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Comment by frumplestlatz | Hacker News Reader

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> If you create a problem like this by essentially opening the border and failing to enforce the law, the necessary corrective action is going to have to be a lot heavier than if you’d just patrolled the border in the first place

Deportations are lower than under Obama, despite ICE having Saudi Arabia's military budget. The resources are very clearly being spent on something other than immigration enforcement. Whether that's an authoritarian agenda or simply corruption is still, in my book, to be seen.

"Deportations" is an ambiguous term, which may or may not include people turned away at the border and actual categories like Removals, Returns, and Expulsions.

> "Deportations" is an ambiguous term

It is. Which means the numbers are generally able to be fluffed. The fact that ICE isn't even bothering to do that communicates that they're not focussing on nor being held to it.

> which may or may not include people turned away at the border

You don't need to blow the military budget of most of the world's militaries [1] to do this, nor build "a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior."

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-ice-bill-trump-2093456

> Whether that's an authoritarian agenda or simply corruption

Its both a floor wax and a dessert topping.

Agreed. I think it's important to remember the lack of real "mass deportations now" when you see two things:

1) low Trump approval rating. Likely due to lack of following through on these promises (rather than disapproval of the promises themselves)

2) protests against deportations. Why do dems simultaneously crow about their superior deportation numbers while condemning current efforts as heavy handed and cruel?

I think the answer to 2) is that the Obama administration scrupulously followed the law, actually targeted those with criminal records rather than grabbing people just based on their ethnicity, and didn't engage in practices like sending people to prisons in third countries such as El Salvador. I suspect you already know this, given your choice to draw a contrast between numbers and methods.

It's the untrained masked men with guns dragging people away because the computer said to, that's the new heavy-handed method that America has not seen before except in WW2 Germany and the Soviet Union.

> Likely due to lack of following through on these promises (rather than disapproval of the promises themselves)

No. Most of it has to do with the fact that masked, unidentified ICE agents are abducting and disappearing people with no due process.

American citizens are being taken away. People who are here legally are being abducted and sent to countries they aren't from.

Of the deportations, Trump said they would be targeted toward violent criminals. Over 90% of those who have been rounded up have no criminal history.

Masked men with weapons who refuse to identify themselves are shooting people and lying about it, directly refuted by video others took of the event.

This isn't some case where "Americans are upset Trump isn't doing what he said!". This is a case where Americans are finally seeing the reality of what he is doing and are sickened by it.

I’m totally sure you’d apply the same for unchecked corporate law breaking, right? Enforce the Hatch Act, go after wage theft which dwarfs any kind of retail or private theft, etc. If you think it’s about political power, you’d question prisons and detention centers being put in red states where they count political appropriation from the inmates and guards.

Well-stated. Our prior solutions to internal enforcement of previous Border misses no longer work given that the scale of border "misses" exploded after deliberate non-enforcement.* Now larger-scale internal enforcement is needed. Sucks for all of us.

*Worse than non-enforcement, the feds actively blocked/destroyed Texas border protections.

This notion of 'opening the border' is a political myth conservatives have been using to justify their increasingly extreme positions for years, much like their inflammatory use of the word 'invasion'.

The border was de facto open since there was no serious enforcement. Because there was no space to detain millions of people, the majority were processed and then simply let go into the U.S. with a "Notice to Appear" set for 2030. Basically a free pass to stay for years.

On top of that, they had parole loopholes (like the CBP One app and CHNV) to legally admit millions more people.

"essentially opening the border and failing to enforce the law" this did not happen is the issue with your statement

It wasn't 100% open, but it was open enough to let in several millions of people who should not have been allowed in.

No it wasn’t and didn’t.

Yes it was, and it did.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2024/...

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