This is the money shot : "Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense."
wraaath · 41d ago
GEO Group also operates similar facilities in Australia, and is publicly traded in the US stock market under the symbol GEO. For the quarter ending 12/31/2024, they had top line revenue of 608M, but pre-tax income came in at 24M, and carrying debt of 2.3B. Somehow with such thin profit margins, their stock is trading at a 4B market capitalization and carrying a 128 P/E (by comparison, Google carries a 20 P/E, Meta 24), i.e. "richly overvalued". It would be a damned shame if Australia started re-evaluating those contracts.
Oh - and some of the risk factors that GEO notes in their last 10-K annual filing:
Efforts to reduce the U.S. federal deficit could adversely affect our liquidity, results of operations and financial condition.
We partner with a limited number of governmental customers who account for a significant portion of our revenues. The loss of, or a significant decrease in revenues from, these customers could seriously harm our financial condition and results of operations.
We are subject to the loss of our facility management contracts, due to terminations, non-renewals or competitive re-bids, which could adversely affect our results of operations and liquidity, including our ability to secure new facility management contracts from other government customers.
and also - this amazing level of self-awareness:
Adverse publicity may negatively impact our ability to retain existing contracts and obtain new contracts.
TheNewsIsHere · 37d ago
10-Ks are one of the last places to find actual honesty in business. We partially have SOX to thank for that.
wraaath · 36d ago
You still do see plenty of trash in the 10-K's with all of the massaged messaging, but yeah.
tim333 · 41d ago
I don't get the " tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights" and a foil blanket thing though. Why be so nasty? If you are making a business improperly detaining people it would only be likely to cause outrage and get it shut down?
I'm curious as a non American why no one stops this. I mean presumably both political parties have not bothered. Do people in the US think it's ok? I think if that stuff happened in the UK there would be a lot of protests.
casenmgreen · 41d ago
> I don't get the " tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights" and a foil blanket thing though.
It's cheaper, would be my guess.
These conditions though, it reads like the Standford experiment.
This is properly tantamount to prisoner abuse.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
A lot of America (even parts of the left) still fall for the "hard on crime" narrative. They assume the sentences are just, and thus bad people deserve the worst. Even if our constitution has a clause agaisnt "cruel and unusual punishment".
never-mind that we've had decades of initiatives using such prisons as a form of soft racism, something so longstanding that is publicly declassified information. And people still don't care.
intended · 40d ago
They would go further, and argue that it’s the people who argue against this narrative, are supporters of criminals.
I.e. - It’s gone from “you are too soft on crime”, to “you are supporting criminals.”
closewith · 38d ago
> I think if that stuff happened in the UK there would be a lot of protests.
A lot worse happened in UK prisons in Northern Ireland and people in Great Britain widely cheered it on. Target the right minorities and there'd be no shortage of supporters in Westminster.
bigfatkitten · 39d ago
> If you are making a business improperly detaining people it would only be likely to cause outrage and get it shut down?
On the contrary. In the US in particular, there is a large and outspoken segment of the voting base that love to see this sort of thing.
femiagbabiaka · 41d ago
Simple. It doesn't cause (genuine) outrage and it doesn't get them shut down. AOC for example, protested these private prisons during Trump's first term and went silent on them when Biden didn't close them.
runarberg · 41d ago
Here is a tweet from soon after Biden took office in January 2021:
> People must understand the depth of what’s happening here: the President of the United States has ordered a halt to deportations. ICE, a federal agency, is refusing to comply.
> There’s no reforming this rogue dept. It’s time for a new, just vision.
> A lot of people who are just now suddenly horrified at the dehumanizing conditions at our border are the same folks who dehumanize immigrants + helped build these cages in the 1st place.
> When we tried to stop this infrastructure over a year ago,we were overruled by BOTH parties.
> Fact is a lot of the politicians crying right now don’t work to solve either.
