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by mindslight 22 days ago
For starters they mainly don't. The whole reason TV personality leadership is en vogue is because most people don't actually think through the implications of what they're buying into. I sure wish they did!

But also, it's quite straightforward to envision a different ICE carrying out its goal slower, more deliberately, with transparency and legal accountability. There's zero need for them to operate as a masked terror squad that is above the law. For example Renee Good's executioner could be behind bars where criminals belong, while his former coworkers who didn't set up a pretext to execute a woman continue on with their job of deporting illegal immigrants. These things are not inherently in conflict.

(Yes, I am aware the rot in the organization has been brewing well before Trump. But terrible needlessly divisive leadership that aims to maximize cruelty (ie spectacle) has accelerated it, and has made it seem like these things are in conflict)

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ICE existed before before Trump and under Obama and Biden was doing the work ICE is intended to do.

But under Trump it's been different in several different ways:

  1. Encouraged aggressive and lawless behavior by its agents with a promise of zero accountability for their behavior (or lawlessness)
  2. A quota system designed to incentive detaining anybody at any cost for any reason
  3. Disregard for due process and the legal system -- arresting and detaining people when they show up for immigration hearings *following the legal process fully*
  4. Killing innocent US citizens.
  5. Detaining US citizens.
  6. Enhanced "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" where they take detainees to another state and then release them there
And all of this follows from the president's rallys where the crowds are whipped up to demand the removal of all non whites who are "taking over this country".

Pro tip: any policies that are designed to welcome or even encourage harm to those that it applies to are inherently evil. The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats it's most vulnerable members, and ICE as it exists today is a shameful stain on our country.