Federal law supersedes state law.
ICE is simply enforcing federal immigration laws.
ICE is simply enforcing federal immigration laws.
It does. That doesn’t mean federal agents supersede state law.
California restricted civil arrests at its courts [1]. The Congress can pass a law superseding this. What ICE can’t unilaterally do, legally, is ignore it. They have, the same as they’ve ignored federal court orders.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Not all of Federal law supersedes state law. The Tenth Amendment clarifies:
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
If it's not given to the federal government to regulate, the federal government can't regulate it.
Simply put, Americans gave Republicans a popular mandate to reduce illegal immigration.
Much of this was economic: illegal immigrants dilute the labour force. Some, particularly among Latin Americans, rose from perceived injustice: it’s frustrating to go through the American immigration process only to see someone who skipped it live a similar life. Some, e.g. those focused on crime, were just racists.
If ICE were simply enforcing the law, I don’t think there would be a national outcry. The problem is they aren’t. All while blowing the military budget of Saudi Arabia [1][2] to accomplish what Obama did with a tenth as much.
[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/saudi-arabia-increases-d...
[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-budget-big-beautiful-b...
The Republicans abandoned the economic debate, and shifted focus to social issues. This is what caught the Democrats, including myself, off guard. Rather than stealing our jobs, the immigrants were accused of stealing our cats.
Framing it as an economic issue in hindsight seems like a polite way of "steelmanning" the voting base, but I'm not sure it's really justifiable.
Trump's win wasn't even close to being a mandate. Also, people (now) hate his enforcement policies.
> illegal immigrants dilute the labour force
ICE is not simply going after illegal immigrants for one thing. Also, immigrants support the economy. They do jobs Americans won't for one thing. But I'd love to see data on the amount of labor force dilution immigrants are doing. We should really one looking at the ownership class sitting on trillions of dollars of wealth and not sharing.
> perceived injustice
Exactly. We should have solidarity, not be pulling up the drawbridge behind us. But the current arrangement suits Capital just fine.
> If ICE were simply enforcing the law, I don’t think there would be a national outcry. The problem is they aren’t.
Agree. They're doing fascism.
Then why are the farmers complaining about it? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-farm-groups-want-trump-s...
“From January to June, the average number of detainees per day in ICE custody rose 43 percent, to more than 57,000. But since July, when the [OBBA] funding was approved, the detainee population has increased only about 5 percent, to roughly 60,000, the latest statistics show.
The stream of social-media clips showing masked federal agents kicking down doors, raiding Home Depot parking lots, and pulling people from their car have kept up the appearance of an ever-expanding campaign. ICE’s own data show that the agency’s buildup stalled over the summer” [1].
Meanwhile, with first-year deportations around 400,000 [2], they stand to match what Obama did in 2012 [3], despite spending $40 to 70bn, or 10 to 15x, more [4][5].
Instead of enforcing our immigration laws, ICE is involved in domestic policing, partisan intimidation and the illegal detention of American citizens.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/ice-imm...
[2] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/23/new-milestone-over-2-mil...
[3] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG...
[4] https://www.ice.gov/factsheets/budget2012 $5.8bn, FY2012, $8.2bn CPI adjusted to ‘25
[5] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-budget-big-beautiful-b... $45 to 75 billion under OBBBA
Easy to inflate deportations when you catch the same fish and the river is flowing.
Much slower when you dam off the river and have to dig the remaining catfish out of the mud.
“U.S. Border Patrol agents recorded nearly 238,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing the southern border illegally in fiscal year 2025” [1]. For 2012 to 2015, the chart shows about 360k, 420k, 480k and 330k, respectively.
So ICE is spending $330 to 580 thousand dollars per additional Southwest border encounter in 2025 versus 2012. ($250 to 440 thousand if we average Obama’s second-term numbers.)
These numbers 10x even San Francisco’s circa 2016 homeless-industrial profligacy [2]. Unless ICE is a ball of wormy corruption, they’re clearly not focused on immigration enforcement.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/10/icymi-illegal-cr...
[2] https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-spending-11-billion-...
Crossings are lower overall due to securing of the border.
If it is, it's being pursued corruptly and incompetently.
From the top of the thread, ICE is spending boatloads more money to deport just about as many people as Obama did with a tenth of the budget [1]. Cross-border encounters are within 100,000, so the difference is not explained by recividism.