> They vote to grow ICE + CBP cages and they do everything to avoid addressing the root: US foreign policy and interventionism that destabilizes regions, the climate crisis, and unjust economic policy.
Your statement that Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez stopped protesting these private prisons while Biden was in office is simply factually wrong. And it was not hard to check it.
freen · 38d ago
[flagged]
femiagbabiaka · 35d ago
1) Tweets are not substantive action. I was actually involved in abolish ICE actions in real life and watched it die.
2) Tweets are even less meaningful when in real life she supported at every step the people who were actively propping up ICE. Including Bernie, who just recently said Biden could have done more on illegal immigration. (Biden deported more people than Trump 1).
AOC actually has a long track record of saying one thing and doing another, like the controversy over her “present” vote on weapons to Israel. This is the major reason why the Squad broke up. The most charitable interpretation of it is that she wants to gain cache within her party. But she doesn’t realize her party hates her.
If you want to continue to champion someone like that, I have no problem with it, at the least she’s effective at bringing people to the left after they are inevitably disillusioned by something her or Bernie does.
dfox · 41d ago
Cost optimization.
qwertox · 41d ago
CoreCivic & Co. then sounds like a good target for a DOGE analysis.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
follow the money as always. Same reason why US has the highest incarceration date. Incentivize people to be put in cells, and they'll optimize for it.
Hence why I'd rather revamp the incentives towards punishing recidivism and completely nailing petty imprisonments.
bojangleslover · 41d ago
Makes complete sense to me. That's how every other business works. Number of detainees is a mostly linear input (aside from the real estate) to opex.
snapcaster · 42d ago
This is horrible and scary, why border guards are even giving the authority to revoke visas is beyond me. When people think about giving cops/guards authority like this they need to be picturing the dumbest bully from their grade school. That's who is going to be using the power
pjc50 · 42d ago
It's Team Grade School Bullies all the way up, from the voters to the representatives. Plus decades of pro-cop propaganda, especially against following the rules.
No comments yet
throwawaymaths · 41d ago
I'm about to travel to canada on work and as i understand it the last step in the visa is an interview at the port of entry where the border guard can decide if I get to stay or not.
poulsbohemian · 41d ago
When I went through it years ago, it was mostly about making sure you had all your paperwork in order - had the company sponsoring you provided the relevant information regarding the role and why you were needed, did your resume and experience match at all with the work being performed, etc. Basically I showed up with a list of documents and a very nice border guard looked it over and said welcome to Canada. Each time I traveled up there for work, the border guards were polite and professional. Each time I traveled home, I got pulled aside for advanced screening like I was a drug mule. Just loved all the America trivia questions and deep dives into the history of where I live, just so they could feel good about their jobs.
aendruk · 41d ago
> Each time I traveled up there for work, the border guards were polite and professional. Each time I traveled home, I got pulled aside […]
Interesting, it was the opposite for me, US citizen with CA work permit circa 2016. CBP seemed to not care while CBSA was often irrationally aggressive and suspicious. The closest thing I got to an explanation once after being freed was “We just like you” with a grin.
ethbr1 · 41d ago
My experiences with CBSA were pretty bad too.
I was grilled in Vancouver about whether the purpose of my visit was work or pleasure, after I helpfully told the officer that my dad was attending a work conference and I was traveling with him but sightseeing.
"Well which one is it, work or pleasure?!"
