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Comment by romaaeterna | Hacker News Reader

The LA Times has a (pay)-wall that keeps me from illegally reading their content, so I don't know what this article says.

But I personally think that uncontrolled migration flows lead to horrific human trafficking problems. The rapes and murders that get committed along this flow because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable.

Yes, the next generation will vote Democrat, due to America's birthright citizen situation. But is that really worth the cost?

Github should help ICE do the best job that it can.

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If ICE simply did their job in a humane but effective fashion, I think conversation around the agency would be far different.

However, the agency has - in the course of their duties - committed horrible acts that fly in the face of what Americans claim to value. They continue to do so, and the "Dear Github" letter linked in the article outlines them: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/

The problem isn't simply that they're enforcing immigration law. It's _how_ they're doing it.

> The problem isn't simply that they're enforcing immigration law. It's _how_ they're doing it.

This may be your perspective, but I can assure you that the desire for open borders and "Abolish[ing] ICE" are very real among liberals in America.

There's an example in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704157

> the desire for open borders and "Abolish[ing] ICE" are very real among liberals in America.

Yes, abolishing ICE will take us back to the pre-borders time of... checks notes March 1st, 2003.

Re "horrible acts", this doesn't sound likely, considering the general lack of documentation or bipartisan outrage.

Do you have a preferred link with a stolid, well-documented account of the worst abuses?

The articles linked in the "Dear Github" letter should suffice to answer your question.

This biggest one for me is this: https://www.aclu.org/cases/damus-v-mcaleenan . ICE's position is that they should be able to detain all people who are legally petitioning for asylum without any bail hearings.

So if you don't detain them you do what then? Let them roam free? Considering the amount of fraud related to asylum claims, with entire legal entities dedicated to coaching aliens to provide fake testimony, letting them roam free is a definite risk for citizens. Especially as they are coming from one of the most violent warlord-controlled warzones in the hemisphere.

This whole problem could be precluded by doing a few simple steps:

1. Build a wall to control flow.

2. Allow anyone to come to the border and seek asylum.

3. Have enough humane beds/housing to store them at the border while their application is processed.

4. Hire enough officials and judges to process all claims timeously.

5. Fingerprint, photograph and document anyone that applies.

6. Turn away all individuals that re-apply without new evidence and attempt to clog the system by creating too much load.

Oh and 7: If they come as a family, let them stay together under monitoring.

And corollary to 7 would be 8: Do DNA tests on all family groups to affirm family status to prevent trafficking

At this point, if no hiccups arise, the wall is only necessary for those that wish to bypass a well-functioning system designed to treat people humanely and allow them to get refuge if they are being persecuted.

Edit: fixed formatting.

Just because someone petitions for asylum doesn't mean they have a valid claim to it. If your position is that anyone claiming asylum should not be detained, how do you propose to differentiate between valid and invalid claims such as to sort out who should and shouldn't be detained?

With bail hearings, the exact same way we've always done it, including for asylum cases. It's only under this administration that we stopped having bail hearings for asylum seekers.

Source for this claim? [Edit: I seem some references in links on that ACLU page referring to "parole" being denied. Is this what you are referring to?]

That asylum seekers used to be released prior to their hearing, and are no longer? It's official policy https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/16/doj-bonds-asylum-s... . If you don't trust politico, they link to AG Barr's memo, which states: "The question presented is whether aliens who are originally placed in expedited proceedings and then transferred to full proceedings after establishing a credible fear become eligible for bond upon transfer. I conclude that such aliens remain ineligible for bond, whether they are arriving at the border or are apprehended in the United States"

There's also the issue of parole: releasing asylum seekers if they were initially approved for asylum by the court but the government is appealing the decision. In Damus v. McAleenan. In the recent decision (https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/as... ) the Judge notes that, while parole was granted in over 90% of these cases in 2016, parole hasn't been granted for a single such case in all of 2019.

Thank you for the link. If this is the most horrible act, I guess I remain unconvinced that there's any fire here. I'm not sure I even understand why detaining is inappropriate.

> If ICE simply did their job in a humane but effective fashion, I think conversation around the agency would be far different.

Somehow I doubt that. There was that whole "being made to drink out of toilets" fiasco, in which the activist (I forget who it was) was the best kind of correct: technically [0].

[0]: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/03/67/06/17789330/5/920x920.jp...

Drinking out of toilets was not accurate. There was a pipe that went to a drinking fountain and the drain of the drinking fountain went into the input pipe of the toilet. The toilet had drinking water. The drinking water was not toilet water.

"because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable."

From what I understand we actually control our border much harder than we did 20 or even 30 years ago.

It's possible that your understanding is incorrect:

https://imgur.com/4yyWYuM

And remember that the numbers in the above graph aren't even population adjusted. This doesn't cover the Trump years, but deportations are even lower under Trump than Obama.

Your graph says little about border control and a lot about enforcement inside the US, which ironically can be partially explained by harsher border control. In southern states it used to be the case that Mexican workers would come over for day labor, or for the harvest season, and then leave to lead their lives in Mexico. Once border control got a bit more serious people started coming to stay.

That's not a great description of immigration history to the US. See for example the Eisenhower administration efforts in this regard as far back as the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback

Controlling the border doesn't stop the flow. Only dealing with the crises in places like Guatemala and Honduras will do that. Sending people back significantly increases the likelihood that they will be murdered. But ICE aren't even doing that; they're putting people in indefinite detention in vast numbers.

Surprisingly, stopping the flow really does stop the flow. Plenty of countries control their borders, we have in the past, and we could even do so again if there was the political will.

Nobody cared before WW1. Borders and passports became more widespread and things to enforce as we marched to war. Passports that go back furthest were for the elite, when a 16th or 17th century printed (or written) passport promise were between the elites, and actually stood for something, but the border? Didn't matter.

