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Comment by Philpax | Hacker News Reader

> “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”

This is one of the most evil things I've seen posted on HN.

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Cue: "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" meme.

Aside: Seems like a natural line of thinking in a country with a thriving privatised prison system.

Nationally, there are less than 10% of incarcerated people in private prisons. This number starts to vary widely from state to state though, with some states having more than 50% and some having 0%.

Public prisons's use of forced labor is not better than private ones.

And people in prisons (private or public) count towards total population in counties, giving them more weight in elections, despite none of the prisoners having chosen to be there voluntarily nor having the right to vote. https://www.vera.org/news/how-mass-incarceration-shapes-our-...

True, but there is this mythology that all prisons in the USA are private prisons controlled solely by corporations, which is wildly untrue. Public prisons aren't much better than private prisons, due to the fact that they are just punishment and not rehabilitation. On your second point, undocumented immigrants also count in the census and give more weight in representation and elections, even though they cannot vote. In a perfect world, we would expect elected officials to represent all of their constituents, not just those who voted for them, but we are far from that.

>On your second point, undocumented immigrants also count in the census

Except immigrants choose where they want to live.

The prisoners are where they are because the party in power (usually Republican, borderline neo-Confederate) creates laws that lead to extensive incarceration (such as "three strikes") and is the one which decides where to build prisons, which results in biased elections in their favor. Which reeks of the pre-civil war rules that slaves count for political weight.

We don't talk enough around here about how dehumanising Amazons (and many tech companies) approach to human workers is.

Also, I would argue that ICE needs less perverse incentives, not more. It's pretty obvious that they have deportation quotas that they have to meet or exceed, hence hapless tourists get treated like dangerous criminals and locked up for weeks (because the detention centers are also commercial, so the longer people stay, the better for them) before eventually being deported: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-det...

Another example of the idea that "treating people like objects" is evil and in fact, is the cause of most evil in the world.

It's also stupid, even if you're a complete sociopath. "Let's ship 3% of our economy to other countries."

These people work, buy things, and pay taxes. Just rapturing them out of the country will not benefit anyone.

Well, it will definitely benefit the people listed in the article and their friends at contractor companies. As for economic or moral aspects - those in power to not give a flying fcuk, it seems.

Then why do you not have a full open-order policy? It will definitely grow the nominal size of the economy

Don't know if that helps, but I'm not a country.

You could grow the nominal wealth of your household by removing the lock

I believe your analogy is trying to liken immigrants to thieves, which is precisely why it's not a good analogy.

No, in fact you did!

I knew a good friend who lived in Okinawa, and never locked his front door even when going abroad

>No, in fact you did!

Then kindly explain to me how your analogy was intended.

... so far. We're only 80 days into this Republican administration.

America is only for Europeans. I don't know how these Europeans act when natives ask them to leave

I don’t think deportation is evil. In fact I applaud this.

Can you see how this comes across as double speak?

He is a fascist that wants to see academics and immigrants suffer. Best to just make fun of him or ignore, logic is pointless.

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