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by tomrod 13 days ago
Honestly? A few ideas

1. US aid abroad to help stem the conditions that drive many of the migrants to flee their homes. Build up institutions, enforcement, and anti-corruption frameworks so these nations can better build themselves. I'd even be open to hawkish approaches -- frankly it's been surprisingly to see the positive responses to Venezuelan interference by the US.

2. Immigration enforcement needs use-of-force accountability and less lethal approaches. The specific clashes between protesters and ICE come from actions that appear practically designed to encourage confrontation. Agents that kill innocent people should also be held accountable, meaning civil liability reform is necessary.

3. Ensuring we have a shared reality -- hold organizations accountable when they lie or disinform. Example - the majority of immigrants aren't actually criminals, nor are they "stealing jobs" in any coherent way -- studies show that many immigration policies have been net positive on communities. So when Fox News or similar organizations bring up random anti-immigrant commentary, dressed as news instead of entertainment, there really should be consequences for misinforming.

4. Targeted investigations instead of street sweeps. While Kavanaugh stops may be legal, like many enforcement policies over the years they are less effective unless the goal is "enforce stereotypes broadly."

1 comments

I mean, you have an immigration policy or you don’t have one. If you have one, you need to enforce it. The unfortunate truth is that any attempt at law enforcement sometimes leads to deaths, and it doesn’t matter what you’re enforcing. The US should not have responsibility to solve all of the rest of the world’s problems to justify enforcing it’s borders.
Third option: realize the effect of the policy is undesirable and change it.
If we are just talking about "enforcing policy" then which specific policy was being enforced when Renée Good and Alex were killed? Renée was a U.S. citizen driving her six-year-old to school in Minneapolis -- far from the border. Firing into a moving vehicle as it drives away isn't "border enforcement". Rather, it's a severe violation of standard police protocol.

You can believe in secure borders without accepting the extrajudicial killing of civilians in American suburbs as just an "unfortunate truth."

The idea that "any law enforcement sometimes leads to deaths" is a cop-out that excuses bad policing. Professional law enforcement operates on strict rules of engagement to prevent unnecessary deaths. When a federal agent shoots through the side window of a car steering away from them, they aren't "enforcing the law". They are breaking it. We don't accept lethal recklessness from local traffic cops, and we shouldn't shrug it off as "collateral damage" just because the agents belong to ICE.

No one is arguing that the U.S. has to solve the world's problems, but Minneapolis is 1,500 miles from the southern border. The deaths of Renée and Alex didn't happen while defending a boundary. They happened because the federal government deployed militarized, chaotic street sweeps into residential neighborhoods. Justifying their deaths by talking about "enforcing borders" completely ignores where this happened, how it happened, and who was killed.