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But have any of Trump’s executive orders told ICE to be more violent? I haven’t noticed any that said that, but maybe you could link to it.
Listen to the words of this President, and the people in his administration compared to previous Presidents. Not to mention deploying the national guard and USMC against civilians to assist ICE, because ICE's methods have changed.
Then ask yourself why does ICE need a budget of $75 billion in the bill Trump is pushing, when ICE was apparently more successful with magnitudes less in previous administrations?
> The GOP bill allocates $46.5 billion toward completing Trump's border wall. It also puts $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and $10 billion to be used for border security more broadly. The bill sets aside $4.1 billion to hire and retain more agents and officers, and invests in upgraded technology for screenings and surveillance of U.S. borders.
It doesn’t say anything about ICE specifically, so it’s not very helpful. ICE wouldn't be doing construction, and they wouldn’t be running CBP facilities, but maybe they’ll be getting more agents or officers or both. They also don’t screen travelers or surveil the border. Overall it doesn’t sound like ICE is getting $75 billion.
Anyway, the budget is not very relevant to my question. If removals are down to a third (well, two fifths I guess) of what they were during Biden’s term, how is it that we are suddenly in a police state? If ICE makes us a police state, then weren’t we in a police state then?
Why didn’t anyone care about this last year?
The security worry isn't extra laborers driving down wages, it's terrorists coming across the border and blowing up Mardi Gras (secondarily, serial rapists or murderers or what have you coming here to ply their trade). Prevention of entry is the only defense there, because presumably those bad actors aren't here for the long haul, economic gain, etc.
I haven't seen a budget breakdown so I can't speak to how defensible the budget is, just that it seems clear that removal metrics don't tell a useful story on their own.
Please stop accusing people of peddling the straw man you want to tear down. It's Reddit-tier, not worthy of HN.
Then why are they spending so much effort deporting everyday people? This talking point is tired, it's the equivalent of "for the children!". Something that everyone can get behind but isn't anywhere near the level of problem it's made out to be.
HN has reached Reddit levels of partisan nonsense. Sigh.
All that aside, feel free to walk your framing back and I'll change mine accordingly.
Previous administrations followed this thing we call “due process”. This admin is not.
ICE is not “kidnapping” anybody, and is not “trafficking” them. They are federal police officers who arrest criminals and deport them according the legal process defined by Congress in 1996.
Based on historical examples of secret police, plainclothes and face masks on Federal Agents by default could definitely make people think that we are "approaching a police state".
All the president has to do is to make a few speeches about how tough on illegal immigration his administration is going to be and people’s perceptions will shift enough that they suddenly care. Now that someone cares enough to start making threats against federal officers, the officers start wearing masks and bullet–proof vests. This apparently causes perceptions to shift even more and people start thinking we live in a police state.
But the reality is that they’re doing ⅓rd of the work. They’re literally arresting fewer people. If anything, that makes it _less_ of a police state than before. And the law that ICE is upholding was passed last amended in by Congress in 1996, so it’s not like Trump has suddenly given them a new job to do.
So yea, I would say that it’s a misperception. The perception doesn't appear to agree with the objective facts.
It is? What is your source for this?
According to TRAC's published stats, in May 2024, ICE booked 8,451 people into detention. In May 2025, ICE booked 23,662 people into detention.
https://tracreports.org/immigration/detentionstats/book_in_a...
But then I remember that trump is invoking the ancient "war powers act" to do them. Why didn't obama or biden have to do that if they were able to deport so many people? I also remember when that psycho dog-killing-enjoyer kristi noem tweeted "suck it" when a group of people who were trying to use legal means to not get deported got deported. Fuck her.
You say it's a misperception, but I think we are all perceiving it exactly as they want us to. They are going to do whatever they can get away with by any means necessary and fuck you if you try to get in the way. Some people just think that's bad.
> psycho dog-killing-enjoyer kristi noem
If you want anyone to take you seriously then don’t call people names. State your claim without ad hominem attacks or other obvious fallacies.
Because the Obama and Biden administrations were not going out of their way (which the Trump administration both is and is publicly flaunting that it is) to avoid providing due process under the terms of existing case law, defying "you must not deport person A to country X" orders of courts.
> But then I remember that trump is invoking the ancient "war powers act" to do them.
"Alien Enemies Act", the War Powers Act is much newer and unrelated, but not all of the controversial deportations are attached to that.
> Why didn't obama or biden have to do that if they were able to deport so many people?
The Alien Enemies Act provides a pretext for deportations with less process than traditional deportation process under regular immigration law (in fact, until the courts ruled otherwise, the Trump Administration was claiming, and treating it as if, it allowed no process at all once the act was invoked and the executive branch designated the target as an alien enemy.)
There is virtually no evidence for many of the people targeted that they were members of that or any other gang, and the standarss used for that designation were laughable.
Had the courts not quickly shut down the Administration contention that expulsions under the act were not subject to challenge, it obviously would have been used much more extensively as a way to sweep up anyone the Administration wishes to deport.
> But then I remember that trump is invoking the ancient "war powers act" to do them. Why didn't obama or biden have to do that if they were able to deport so many people?
In other words, this guy thinks that Trump is using this act to boost the number of deportations. But the gang doesn’t have enough members to make a dent in the statistics. 35k illegals are being removed from the country every month and no gang has 35k members, or even 3k. They might have three dozen.
And I’ll reiterate that if lots of people are angry at Trump because they think that he’s using some ancient obscure law against _every_ illegal immigrant then they are suffering a misperception of what has actually been going on. If this is the reason for the sudden protests against ICE then it is a very bad reason indeed.
Note this is even orthogonal to the actual issue of immigration policy.