You're telling yourself what you want to hear. I guarantee you these guys are dead serious, and they've recently gotten a huge flush of cash.
The answer is the business owners are their constituents. They cannot afford to piss them off. If they lose their support the wheels will fall off this farcical performance.
I grew up in Florida, and I remember the sugar plantation “raids” they used to stage. They were a complete dog and pony show. They would announce them in advance so the plantations could hide most of their undocumented workers. Then they would round up just enough people for the photo op to prove they were being “tough on immigration.”
This is the same thing but on a grander and more dangerous scale.
Here's one that happened near me last month: https://cnycentral.com/news/local/breakdown-ice-detains-work... - and there are more happening in other places.
"That is outside the scope of this investigation." Nothing ever happened.
At Hormel, complaining about all sorts of strange diseases and health conditions, possibly from inhaling aerosolized pig brain all day long? Oh, look, another raid.
"Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome workers?"
Just a theory but it seems highly plausible in both these cases that the companies and ICE colluded... stage a big photo op, get rid of problematic undocumented workers and oh, hey, wouldn't you know, no plans to investigate the company?
This is also your friendly reminder that visa overstays are a misdemeanor, but for an employer, assisting or knowingly hiring undocumented workers is a felony. Tough on crime, indeed.
Is it (R) or (M) for MAGA.
I used to joke "Hello to the NSA analyst reading this!" when talking about "sensitive stuff" in private messages, but I guess that needs to be updated to "Hello to the LLM!"
Because immigration stuff isn't the primary purpose at this time. The primary purpose is to normalize a police state, to invoke feelings of fear in the general population and to build up a bigger infrastructure to do more authoritarian things.
"The purpose of a system is what it does", not what it claims to do. Today it looks like that purpose includes mass surveillance of social media.
For the most part, they've been targeting visa overstays by those who have been charged with and/or convicted of other crimes in the US. Not significantly different than under Obama. It's only that the visibility has been turned up to 11 along with ramped up protests and state/city sanctioned resistance in some locations.
As to the ramp-up in scale.. that's what happens when you let 5x the amount of people legally allowed entry to come into a nation in a relatively short period of time illegally. over 90% of asylum claims are invalid and fraudulent... there is almost no legitimate reason for crossing into the country outside a recognized port of entry.
I say this as someone who feels that immigration should generally be tied to "do you have a source of income and a place to stay?" at its' core... combined with a multiple of minimum wage as an income baseline with hefty employer side taxes to go along with. Arguments against doing so are very similar in my mind to having slavery... it's not okay, not good for the nation. I have similar feelings that "free trade" should only occur when similar quality of life or safety measures are in place. I'm optimistically libertarian minded, but recognize reality.
Just because the grunts are dead serious doesn't mean the initiative is dead serious.
Even then, serious doesn't equal competent. They are still trying to deport Abrego Garcia. Spending millions in legal fees and transport to deport a single man is not pratical in the slightest.
Turns out cruelty is very expensive to maintain, though. And we certainly do not have the economy to keep accommodating the narrative as real citizens starve and lose jobs. Something's going to break.
But you're in denial if you really think certain driven individuals in all three branches of the us government aren't dead ass serious about taking this stuff to misanthropic ends.
But their message isn't directly saying "spend 1 trillion dollars to be bigoted"
People have been worrying about "ecofascism" well then why aren't you concerned about an administration whose policy is measles outbreaks for the misinformed of their constituency? Whose health minister is a rich environmental lawyer who just so happens to be a huge fan of letting disease rip?