Stopping the flow doesn't stop it, it just pushes to less visible but far harder to control channels. Frequently more dangerous channels like inside containers, refrigerated trucks, boats in the middle of the night.

You will never stop the flow as long as there are third world nations who are being sold "a better life" via people traffickers, or don't have political or economic forces effectively demanding they migrate.

> Nobody cared before WW1

The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882.

> Stopping the flow doesn't stop it, it just pushes to less visible but far harder to control channels. Frequently more dangerous channels like inside containers, refrigerated trucks, boats in the middle of the night.

These dangerous channels tend to be more and more used when internal enforcement mechanisms are abandoned. The dangerous and often fatal migrant flows across the Mediterranean in recent years exploded when countries on the other side stopped turning boats and migrants back. Paradoxically, it's the immigration enthusiasts that lead to the massive flows that then lead to the human tragedies.

This is not true, it's mostly a result of the collapse of Libya and Syria.

The context for the container issue is a container of 31 dead Vietnamese found in the UK recently. The person responsible for that is in effect one of the worst mass murderers in the UK.

I'm aware of the UK container issue. But the one man is not the only monster. Look to your politicians as well for allowing such smuggling to have become popular. Similar issues have been a frequent occurrence in the US over the years in southern border states. Lack of internal enforcement is one of the biggest drivers. E-verify and crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants could make the such smuggling pointless, causing it to dry up quickly.

I wish - and I bet most politicians who have played the immigration card - wish that such a simplistic view held the slightest validity.

Except it's not a "UK container issue", it's a route that's been used and is being used throughout the EU. In the week of the deaths in the UK, there were reports of similar seizures in Germany and IIRC Greece and Holland. It's been commonly reported for years - EU wide. It is not the politicians (of any colour), unless you wish to blame the lack of detailed inspection of every individual lorry and container, i.e. remove all contents, inspect every package, measure for hidden compartments etc. Which given the level of imports and global trade we all indulge in would push severe delays to every product and import. Probably enough to start killing migrants often, and ruling out import/export of perishables as even vaguely viable.

We'd probably have to go back to pre-war open cargo to have even the slightest chance of retaining an import/export economy for perishables.

The migrant camps getting into the EU, and relocating from one EU country to another (e.g. Calais) have gone from strength to strength through clearances, crackdowns and multiple administrations. The issue has been there decades.

> E-verify and crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants

...is already there, particularly harsh, and applied in more than just one EU nation. Yet has not had the blind bit of effect on immigrants. The problem stems from a Vietnamese paying $20-50k to someone in their country for their "opportunity" for a better life in Paris, London, Berlin - and presumably NYC, Washington and San Diego too...

Many of whom they have paid for a lifelong debt, threats to family and have bought themselves into modern slavery and perhaps a life in something outright illegal or the sex trade. If you're shipped into the underground economy a crackdown on employers and e-verify is targeting exactly the wrong thing, only ever destined to find collateral.

It remains a growth industry in all of the developed nations. Walls and internment camps barely register to discourage while much of the pressure is external profiteering... A complete redesign of import-export capitalism might. No more coffee, tea, bananas and other "exotica" for US and Europe then.

Not to mention the increase in wars and climate impacts forcing people who otherwise wouldn't to consider migration. Those external pressures just keep on rising...

> A complete redesign of import-export capitalism might. No more coffee, tea, bananas and other "exotica" for US and Europe then.

So instead of using the existing systems that we have in place to make sure that everyone is paying their income tax, etc., you'd like to remake all of capitalism?

Your picture of illegal immigrants being quickly caught and deported in the UK and Germany (the nations in the EU where this problem is biggest) is fantastical. The investments in information and enforcement have not been made. As Scandinavian countries go cashless -- making it very hard to cheat on taxes and pay people under the table -- you really have to wonder why Europe as a whole can't do better on immigration.

So you focus on the aside and ignore the entire preceding argument. I'm done.

The US has always taken particular issue with those that look different, whether black or oriental. It passed that act whilst essentially retaining open borders for the rest, and famously continuing to encourage net immigration...

There were not "open borders for the rest". Illegal immigration across the southern border was prosecuted aggressively by the FDR administration, for one example.

FDR was after WW1, coming back to my original point. Policy and extent of caring about borders and passports globally in the developed world, came with WW1.

Furthermore, the subset of illegal migrants who cross the border away from ports of entry is the subset that contains almost all the criminal deportees, new criminal migrants, and other people who wouldn't qualify to enter as tourists because they've already worn out their welcome.

It seems that preventing and/or detecting illegal entry over the border is the most effective way to reduce the number of known criminal aliens entering the country.

Immigrants, regardless of legality, have been consistently shown to have lower rates of rape, murder, and crime in general than good old Texans.

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/irpb-4-up...

The problem, if you are unaware of it, is that they are raped and murdered getting here. Illegal immigration to the US is a trail of tears.

What are you reading that suggests the border is less controlled now than in 1999?

> Yes, the next generation will vote Democrat, due to America's birthright citizen situation

The next generation will vote Democrat if the opposition continues to make absolutely no effort to appeal to the next generation. Don't blame birthright citizenship for bad politics.

> due to America's birthright citizen situation

Birthright citizenship is an incredibly foundational American principle. Acting like it's some oddity that exists for political gain is just plain wrong.

The next generation of most developed nations will lean more left, and in the US vote Democrat for reasons entirely unrelated to birthright.

Simply put the boomers are currently the retirement generation, as they age out of the system, the system will skew less unfairly to the right. (Older voters naturally lean a little right despite most parties of the right having abandoned small c conservatism).

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