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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

ICE is not a partisan organization, it's a government agency. If you pay taxes, you support ICE, and are their customer, period.

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If you pay taxes, you "support" the entire government. That doesn't mean that you are in favor of all of the things that it is doing.

If you pay taxes, you are a citizen, not a "customer". These things are not the same.

This is key. Modeling citizens as customers of government leads to all sorts of bad conclusions (including that government can choose to refuse service; there's a reason most of the developed world has no legal concept equivalent to the ancient "writ of Outlawry.").

Taxes are not voluntary. I pay taxes for the sole reason that I do not support armed men coming to my house to jail me for not paying taxes.

They are paid under duress. I do not consent.

No. You entered into an agreement with your employer and the US government when you were hired. You gave them permission by consenting to work within the system and you probably filled out some sort of form with a W in front of it.

You may work outside of the system.

I made no such agreement with the government. You are manufacturing consent where none exists. The sole reason I pay is because of the threat of force, the promise of a gun to my head if I do not. There is no consent.

Who will put a gun to your head if you stop working in the US?

Local cops via MLAT wherever I am working, as I owe US taxes regardless of where I earn money, a fun misfortune based on my location of birth.

Failing that, local cops, when I am working nowhere and have to resort to stealing food to survive.

Starvation, death by exposure, death from preventable disease and the like might not literally be guns, but the effects aren't that dissimilar and they are all consequences of not working in the US. There's not exactly a robust social safety net here.

I think people overstate the dangers of moving to Canada

No laws are voluntary. They are all enforced under duress. Men will come to your house and jail you if you don't follow them. That's why they're called "laws", not "options".

I think you two are in agreement.

WAIT. You entered the US? You're not a citizen? You're complaining about our rules after we let you in?

Couldn't you say the same about ICE? You support their main function, protecting the border, but aren't in favor in all of the things they're doing in order to achieve that goal.

Yes, that's my point.

Whether government agencies do their work effectively is absolutely a partisan matter. Remember the founding of CFPB? Remember Rick Perry campaigning on getting rid of the Department of Energy? Remember the per-party vote on the act that created DHS? http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll367.xml

I mean, yes, ICE is a government agency, but it's political parties that decide which government agencies exist and what they do.

> ICE is not a partisan organization,

Only if you have your head deliberately under the sand in the face of all the reporting that has been done so far about wanton cruelty inflicted on human beings by this agency, including but not limited to:

* separation of toddlers from their parents * horrific conditions in detention facilities * detaining immigrants for as long as they possibly can * arresting and trying to deport brown people in suspicion of being illegal immigrants

If none of these policies affect you, yeah you can say "By the laws of the US, ICE is a non partisan branch of the Government". But the actions of the agency and its leadership have shown that its decidedly not so.

The agency will live on past the current administration. The main function of ICE is needed. The policies imposed upon them from above are the root of the problem and need to be removed. But they will be gone in time, hopefully sooner rather than later.

ICE didn't exist until 2003, and isn't necessarily needed.

Sort of. The organization ICE didn't exist. The functions of ICE were executed by other organizations in the government and (correct me if I'm wrong) no additional responsibilities were really added to ICE whole-cloth; it's more of a post-9/11 consolidation of resources.

Abolishing ICE without considering the need for those responsibilities and what org, if any, should take them on is certainly risky. But technically, yes, we could abolish ICE and route things ICE does (immigration management, customs enforcement, non-military border security) to other executive departments (not necessarily back to their originating department, since instituting ICE also abolished some of its predecessor departments).

The US has had Border Patrol agents for 100 years. From 1920-1940 they were organized under the Department of Labor; from 1949 to 2003, the Department of Justice; since 2003, Homeland Security.

ICE isn't border patrol; they don't patrol American borders. That's CBP, which is a separate wing of the DHS, and focuses on an entirely different area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protec...

Huh?

The Programs division [of INS] was responsible for handling all the functions involved with enforcement and examinations, including the arrest, detaining, and deportation of illegal immigrants as well as controlling illegal and legal entry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization...

Exactly. ICE isn't needed.

The name matters to you?

Names are important. I'll give you that.

I didn't realize solving the problem was as easy as renaming ICE back to INS.

I'm open to multiple ideas. Your idea of renaming seems to be useful for part of the process of rehabilitating ICE or whatever we're going to call it in the future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebranding#Elimination_of_a_ne...

Well consider the cultural difference between an agency whose mission is enforcement and one whose mission is service.

You'd be more convincing if you demonstrated how the current purported "culture" problems were there the entire time pre-2016. And absent in INS before that.

Jesus Christ. It was called INS and did the same damn thing. Who cares if the name changed?