I don't know, dude. I just explained the situation: you're supposed to be the expert!
manwe150 · 41d ago
What confuses me even more about that situation is that Canada seems to distinguish between business travel and work travel instead, where those two options seem to be mutually exclusive to each other (199b), and neither is for pleasure
I believe making you flustered is a deliberate part of the procedure. If you don't act 'normal flustered' or panic, it is a signal for more advanced screening.
j_timberlake · 41d ago
Imagine taking a >$500 flight to Japan or South Korea only to be told by the border guard there that you can't enter, even when no rules were broken. And then the flight home is even more expensive. It happens sometimes.
wahnfrieden · 41d ago
canada just revised the rules to allow border agents to revoke your visa / work permit, fyi. so look out. it might be better to go during "normal" hours and at major ports of entry to try to get a more senior officer.
blindriver · 42d ago
Every country is like this. Israel is the scariest but I remember decades ago crossing into Switzerland by train and in the middle of the night being woken up by border guards with barking German shepherds asking for my passport. I have so many stories it’s funny. On top of the other stories I’ve already posted, my friend who is Canadian drove into Buffalo for dinner and on his way back, they asked him where are you going. He answered “Canada” and they detained him and pulled apart his car looking for drugs. He was detained for hours until they let him go.
nsavage · 42d ago
As a Canadian living near the border (as many Canadians are!), I would often drive into the US for shopping. There are a number of towns that seem dedicated to serving Canadians, like Watertown, NY. I've found that often the US border guards would be much nicer than the Canadian border guards, probably because the Canadians are the ones that need to deal with the customs rules (Canadians aren't trying to smuggle their new purchases back to the US without paying tax!).
I haven't been on a shopping trip like that in a while though, and I find it hard to believe I'll ever do it again now. I feel bad for Watertown, but with the tariffs and the risk of detention, its not worth it.
thelittlenag · 41d ago
That's an interesting anecdote. I grew up on a border town, but as a US Citizen often going up into Cananda. Without fail it was always the US border guards who were the jerks (I went to school with their kids!) and the Canadian guards who were gracious and courteous.
Given that I've NEVER had what I would call a great interaction with a US border guard, it warms my heart to hear that at least they could be kind to some one ;-)
freedomben · 41d ago
This has been my experience as well (as a US citizen). I've crossed the US/Canadian border many times and the US guards are usually the jerks. I always dread re-entry into the US because of that.
ilamont · 41d ago
The Walmarts and gas stations near the Northern NY border used to have a lot of Ontario and Quebec plates. I've seen reports that February traffic across the bridges was down ~15% in February YoY.
dowager_dan99 · 41d ago
don't forget a sub-70 cent dollar. Pretty rough to pay that sort of premium and THEN maybe GST and duty on your purchases. It's not the same as a generation ago when you had to go to the US to get their chocolate bars...
pjc50 · 42d ago
There's a wide spectrum between being aggressive about asking for your passport and detention for weeks. While it's a slippery slope the extent to which it happens, and the extent to which prejudice is involved, varies a lot.
blindriver · 42d ago
Are you suggesting that Swiss border patrol would have been more forgiving if I were illegally entering their country?
poulsbohemian · 41d ago
I have the best story on this - they didn't believe I wasn't Swiss, because my name is clearly Swiss and I was speaking German. My (American) passport had been amended so it took an hour and them making some calls before they were convinced I wasn't some kind of spy. Love the idea of my ancestral home not believing I wasn't one of them, even if they were quite rude about it.
wk_end · 41d ago
Well, she wasn't illegally entering the United States, so that's sort of moot.
blindriver · 41d ago
She was. You didn't even do a modicum of research. She co-founded a hemp drink company in California and then self-assigned her own TN visa through the company she founded, which isn't allowed. Her visa was actually illegal and then she was found upon subsequent crossing. She tried to reapply and this time she was detained.
wk_end · 41d ago
Sorry, I’m commenting on an article and don’t feel as though I should need more research than what’s written in it. Based on her account, that’s not really accurate, and I do actually trust her (and Guardian fact-checkers) more than your anonymous claims. Feel free to give sources.
Anyway: it’s still moot. What she did, even based on your account, is not illegal.
It’s not illegal to apply for TN, period. If the application is rejected, that doesn’t make the application retroactively illegal.
It’s not even illegal for a Canadian to apply for a TN at the border crossing, have their application rejected, and keep driving right into the US. I know this because it happened to me. As Canadians don’t need work permits to enter the US, entering the country wasn’t the question - only working in it.
