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Comment by throwawayohio | Hacker News Reader

Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives.

We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might jump out and disappear our friends, family, or nanny who could be watching them?

And that is before we even get into the potentially disastrous child healthcare decisions and regulation rollbacks.

It's an unfortunate time to be trying to grow a healthy family, IMO.

ETA: I already have children.

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Many of our family's friends have already left back to their home countries (bringing their own families with them). Risk/reward calculation has abruptly changed. The risk to your life and livelihood is not worth it, and the reward of living in the US has been steadily declining.

That is almost certainly the reason why they are making such a spectacle of it. Self deportation is the goal.

The goal is to rile the base and distract from the fact that there is no improvement in cost of living, healthcare, education, etc... tourism is down, farmers are losing their farms en masse, etc... It was trans people yesterday, Somalians today, and it will be someone else tomorrow. If that wasn't bad enough, it's clear the president and other powerful men (of both parties) were engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring. It's all a distraction and there are enough hateful Americans for it to work for now.

It's not "a distraction". It's serving their constituents. No good people support the Republicans, their primary voter base are just a bunch of hopped-up xenophobes who hate people who aren't like them because they've never met anybody who isn't from their inbred town.

If anything, from a democracy angle it's almost admirable how committed to answering the demands of their base the Right is in America. Pedophile billionaires get their desires met, racist yokels from flyover states get their dreams delivered, the war hawks, all of them.

We need to stop deluding ourselves into thinking "oh, the constituency on the right would be horrified if they just knew better". They wouldn't be them if they knew better. They are simply worse people, and the actions of the government are directly appealing to their worst desires.

OkayPhysicist wrote:

> No good people support the Republicans, their primary voter base are just a bunch of hopped-up xenophobes who hate people who aren't like them because they've never met anybody who isn't from their inbred town. ... They are simply worse people...

You should apply to the DNC to help with their messaging efforts, clearly they're missing an important voice!

There's like what, 15 to 20% of americans actively trying to trigger rapture? You've got a lot of religious nuts in your country, and they really are bad people.

Clearly you also learned the messaging principles so clearly demonstrated in the great Basket of Deplorables debacle of 2016. Maybe you can be GGP's deputy.

Anyway, do you have a source for that? My understanding of American evangelical protestant theology is that they don't view rapture as triggerable in nature. Not being one, I can't state that confidently, so I'd love to see your source for your stats, and understand your definition of what it is they feel they can do to trigger rapture.

> Self deportation is the goal.

Perhaps.

GP didn't say whether or not there were any legal clouds over the persons he's describing. The answer to that makes a big difference to his point.

It doesn’t even matter anymore, being anything less than a full citizen puts you at risk. In my community, we have a bunch of Nepalese people whose TPS is going to expire and they are going to be deported. Not far away is Springfield, where a community of Haitians, who are mostly liked by the people in their community, and who even the Republican governor is asking the administration not to deport, have seen their TPS expire.

There are a lot of non-criminals who are here legally, but still very concerned about their future. If I were one of the Haitians in Springfield, I would be looking for another country to take me in.

Every one of them are legal permanent residents who don't feel welcome here anymore. Some are afraid they're one mistaken identity away from ending up black bagged and sent to El Salvador.

We're now heading in the same direction -- will take more time than I would like to work it out, for various reasons, but this is no longer a country where I want to raise my kids (despite us being citizens and having the "right" color skin), and as much as I want to be hopeful for change it's really hard to see the damage being undone any time soon.

I certainly don’t agree with the things the administration is doing, but this seems like just hysteria. You are putting off your family growth plans because they might deport a theoretical future undocumented nanny? It is strange to me how generalized partisan fear has become.

I guess you don't live in Minneapolis, or another targeted metro area. It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in a city where 3000 masked and poorly trained people cos-playing special forces are specifically tasked with arresting as many people as they can and told that they have full immunity.

you haven't seen the effect on schools when federal agents enter school grounds and take kids away.

you haven't seen my parent's nursing home sending the senior leadership outside the building to look for patrols before they let the staff leave (the staff is all legal/greencard holders, but see note above -- ICE doesn't care).

It's not hysteria when it is your every day lived experience.

There have been several raids in my city, but it is definitely nothing like what is going on in Minneapolis.

For me, it's not just that -- I don't live in Minneapolis -- but it's the sinking realization that half the country literally voted for this and is either ok or indifferent, so long as we are maintaining our "true (WASP) American culture". Call me naive, but it has come as a pretty big shock to me that Trump has exposed just how rotten a good fraction of Americans are -- and that's before even getting into the removal of climate change action (something I care very deeply about because it concerns my children's future), cuts to science, healthcare and higher education, foreign policy (admittedly, the US has always been a bully, but it's even worse now), clear attempts to rig the upcoming elections, etc. etc.

Don't be ridiculous, talking about "partisan fear". They have taken away documented, American citizens without due process.

When armed men can take you out of your home or your car and whisk you away without a judicial warrant and without due process, it is very reasonable to be afraid.

It’s really not. Define taken away. They’ve absolutely detained some citizens, then let them go.

And again, not defending what they are doing, they are awful,but you are probably more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to have any of your family planning go wrong because of them if you are a full citizen. (If you are undocumented here right now, yeah, totally.)

Hysterical people think they are being rational and stuff like this is exactly what they say.

Their own data reports that they are holding tens of thousands of citizens who have committed no crimes.

They have murdered people in broad daylight and allowing many more to suffer and even die in their facilities.

People are not being hysterical, and the people who are downplaying or ignoring this are showing that they are in fact evil.

Tens of thousands of "citizens" or "residents"?

There's an important distinction here.

