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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

> suing the everlasting shit out of the government when they try to detain you, which they won't, because this is just made up.

Two things

1) Suing the US government only works when they say you can sue them (see: Sovereign Immunity). Additionally, the rank-and-file have vastly extended defenses against lawsuits (see: Qualified Immunity). If an customs agent decided to get especially frisky against you, the odds of you succeeding on a lawsuit against either the agent or the US government is close to nil unless it was an extreme violation of your constitutional rights, and even then it's not in your favor.

2) We have multiple recent examples of US citizens being illegally detained by ICE agents despite showing paperwork and evidence of citizenship. If you think you're safe: You're not.

There are lots of legal carveouts for when you can't sue the government but that is not relevant to this particular discussion. Yes, there are a handful of recent examples of ICE detentions of American citizens suspected of being illegal aliens (although the only deportations I'm aware of are minor natural born citizens deported by request of their birth mother). The majority for obstruction but a handful pending deportation proceedings and held even after documentation of citizenship was produced. You've heard about them for two reasons.

1) There are very few compared to the scale of deportations currently being processed, so each case is exceptional against an incredibly low base rate. And these stories have been happening since 9/11 but journalists didn't give a shit until there was a salient political point to be scored

2) They are all suing the everlasting shit out of the government or have already settled

You've changed your argument. First you said it wasn't happening and was made up, now you're saying it's happening at an incredibly low base rate.

To be fair you raised a different point about ICE detentions as opposed to US citizens being denied reentry because of social media posts. The former happens but extremely rarely (like winning the lottery rare). The latter does not happen.

Since the election, we have social and institutional norms be torn down or routed around time and time again. While I agree that I have not seen this specific situation yet, I think you'd be a fool to blithely assume it will not happen soon. It is possible, it is (by some people in power) highly desirable, and those people have made it clear that legality is irrelevant to them.

These are not normal times, and your cynicism is not serving you well here.

EDIT: I don't believe that the parent post should have been flagged. While I disagree with them, I believe they posted productively and in good faith.

I was probably flagged for the unnecessary snark at the beginning of my post. I get it -- this isn't reddit and that sort of thing doesn't help. But I do earnestly believe that this is an almost pathological exaggeration of the state of the world.

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