The predecessor, INS has an interesting history too. I'd experience some kind of small joy if a new INS were re-established "merging these previously separate areas of administration."

>INS, the agency ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred to three new entities – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as part of a major government reorganization following the September 11 attacks of 2001.

>Prior to 1933, there were separate offices administering immigration and naturalization matters, known as the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization, respectively. The INS was established on June 10, 1933, merging these previously separate areas of administration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization...

you are making a convincing argument that the organization is extreme, but you haven't addressed the issue of whether or not it is partisan.

to do so you'd need to compare and contrast its behavior across administrations under different political parties. as one data point, roughly same # of people were deported under bush/obama (the definitions changed, so not quite apples to apples data wise).

* also separation of children from smugglers. Stoping human trafficking is primary role of ICE.

Important to note that there are different divisions of ICE. The division that tackles International crime (HSI) is different from the one that subjects immigrants to cruelty (ERO).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/seeki...

> * separation of toddlers from their parents * horrific conditions in detention facilities * detaining immigrants for as long as they possibly can * arresting and trying to deport brown people in suspicion of being illegal immigrants

You've proven beyond all doubt that these actions are indeed partisan. Hence, we ought to resist the party that revved this into high gear - the one led by the deporter in chief [1]!! Resist!

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2017/01/20/510799842/obama-leaves-office...

It truly isn't a partisan organization. The Dems buried their heads when this happened under President "Deporter & Chief" Obama. People are pretending this issue is new because they didn't take the time to learn about it years ago. Some media reported on it under Obama, but few took the time until they were looking for ammunition against Trump.

No, don't do this both sidesim over here.

Obama prioritized deportation of those with criminal backgrounds. He created the DREAM program to help the millions of immigrants who spent most of their life in the US.

Its not the same.

The DREAM act has been around since 2001 and at its peak never even had even a million members throughout its existence. Illegals with a criminal background have always been preferred for deportation in the US. But my question how is which ICE is a government entity partisan for following the immigration edicts of the current administration?

Also looks like Both Sideism can go into the large book of unnecessary and arbitrary -ism words people have come up with during this presidency.

The act was never passed into law whereas Obama gave actual legal status to Dreamers and attempted to do the same for their parents too.

Whether it’s the by-the-book definition of partisan, it is still reasonable for people to have strong moral or ethical objections to working for this client.

But not to receiving their services, apparently.

I can’t pick and choose where my taxes go any more than I can pick and choose which constitutional amendments I want to see enforced. I can’t stop a war but I can choose not to work for military contractors.

Yes you can. You may give up your citizenship in exchange for another.

Without rabbit-holing too far on this, I'd note that the people in concentration camps at the border were trying to do that. May not be as simple as you seem to be asserting.

There are quite a few Americans who would prefer to receive no services from ICE. "Abolish ICE" is a concept that has even started to gather steam in Congress itself.

According to the Washington Times (a right-wing news organization), 49% of Americans live in sanctuary jurisdictions, based on data from FAIR (a right-wing pro-ICE advocacy group). https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/10/half-of-ame...

I think that makes it clear that a sizable number of Americans are opposed to receiving ICE's services, only receive them because there isn't actually a way to opt out of them, and are doing the next closest thing.

That is inconsistent logic.

I have nearly the same power to determine where my taxes go as I do to stop the people in local council making non-binding declarations that don't carry any legal consequences or obligations. If I happen to live in an area with a HOA, does that mean I support HOAs too? If I live next to a Mosque does that mean I support Islam?

My point is that geography is not a good determinant for agreement or disagreement with the politics and beliefs that take place in that geography.

Then we are in agreement that the premise of being able to refuse services from a divisive government agency we have no power over is flawed? Because it sounds like we are, but are presenting the argument in different ways. Apologies for speaking for the other commenter.

Sure, I'm not claiming that 49% of Americans don't want to receive services from ICE - I am claiming that a large number do, as evidenced by the fact that 49% of Americans live in jurisdictions with sanctuary policies. Of course some people will oppose the policy and live in a jurisdiction that supports it - and some will support it and live in a jurisdiction that doesn't.

From your analogy, the fact that tons of Americans live in HOAs does in fact imply that there is a fair bit of support for HOAs in America. It doesn't imply that everyone in an HOA is happy about it - but it definitely doesn't imply that everyone in an HOA is unhappy about it, otherwise they wouldn't exist.

'creaghpatr is trying to imply that, because ICE exists and is tax-funded, 100% of taxpayers support ICE and everything they do, and anyone who opposes it would just stop paying taxes. That's the inconsistent logic, and it's in the general class of "yet you participate in society" fallacies. I don't know what the true number is and I don't have a good way to get an exact estimate, but I do think the evidence is that it's far closer to 51% than 100%.

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