I don't see how what has been described here as "the system works as intended".
A free state should not be able to sniff after people for made up reasons.
I don't see how what has been described here as "the system works as intended".
A free state should not be able to sniff after people for made up reasons.
Re-read the first few sentences of his post.
> if there is a valid warrant or subpoena
It still shouldn't be secret. An ordinary valid warrant or subpoena wouldn't allow them to secretly search your house.
I'm having trouble imagining a way to describe a post-Patriot Act USA as a free state.
In the sense that all reasons are made up, I suppose that might be true. But while deporting illegal immigrants for no other reason is totally fine, deporting the ones that also have a criminal conviction is definitely not made up reasons.
Yeah, and your point? ICE has already descended into detaining anyone, literally anyone, because they have quotas to meet. They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview.
This is Gestapo all over again.
That guy had been overstaying a tourist visa for something like 17 years, and only started the green card process in April 2025. I don't think people who have overstayed tourist visas for 17 years should be eligible for any kind of permanent residency in the US, and would support laws making it impossible for someone in his position to get a green card or a work permit.
The fact that he is a white Irishman is legally irrelevant and enforcing immigration law in a race-neutral way is pretty un-Gestapo-like behavior.
Only because we made the "overstaying" an illegal offense. But there's no reason to -- if the guy was paying taxes the whole time, and never committed a serious crime, then we should be happy to welcome such guys, ramping up our GDP.
Don't forget that the paperwork costs a lot, if one has children, can get close to $10k.
Look at Spain -- instead of deporting "illegals", they just made them "legals" (those without a criminal record). Easy, problem solved.
You make it sound like deportations happen because of some mistaken legal wording. That's distortion of reality. A significant amount of US citizens voted for them to happen. I'm sure they heard about GDP many times and still found other reasons more important. It wouldn't be a wild guess to assume that they won't buy Spain as a good example.
America's a society built around finding people to punish and watching them get punished. I don't understand it, myself. It's like Roman gladiator fighting. But Americans seem to need to feel like they're hurting people who "deserve" it and they can't do that by convincing themselves nobody deserves to be hurt.
If he was paying taxes during that time period he was also committing a felony.
Sounds like B.S.
Anyone not eligible for a SSN can get a TIN and pay taxes to the IRS.
* https://www.irs.gov/tin/itin/individual-taxpayer-identificat... * https://www.nilc.org/resources/itinfaq/
And all those payments has contributed trillions of dollars https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-defi...
I like this theory of paying taxes is a felony, tell me more!!
Levity aside, working on a tourist visa is a violation but generally isn't prosecuted as a felony.
Also the grandparent post said "They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview."
If he had a valid work permit I suppose this means that he was allowed to work and pay taxes on that work, in other words - no, he was not committing a felony.
All you need to pay taxes is an SSN. One can get an SSN in many ways, e.g. long ago on another visa. Same as income to pay on -- can be earned in many ways.
The first lady originally came to the US on a tourist visa before getting work as a model and eventually applying for a green card several years later. Musk came to the US on a student visa for a program that he never actually enrolled in. Even if you want to argue its "race-neutral", it's certainly not "proximity to the president neutral" so it still is very much "Gestapo-like behavior".
It's not Gestapo-like, and whatever is your position on political spectrum it's ridiculous to put things like Stalin-Hitler-Mao-Pol Pot repressions on the same level as anything happening in the US.
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I listed asylum seekers and visa holders in detention but they are definitely grabbing citizens too. Usually they do not hold them for very long.
This happened at the Target I shop at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/ice-immigrat...
Two teenagers just doing their jobs, dogpiled by roughly four adult men, beaten up and released hours later. One of them was just dropped off at the Walmart down the street, the other they released at the federal building they’re working out of.
> Usually they do not hold them for very long.
I am confused here. If the law grants ICE (or whatever is the umbrella agency that ICE operates under) the power to detain to determine legality of the status, ICE does it, and then releases people back, the law works as intended, no?
I am confused what is the difference between this, and police who can detain a “tall man in black short and red hat” and 10 hours later (or whenever) release back due to new information, or mistake in ID?
I understand that we absolutely have to strive to zero of such cases, but operations at scale (like law enforcement) have zero chance to have no mistakes.
