I wish people would be honest with themselves and the rest of us when they go on about ICE.
"Abolish ICE" sounds like you think once you get a few miles past the border, no one should be able to apprehend you. Sounds like you just want open borders.
Even if you think they should use different methods, or be more careful, it's still stupid to say "abolish ICE" or "we should dox and harass all ICE officers and interfere with them." That's just as dumb as saying that because several people die every day from medical malpractice we need to abolish doctors and hospitals.
Borders don't exist if you just let whoever wants to, come and stay forever and do whatever they want. And that's also why legal immigrant citizens moved to the right in recent years. They think it's messed up that they worked hard, paid a ton of money, followed all the rules, meanwhile random people from central America just hopped the fence and made up some story to claim asylum -- interesting that they crossed 4 countries before claiming asylum.
> And that's also why legal immigrant citizens moved to the right in recent years. They think it's messed up that they worked hard, paid a ton of money, followed all the rules, meanwhile random people from central America just hopped the fence and made up some story to claim asylum -- interesting that they crossed 4 countries before claiming asylum.
Yeah, you don't speak for me.
As a legal immigrant whose immigration to the US took several years and cost in the neighborhood of $30,000, I think it's messed up that it costs that amount of money to immigrate here, that pardoned J6 rioters are paid signing bonuses of $50,000 to be "law enforcement" and $5,000 per deportation to run around playing judge, jury, and in this case executioner, answerable to no-one, unbadged, masked and unidentifiable (because "fuck brown people/libs, amirite?"), because they run under a government entity that tells other government entities "fuck you, you can't tell me what to do".
> meanwhile random people from central America just hopped the fence and made up some story to claim asylum -- interesting that they crossed 4 countries before claiming asylum.
Perhaps you should look at whether or not some of those countries have signed treaties on asylum seekers.
Why do those countries not take asylum seekers? I wonder if they think it's not up to other random countries to evacuate whole failed states, or that they have their own problems and don't need to be taking responsibility for those of other countries.
I think it's not generosity to give other people's money to 'asylum seekers.' On the other hand, individuals should be able to sponsor 'asylum seekers' as long as they personally pay for housing and feeding them, and those 'asylum seekers' keep a clean criminal record.
ICE is a corrupt agency hiring the worst of society, whom just murdered a woman for no reason other than to power trip. The state apparatus immediately leapt into action, calling her a terrorist, a criminal, that this action was justified. This is only the most recent of their numerous crimes against the American people.
If you want to believe we need some form of immigration enforcement then fine, but ICE isn't it. ICE needs to go, yesterday. And every single person who joined said agency investigated, jailed and kept away from polite society. This is non-debatable.
ICE didn't exist prior to 2002, neither did CBP in it's current form, and they have done a lousy job of enforcing immigration, either at the border or internally, and primarily now exist as an internal secret police force under the personal control of the president. There is no reforming either of them, and they should both be completely disbanded and replaced with a new immigration enforcement service, ideally not under DHS which should also be disbanded. Everyone who currently works for either ICE and CBP should be fired and they can re-apply to whatever gets created to replace them after a thorough background check, if they don't get jailed.
ICE has only been around for about 20 years. It is not the only mechanism of immigration enforcement. It is, at its very structure, a system of violence.
Abolish ICE. I am 100% literal and serious when I say this. The agency should be dissolved.
I mean, nothing ideally. Most countries do just fine without a secret police, splendid even. And, for basically the entire history of the United States, immigration has just been a non-issue. It's only been to our advantage.
Just saying it's that doesn't make it that, but okay.
> immigration has just been a non-issue. It's only been to our advantage.
Unfortunately for you, there is a significant plurality of Americans for whom uncontrolled immigration has been to their disadvantage. It distorts the labor market. Not for white-collar jobs like yours. For low-wage jobs.
It also changes the culture, which is something that every country except the USA and the UK is allowed to be quite cranky about -- think of how prickly Quebecers get about people not speaking French, or people who don't like American tourists being annoying in Rome, or Mexico not allowing non-citizens to own property.
And the notion that we just open the borders and walk away with our fingers in our ears -- which is what logically must happen when you "abolish" the only people who are supposed to send people back when they show up, unvetted and uninvited -- is not a winning argument. That's one of the main reasons Clinton and Harris lost, because that's what their rhetoric sounds like.
So, you can of course keep on arguing that unlimited, unvetted immigration (which without any enforcement is the only kind we'll get) is an indisputable boon to our society, but you'll keep losing elections.
The reality is people are stupid, and will believe whatever it is they want to believe. People just want to believe immigration is harming them because they are being harmed - by shit fiscal policy. The GOP pretty much exclusively writes the worst fiscal policy imaginable.
But it's very easy to tell people that it's not them, it's these brown people with a different culture. And the solution is simple, just build a wall or something equally braindead.
Does that solution work? Of course not. But it doesn't matter. That's populism. People have high confidence in solutions that are simple, because they can wrap their minds around it. And people love hearing that some other group that is distinct from their own is causing all their problems.
