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Comment by whatsupdog | Hacker News Reader

I'm tired of people protecting these murderous criminals who don't give two sh*s about any laws. This lack of empathy (for the victims of these criminals) is appalling.

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The thing that annoys me most about such thoughts is not the callousness - it’s the extremely short sighted opinion that the same tactics won’t eventually be used on them, or people they care about. It never even occurs to them that can happen until it does.

Erosion of anyone’s rights is an erosion of everyone’s rights.

Absolutely, we older types used to argue with the term, "slippery slope". ICE is a classic slippery slope that will most likely be used, eventually, against all of us if the current administration isn't stopped breaking the law.

This 100%. It's like a private army is being built, especially with the masks/secrecy aspects of it. Terrifying.

ICE and the use of the National Guard is very terrifying. The current administration could use them both to try to hold onto power when it terms out. The lunacy of SCOTUS and congress is beyond the pale. If, and I do mean if, the Epstein situation blows up on the big orange dummy, no one should doubt he will try to declare some type of marshall law to stay above the law. Then we will find out if the National Guard members really pledged allegiance to the Constitution.

“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

> I'm tired of people protecting these murderous criminals who don't give two sh*s about any laws. This lack of empathy (for the victims of these criminals) is appalling.

wait, are you talking about this guy and the people they killed in Venezuela or ICE?

Isn't it obvious? How many people has ICE killed extra judicially?

Do deaths in detention count? [0] 12 so far since the administration began through August (data only being published after 90 days.) Of course, nothing's stopping the administration from using "probable cause" to detain anyone suspicious - like citizens (or at least brown citizens.) [1]

[0] https://www.ice.gov/detain/detainee-death-reporting

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-citizen-detained-ice...

No, ICE did not kill those people. I looked through the latest six this year. Two were suicides (one suicide was of a man who had state charges against him for several crimes including child molestation), one was someone who had diabetes and refused to take insulin, and the others seem to have had other health issues. They got medical care many different times.

I think it is misleading to conflate murder with people dying of health issues in detention after medical care.

I think it's also misleading to call it people dying of health issues. But after years of knowing, under multiple administrations, that even the pre-Trump ICE detention regime killed detainees due to medical assessment delayed and care denied [0], the weight of the evidence points currently points to ICE being malicious, not ignorant: ICE currently knowingly detaining medically frail individuals, without care corresponding to their needs, knowing that a random subset would die due to circumstances that ICE could have chosen to change, but didn't.

Therefore, I think that what is happening does rise to extrajudicial killing - killing that ICE chose not to prevent but to maintain; and inevitable killing without any corresponding sentence.

Forgive me for not taking ICE at face value. I looked through the next four accounts – assuming that, at that point there would be sufficient independent reporting that would either complement or contradict ICE's accounts.

The next four individuals died preventable deaths due to care ignored (e.g. in the case of Nhon Nguyen, who was detained with dementia), or denied (e.g. in the case of Maksym Chernyak, who was unconscious after fainting for hours until detention guards provided medical attention too late.)

- Marie Ange Blaise's death (#7) was blamed by ICE on blood pressure medication noncompliance. The narrative stitched together from Broward County medical examiner reporting, along with detainee testimony, instead argues that she fainted after taking blood pressure medications, and it took at least 8 minutes for medical attention to arrive (after a guard walked away) [1].

- Nhon Nguyen (#8) was, according to his family, detained while living with advanced dementia, and according his death report, bounced backwards and forwards between hospitals and his detention processing center before dying of avoidable pneumonia [2].

- Brayan Garzón-Rayo (#9) died by suicide after repeatedly being denied a mental health evaluation - once due to short-staffing, next due to contracting COVID-19. [3]

- Maksym Chernyak (#10) fainted - possibly due to overdose - but was denied care for hours despite attempts by others detained with him to draw attention; his death was attributed to a stroke. [4]

[0] https://phr.org/our-work/resources/deadly-failures-preventab... [1] https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-08-01/haitian-ice-deat... [2] https://www.abqjournal.com/news/article_7519bc08-a416-4275-a... [3] https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-05-13/missouri-man-who-died-b... [4] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/04/24/as-immigrant-arrest...

Most likely in the hundreds if you count the deaths in detention, the deaths due to deportation to unsafe or unsanitary locations, and the suicides attributable to their actions.

This is based on a historical accounting of ~1 death a month in their direct care over the past 5 years, plus assuming at least as many due to other root causes. I expect that number to increase as they continue to expand operations and worsen protections for detainees.

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