Replace "tall man in black short and red hat who may have committed a violent crime" with "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed," even if they have a valid government ID card and we arrive at the problem with ICE.
> "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed,"
There are two parts to it in my view.
First, sure, I understand where you are coming from. At the same time I find this argument a bit problematic because if the numbers on border crossings from South America are true, and majority of those that crossed through are from South and Central America, who do you think ICE is going to look for? Tall, blond, white people from Norway (and I am not saying that there are no people who are out of status from Norway)?
Second, while Trump and co claimed that they will go after "only after criminals", and ICE arrests a bunch of people who may be not criminals in the hardcore sense of killers, etc., but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well. I do not understand this -- if the person crossed the border, are they supposed to get a pass just because? Why?
>who do you think ICE is going to look for?
They should do some actually police work. This kind of "Papers, please" approach to immigration enforcement is dystopian. If you genuinely feel that illegal immigration is a problem that needs to be fixed, attack it systemically. Go through government, business, and housing records, find people who aren't here legally, and then go detain them. Don't just round people up based on nothing but their ethnicity and make them prove their innocence to you. It's inherently unAmerican, at least according to the ideals we like to claim we have (even if our history often falls short of those ideals).
>but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well.
Then arrest those people who commit crimes. If these people are guilty of something, why is ICE the one rounding them up? Why isn't the FBI or local police? If this is all motivated by a desire for lower crime, why are we treating it as an immigration issue instead of a crime issue?
> They should do some actually police work. This kind of "Papers, please" approach to immigration enforcement is dystopian.
Why it’s dystopian? It’s literally how it’s done in other places as well.
I agree that the government has to go through and punish those who employ illegal immigrants too to disincentivize unauthorized employment, but it doesn’t have to be only one avenue.
> Why isn't the FBI or local police?
I do not know where you live, but lately crimes in the US in many jurisdictions are not prosecuted, and repeat offenders are not punished. Coupled with the fact that many cities forbid their local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration, I am not sure how can local police do anything.
If an illegal immigrant committed a crime it is a failure of both local LEO and immigration. It doesn’t have to be only one.
There’s this case where a citizen was detained and they called his authentic RealID “fake”: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/us-citizen-d...
So even using valid papers on you is not enough. We’re beyond a “papers please” situation. It is up to their mood.
https://youtu.be/e4X0hI40a8A
Just a handful of examples from last year. As a resident of Minneapolis I can assure you it is much, much worse than these few examples.
Are you not familiar with Liam Conejo Ramos? Or Kilmar Abrego Garcia? Just two other high profile cases, but this is far more prevalent than any reporting has outlined. Three of Liam’s classmates were also “mistakenly” shipped to Texas and returned. At least one of his classmates, a documented asylum seeker like the rest, is still in Dilley.
I am not familiar with the first one, but the second one is not a clear cut and not “everyone”.
Regardless, there is a huge gap between “literally everyone” and individuals who are not a slum dunk citizens, but have questionable status.
Regardless, I think this kind of sensationalism desensitizes the public to the point when no one cares.
Probably referring to this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/seamus-cul...
This guy had an order of removal, so he seems to be a valid person to detain and deport, no?
Edit: the more I read about it, the more I am convinced he is not a "literally everyone" case.
He was in the US for 20 years, and had no green card. He has work authorization, which means he probably got it as part of the i485 application to get a green card due to his marriage. Other publications report that he came to the US on a tourist waiver visa program, and overstayed. So, what was his status all these years?
No wonder the trust in media is all time low -- this article did a sloppy job to paint a specific picture, and this picture has a bunch of holes in it.
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> We lock up innocent people all the time, as the court system is imperfect. That doesn't make something the Gestapo.
Correct. The methods, the scale, and the targets do. Refusing to ever show any identification or proof of orders at all when that definitionally makes them a secret police does. Repeatedly violating federal court orders does (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965333). Repeatedly violating habeas corpus rights does. Assaulting people in the streets merely for witnessing does. Let us not forget that a woman was violently shoved backward to the ground while she was backing up in the lead-up to the killing of Alex Pretti, and the government's immediate response was repeated shameless lies and hiding or destroying evidence, just like they did with the killing of Renee Nicole Good, just like they did with the killing of Geraldo Lunas Campos, just like they did with Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, ... The list doesn't end.
It's very weird of you to just ignore all of that.