Unless she’d previously been given paperwork that had banned her from entry to the US - and she hadn’t been - there was nothing illegal with reapplying. She was told to reapply.
Whether she did anything “wrong” is debatable, but whether she did anything illegal isn’t.
No comments yet
dowager_dan99 · 41d ago
I need to determine if this is true. I had not heard of it before, and the idea she would qualify for a TN visa seemed a little thin, but the rules are so arbitrary and uneven (especially these days) who knows. Regardless this sounds like a nightmare, and to top it off is neither "DOGE-efficient" or increases US security. It's a least 4-combinations of lose-lose.
Hmm, I'm not an American so this is all new and pretty interesting. If you wholly or partly own a company and the company sponsors your TN, would that be OK? Or is that still 'self-sponsorship' under the regulations?
ikerrin1 · 41d ago
Canadian here. I recall in 1991 being woken by Swiss border guards in a train carriage full of Germans and Italians. After inspecting their passports they shined the light in my face. They saw my maple leaf on my bag and asked “Est-tu Canadian” bleary eyed I replied “oui” and they said,”it’s fine, we don’t need to see your passport”. Of course 9 years later I was thrown off a train to Czechoslovakia” because they changed the visa requirements at the last minute and my “Let’s Go” guidebook was out of date.
Oh being young, stupid and crossing boarders without a clue.
ssijak · 42d ago
"Switzerland by train and in the middle of the night being woken up by border guards with barking German shepherds asking for my passport"
What is exactly wrong here? They checked your passport and went on their way, that is how it works.
ethbr1 · 42d ago
It was hilarious seeing the difference between the French and Swiss border guards on train rides.
French: laughing and talking, checking everyone's passports
Swiss: eyes scanning the car, papers please
dowager_dan99 · 41d ago
Why do you need guard dogs to check a passport? Is it the most effective system to do sweep-checks in the middle of the night? Why not check as you're boarding or de-training? What happens if something is wrong or not aligned? Is a stressful situation the best way to conduct routine processes for anybody?
HOW shit goes down is really important. When systems reduce people to cogs in a machine they lose empathy and personal responsibility. This is why we end up with guards who know nothing, treat people like cattle, and are "just doing their job". It does not lead to good results.
cutemonster · 41d ago
Drug drogs I suspect.
blindriver · 42d ago
Nothing wrong. The previous poster claimed that the US Border patrol was excessively scary but my point is this happens everywhere around the world.
freehorse · 42d ago
The part OP is scared of and points to is some border guard revoking your visa, which probably implies you losing your job and having to leave the country you live in. This is scary because it is a very big, bad outcome to be totally in the authority of a random border guard to decide. Waking out by guards and dogs barking on a train is scary in its own right the moment it happens, but we are talking about totally different things whose only intersection is "border guards" and the emotional category of "scared".
No comments yet
Mashimo · 42d ago
They detained her for 2 weeks, while the lights where always on. I think that is a bit more then aggressively asking for papers.
wezdog1 · 41d ago
Even if that were true it doesn't justify it.
yerushalayim · 38d ago
Scary can be an effective deterrent against unsavory adversaries.
seec · 37d ago
Of course, it's kind of the point of having borders and control, if they let anyone in without verifying, it's not even worth having a border.
Going from France to UK is like that, and before Shenzen, it was like that from EU country to EU country. When I was young, we had to wait for 2 hours with my parents while they checked everything was in order for a Spain border crossing (we were in a big RV so it makes sense).
People on HN have very soft views of the world, being too idealistic libertarian or some sort of socialist derived ideology.
Most people may not be criminal but you have to process everyone crossing the border as if because otherwise it's pointless and you will never catch the criminals...
bergie · 41d ago
The only border experience I've ever had that was worse than US was Canada. And I've traveled quite extensively.
