border enforcement. But this ain't the way. This just seems like a huge waste of resources.

And just another thought -- when non-white US citizens such as myself, my relatives, my in-laws, feel the need to carry their passports on them to prove citizenship and even then are fearful of being roughhoused and detained for no reason, the system is obviously broken. Or, maybe it's working exactly as intended.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/georgia-army-veteran-go...