The truth is that it's truly trivial for the Republicans to stamp out illegal immigration for good. Just start throwing business owners in prison who hire undocumented people. But they won't do this, and they never will. They will, instead, implement showy, but worthless, non-solutions. Like walls and grabbing people off the street one at a time.
Why? Because most red states are economically defunct, and of the few that aren't, they all rely directly on immigration to have a viable economy. They can't hurt their constituency like that, and if they did, then the populism facade crumbles as people realize - oh wait, getting rid of immigration did not solve all our problems.
So they need to have a constant machine to keep up their rhetoric, and as such, they will never do anything that actually works.
From an election point of view, this strategy works. Populism works, and really well. That doesn't mean it's good.
When the Nazis fell, the occupation forces didn’t say “you can’t abolish the Gestapo, we need police, otherwise it’s just anarchy.” They got rid of the Nazi machine and replaced it.
ICE is rotten to the core. It should be abolished and replaced. Create a new organization with new leadership. Ban anyone from a leadership position in ICE from being employed by the new organization. Maybe allow the rank-and-file to apply, but they have to start fresh and are treated like any other applicant at best.
“Abolish ICE” isn’t about immigration enforcement. It’s about bringing to heel a reckless, out of control, proto secret police. “Abolish ICE” is about immigration enforcement as much as shooting a US citizen in the face is.
> Create a new organization with new leadership. Ban anyone from a leadership position in ICE from being employed by the new organization.
That will solve almost nothing though. 90% of the people who want to abolish ICE today would still want to abolish... let's call it NICE for "Nice Immigration & Citizen Encouragers" if NICE is empowered to deport anybody for any reason. Most liberal Americans I know do not think anyone should be deported for any reason. That's the disconnect. I actually agree that the tactics of some of the agents are probably wrong, but I won't ever align with the Democratic Party on the issue because they demonstrably want to make it impossible for anyone to be caught, which de facto means open borders.
Factual reasons I say this:
1. Democrats overwhelminglhy oppose requirements to be here legally to use government benefits
2. Democrats openly and proudly establish sanctuary cities and similar policies where local police explicitly aren't allowed to report people suspected or known to not have a valid immigration status.
3. Democrats overwhelmingly oppose automatic deportation for felonies committed by undocumented immigrants.
They do this mainly on the well-meaning grounds of "but what if mom or dad is illegal, we don't want to tear a family apart" but are so intellectually lazy that they don't bother to ask or answer how we could ever ethically deport anyone then, since anyone can claim to have some special family connection to someone with legal status.
Well, when the Nazis fell, the occupation forces of the Eastern part of Germany actually did say something like "you can’t abolish the Gestapo, we need police". The seed of Stasi.
Yeah, i think the memory work West Germany did is more long-lasting and better than what East germany did.
But i was responding to someone implying that East germany inherited the Stasi from the nazi power structure and personnel, which is categorically false. The US wanted to keep the power/legal structure, hence the sham Nuremberg trials, the myth about how the Wehrmacht and the German police didn't participate in the genocide or in slavery (the STO in france was just that), it was all SS and a lot of other myth deployed at this time period. The soviet on the other hand purged most of the rot, and replaced it with their own.
That's also a proof that rehabilitation is better than punishment overall for a society, even if you base it on small lies.
I guess first we need a separate, highly-trained de-escalation force just to follow ICE around and gently arrest all the well-meaning liberals driving their cars around trying to interfere.
In their actual duties, ICE itself seems to me to have not made that many irreversible mistakes outside of these confrontations that are being generated deliberately by the "abolish ICE" crowd.
If they arrest someone unjustly who has legal status, that person can produce the proof or identify themselves and resolve matters, and if they're more than simply inconvenienced, they can sue the government for whatever damage was done and I'll cheer them on.
People try to frame this like "you shouldn't have to carry around your papers, that is a police state" but like, if I were wandering around China and encounter police, you better believe I would have my passport and visa on me to prove I'm not there illegally. I'd be an idiot not to. Why is that so much to ask in America?
Currently, no comment anywhere in this discussion mentions abolishing ICE. Was something edited away? This seems like a misdirection. You have picked several inflammatory positions that nobody here is openly advocating.
I am personally concerned with the rule of law and the also extreme polarization of American society.
"Abolish ICE" sounds like you think once you get a few miles past the border, no one should be able to apprehend you. Sounds like you just want open borders.
Even if you think they should use different methods, or be more careful, it's still stupid to say "abolish ICE" or "we should dox and harass all ICE officers and interfere with them." That's just as dumb as saying that because several people die every day from medical malpractice we need to abolish doctors and hospitals.
Borders don't exist if you just let whoever wants to, come and stay forever and do whatever they want. And that's also why legal immigrant citizens moved to the right in recent years. They think it's messed up that they worked hard, paid a ton of money, followed all the rules, meanwhile random people from central America just hopped the fence and made up some story to claim asylum -- interesting that they crossed 4 countries before claiming asylum.