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The risk and level of publicity is just too high for many people to even consider, especially people already intelligent/capable enough to immigrate anywhere else that doesn't have these issues or stay in their own country.
1. Detained the incorrect person
2. Detained the correct person, with the correct legal status
3. Detained the correct person, with the correct legal status, but in unlawful circumstances
4. Detained the correct person, with the correct legal status, in ostensibly-lawful circumstances, but in a way which is unconstitutional or crazy
An example of the final category are the immigrants that spent years being vetted, following the law, and doing expensive paperwork to be citizens. ICE snatched them when they showed up on at the last second as they were to take their citizenship oath. [0] Not because of anything they did, but because today's Republican party has decided that it's OK to hurt people based on their "shithole" country of birth.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/30/us-citizensh...
If anything I find the stories featuring white/European people oddly racist because they seem to assume that I, the reader, will assume a white/European person couldn't possibly be in violation of immigration rules. But all the ones I've read turned out that they were indeed in violation of immigration rules.
Overall as a potential immigrant to the US myself, I find the process capricious and that US citizens by birth don't fully appreciate how painful it is or why it shouldn't be that way. But I don't find it notably worse or more onerous than the vast majority of immigration policies of other countries in practice.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/ice-immigrat...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-u-s-citizen-says-ice-f...
[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
To address your stories specifically, my point would be that I'm still not sure whether this shows the US is notably worse on this than any other place.
Suppose you have a "civil infraction" against you, like an unpaid parking ticket, running across the road in an unsafe way, or overstaying a visa. It's terms of US law categories, it's less than graffiti on a fence. In this case you were "indeed in violation" of it.
However, what happens next is some recently hired weirdos in mismatched camo-gear claiming to be police (with no ID) surround you on the the sidewalk, drag you into a van, and imprison you for months without trial. You are purposefully shuffled between different prisons in different states to prevent your own lawyer from being able to find you.
Meanwhile, some internet dude nicknamed 0x40 comes along and says: "Ugh, why do you guys keep glossing over the facts about their parking tickets to focus on the hardship? Yes, it's a hardship to be split from your family, I can't deny that, but..."
In short, one of the several problems right now is the that even for victims that actually did something wrong, the "hardship" is frequently illegal and disproportional. The truthfulness of the cause does not justify the effect.
The 'level' of the crime is only one aspect determining the treatment.
Some crimes are inherently more prone to absconders, immigration infractions being one of them.
Now, you could just say "oh well, that means we should just not try so hard to get perfect enforcement". Which is fine. But that's obviously not the view of everyone.
I'm not even sure that's the view of everyone when it comes to grafitti. Plenty of people would like to be zero tolerance on that too, it just doesn't have the political momentum right now that immigration issues do. And immgrants as a class are vulnerable in a way that random natives spraying fences aren't.
Also, I'm not sure this really addresses the question(s) of the thread which were more along the lines of "when compared to other countries, does the US: (a) have a higher false positive rate; and/or (b) a harsher regime of treatment".
On that, I'm still not convinced the answer is yes. The UK, for example, has been up to almost exactly the same things. Many European and Asian countries are much worse.
This article is from October of last year. It’s very hard to get current numbers. https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
According to this [1], ~68k have been deported. So, around 1 in 10,000 (or 0.07%). Next question would be, is 1 in 10,000 reasonable? You would have to compare to other countries or maybe police operations (like I experienced).
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/us-immigration-tracker...
I don’t think I agree with any of those points. Firstly the article is likely a gross underestimate from a few months ago. Since then a lot has happened - Americans have even been killed by ICE. On the second, we deported plenty of people in previous administrations without the racial profiling that lead to several of these Americans being detained. Finally, I don’t believe this level of deportation is making us safer or benefiting us economically
This is false, which should be expected, since not detaining an American would necessarily mean freeing all who couldn't be immediately identified.
https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/latest-report-ob...
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2013/mar/15/us-citizens...
Here's a realistic scenario that I would like your answer for:
A car is pulled over for having plates that belong to someone with an expired visa, with a deportation judgement. The car contains 5 people, none have valid forms of id. In your opinion, what's the next step? Do you temporarily detain them to figure out who is who, possibly detaining a citizen? What is the correct next action to make sure less than 1 in 10000 citizens are temporarily detained?
I look forward to your answer.