The archive link isn't working for me atm.
But tech companies should be complying with subpoenas from governments in countries they would like to operate in. I don't like what is happening in the US either, but to me this feels like a problem with the electorate. Maybe it's possible for Google to provide some of these services without actually having access to the data under subpoena, but I don't know enough about what services they were using or how they work.
Ultimately, whether or not people are able to do anything involves consequences for their actions.
There's the "three" boxes of liberty that are meant to give a framework for how humans in a society are to introduce consequences to state actors who abuse rights: the soap box, the ballot box, and the jury box.
So we need to start using at least those three to prevent human rights abuses with regard to search warrants.
I take it you didn't include the fourth box because you didn't want to be flagged?
What about the consequences for the people that let in millions of illegal aliens with criminal records that harmed and killed Americans? Should those politicians be charged as accessories?
if only they had killed the Americans without harming them, but I think it was a step too far to harm the Americans and Kill them! That's rude. How many Americans did each of these millions of Illegal Aliens Harm and Kill, I'm guessing at least two due to the plural usage and there are millions of the Illegal Aliens therefore there are at least two million.
This means that the Illegal Aliens have evidently harmed and killed at least 4 million Americans.
I'm not gonna sugar-coat it here, that is a lot of harming and killing alright.
Can you list off the names and crimes of these millions of illegal aliens with criminal records so I can verify they exist?
I know there are people who shouldn't be here who have committed violent crime, but is it really millions? Is it to the point where we need to be letting God-knows-who run around American cities with tac gear and firearms dragging people off to inadequate detention facilities for over six months?
are the millions of illegal aliens with criminal records in the room with us now? Can you show us on the doll where the millions of illegal aliens with criminal records touched you?
But Fox News said...
No, this is absolutely the system working as intended: The State exists to protect large monied interests and their power, and those entities in exchange will sell out individuals to the State that seek to undermine their power. The State will never not do this.
Like, I realize I'm the rambling anarchist up in here, but show me ANY government ever that didn't Murder and Pillage, two things that we all hate when perpetrated by individuals. There's no amount of democracy that can be injected into a hierarchy responsible for controlling hundreds of millions of people that will inhibit authoritarianism, the best people can hope for (and what many white/middle class citizens thought they had for the last few decades) is not being the target of that authoritarianism.
Cat's out of the bag now and we're doing that thing we do every few decades where we weaponize the State against the citizens.
> The State exists to protect large monied interests and their power, and those entities in exchange will sell out individuals to the State that seek to undermine their power. The State will never not do this.
Reminds me of a certain ideology, can't quite put my finger on it.
I think it starts with F
> A free state should not be able to sniff after people for made up reasons.
Right, exactly -- a free state should not do that, yet the system is working as intended, therefore we do not live in a free state. It's time to accept that.
Why would we accept that instead of changing it?
My interpretation of ModernMech's comment is that acceptance is a pre-requisite of changing it.
ie. if you didn't accept it, then you wouldn't feel the need to change it.
I agree that is the most favorable interpretation.
You obviously don't live in the EU, UK.
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All systems work as intended — usually phrased as "the purpose of a system is what it does"
If this wasn't the intention they would have changed it by now.
You can't write rules against bad actors. There will always be some legal loophole a bad president can invent to exploit. if not for administrative warrants we would see some other creative (read: illegal) use of executive power.
The only option is to not elect someone that doesn't respect rule of law. And since I know some enlightened "centrist" will play the both sides game: What's 1 thing any previous president has done equivalent to violating posse comitatus.
I strongly disagree. You should always write rules under the assumption it will get in the hands of the worst people. If there is a 'become god-emperor' lever in your supposedly democratic government system then it is a shitty system.
No careful rulecrafting can survive the worst people being in charge.
That’s the topic of the Federalist Papers. It’s been working for 2.5 centuries.
Maybe so but what here really would've prevented this? The information involved is necessarily public: bank details and credit card numbers need to be shared otherwise why have them?
Writing a rule that says the government can't do this is just the government writing a rule it can simply remove it ignore when inconvenient.
The banking information belongs to the account holder and the bank. Google knows it by coincidence but should not share it because it isn’t theirs. If the government wants to know my banking details they can ask my bank. If they can’t figure out who my bank is they should get better at investigating. This approach is just exploiting Google’s wide reach.