Citizens. US citizens

First they came for the "residents", and I said nothing, because there were important distinctions to be made...

So in other words your claim that they are holding tens of thousands of "citizens" is fabricated. cool, thanks for clearing that up.

I'm not the person you think you're replying to.

However, since you're here: etymological arguments are really not the win you should be chasing.

> Their own data reports that they are holding tens of thousands of citizens who have committed no crimes.

A source would be nice

> Define taken away.

You already did it:

> They’ve absolutely detained some citizens, then let them go.

That is taken away.

Someone in my network - a US citizen - was detained, taken to a city 3 hours away, and held for 10 days before being released. Was quite a while before her family knew where she was.

If you're an American who is visibly Hispanic, it's not at all hysterical. If you're in one of those cities, you do have to worry whether you'll return home when you leave your house.

> you are probably more likely to be hit by lightning

I get that you're trying to rationalize this scenario, but this line is completely false. If there was a nation-wide wave of aviation terrorism, it would not be appropriate to say that you're "more likely to be hit by lightning" than risk your life in a plane. The situation has changed, and they're not being hysterical for observing the trends and adjusting accordingly.

Lightning has a relatively static chance of hitting you. The likelihood of feds accidentally executing you in your hometown is on the rise, and we don't know when it will stop climbing.

> Lightning has a relatively static chance of hitting you.

That was fun.

Do you really think you have a holographic sign floating above you that tells them you are a citizen? How are you sure you are above suspicion to be an undocumented immigrant? Could you prove you aren't if some goons decided to pick you off the street right now or next time you go for a walk?

All this is about expanding the reach and normalizing abuse of the power of law enforcement, just like back then after 9/11.

It's like Germany in the 1930s again when Jews were required to wear a yellow star on their clothes, but the other way round.

or just shoot you while you are in your car.

If one can't even aspire to use a small portion of their dual tech sector incomes to illegally underpay someone to ensure they must sacrifice neither sleep nor income in the raising of their own children, well, then, the American dream is well and truly dead for all.

What?

This happened a few blocks from my home: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/17/dc-arrest...

As did this: https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-goons-tear-down-pro-immigr...

These neighborhoods are high income, predominantly white, and filled with families.

My oldest has come home terrified because he turned a corner while playing outside and physically bumped in a guardsman carry a rifle.

I get it that some of you don't live in places that are immediately impacted by this administration, but some of us have to confront this on a daily basis.

I am with you, it is a scary time. I have to remind myself that we have gone through worst times. My grandfather grew up in a ranch, at 22, along with his extended family and friends, they took arms and joined a revolution, they overthrew a dictator. They fought on the back of a horse for years. It was a rough life, but they endured, and here I am. Enjoying a life so comfortable that would be unimaginable for them. You cannot stop moving in life because things can go wrong.

Eh, my grandfather lived through World War 2 and he was a lot less confident that "we have gone through worse times" than you are.

Physical comforts are a small piece of the equation.

With all due respect, but this extremely biased and US-centric view. IT was not easier to have kids in 2024 or 2023, both in the EU or US. Childcare is expensive, pace of life today (and the past 20 years at least) implicitly treats kids as a liability and a detriment to career progression and financial security.

Yes, this article is about the US.

And I live in a place single digit blocks from multiple places where ICE agent behavior has made national headlines. I have no financial reservations.

Sure, and I understand that. My point was that it was hard financially to have kids even before Trump was elected. Moreover, there are plenty of places in the US with no/little ICE activity, and it is still hard to afford kids today, a year, or three years ago.

It has/had nothing to do with ICE.

Not to mention fear of a school shooting that would leave your kid traumatized at best and dead at worst.

School shootings are incredibly rare, and existed 25 years ago too.

> incredibly rare

312 shootings in the past 5 years [0]

that's an average of ~ 1 shooting every 4 school days (across ~ 120,000 schools)

that is not incredibly rare; you can try to rationalize it, but if you're a parent and your kid is going to school every day for 12 years, that's about 3000 opportunities for this rare event to happen to them

If I'm computing this correctly, that's approximately 4 * 120,000 = 1 / 480,000 chance of it happening on any given day, or a 1 / 160 chance of it happening to your child in the course of their lifetime; compare that with a 1 / 15300 chance of getting struck by lightening over your lifetime, or a 1 in 800,000,000 chance of dying in a plane crash (this is according to Gemini, I didn't research these numbers thoroughly).

And yet, look how much effort we put into airplane safety.

> existed 25 years ago too

sure, but it's so much worse: [1]

55 shootings in the '70s 80 in the '80s 157 in the '90s 121 in the '00s 260 in the '10s 312 so far in the '20s

the fact that we know this has been a problem for 50 years and instead of doing something about it, the problem is actually getting worse. All so that some grown men can play with their guns (please don't tell me that it's about 2A ability to "resist tyranny"; that hasn't been true for a very long time)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...

That 300+ figure (60/year) is including things other than mass shootings people typically think of as school shootings (e.g., targeted gang violence).

There are ~74 million children in the US. Even taking your number at face value, it's 0.00000081 shootings per child per year. This is rare.

It's not shootings per child that matters, it's shootings per _school_.

I don't want my child to be traumatized by a school shooting on their school even if they themselves are not killed. That's pretty basic. If multiple people were shot and killed at your workplace, how would you feel about continuing to go there? You think that survivors of a plane crash where other people on the plane died are ready to get back on a plane the next day because "the chances of it happening again are small"?

And I don't care whether it's targeted gang violence or some other type of shooting, it's still an event where someone with a gun is on the school and kills one or more people.

It’s nothing short of miraculous that medieval families raised their own children without cheap, brown labor to do all of the actual child raising.

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