BizarreByte · 42d ago
The specifics of this case are largely irrelevant to me, the fact is I am scared to cross the border into the US at this point.
For the foreseeable future I will not be travelling to the US for any reason. Canada is safe and there is nothing in the US worth risking my freedom for. I will remain here and I will continue to avoid travel to America as well as spending money on American goods/services.
transcriptase · 42d ago
The specifics are seemingly irrelevant to everyone. She had her work visa revoked at the Canadian border because her company in California was allegedly making THC beverages in violation of federal law. She was told to visit a consulate to straighten it out.
Instead she flew to Mexico and tried to enter there with new and obviously fake job offer. She was treated like anyone else would, but it’s international news because she’s a pretty white woman.
BizarreByte · 42d ago
Again I do not care. The US has done more than enough to instill fear in Canadians like me.
Would you travel to a country where its leader is constantly making threats against your country, some as serious as repeatedly calling for your annexation? The current US administration has made it very clear how it feels about me and my countrymen.
I don't consider the US safe and I do not need someone to americansplain to me. You aren't exceptional, you're a threat.
transcriptase · 42d ago
I am Canadian. I’ve been to the U.S. a hundred times and nothing has really changed to make me blink at continuing to go. I have friends and family who work and vacation there, and it’s the same for them as it’s always been.
The Canadian media and Canadian businesses have been drumming up fear and patriotic rhetoric to drive domestic industries. That’s great - the last 10 years of “Canada is a post-national state with no culture or identity” narrative that Trudeau championed wasn’t doing us any favours anyway.
Trump may be a buffoon and what he’s doing is clearly not acceptable with respect to Canada, but to fear visiting or considering the U.S. unsafe when it’s objectively far safer than visiting any all-inclusive hotspot in the Caribbean that Canadians are still flocking to like they do every winter is, well, removed from reality.
jszymborski · 41d ago
> nothing has really changed to make me blink
Then you perhaps aren't looking closely. The US is undergoing one of the fastest democratic backslides (democratic sinkhole?) the world has yet to see [0], deportations and detentions are happening with zero regard to the rule of law [1], and our _sovereignty_ is under attack daily.
If that doesn't make you blink, like most Canadians have [2], then perhaps nothing would.
You might want to try getting out of your doom news bubble.
BizarreByte · 42d ago
> I’ve been to the U.S. a hundred times and nothing has really changed to make me blink at continuing to go.
Let's hope you never get unlucky, it only takes one border agent having a bad day after all. I've been to the US many, many times and as I said I no longer consider it safe, but we all have different risk tolerance levels.
> when it’s objectively far safer than visiting any all-inclusive hotspot in the Caribbean
I don't visit those places either.
Cry to someone else about how it's all media based fear while ignoring the very real changes in attitudes, policy, and atmosphere, but I personally see no reason to take the risk when I could...just stay in Canada and be safe.
metabagel · 41d ago
Dude, if you have a tattoo that looks questionable, you literally could be deported to a concentration camp in El Salvador. Granted, maybe you are white, and that might be the one thing which saves you.
wahnfrieden · 41d ago
Reportedly even having an LGBT tattoo was sufficient to be marked as criminal and sent to the El Salvador concentration camp
somedude895 · 41d ago
You're saying that you're not actually interested in discussing the post you're commenting on, you just want to use the comment section to rant. Got it.
jszymborski · 41d ago
No, they are saying that the minutiae doesn't impact their desire to not visit, as simply the threat of arbitrary incarceration is sufficient. It's in fact a sentiment shared by most Canadians if the sharp decrease of Canadian visits to the US approaching pandemic levels is anything to go by.
apwell23 · 41d ago
its not up to you to decide what rules are "minutiae".
Thats the attitude of drivers towards laws on streets of bangalore.
SpicyLemonZest · 41d ago
It's international news because she was detained for 2 weeks with no explanation. If they had simply booted her back across the border - which I thought was the default in cases like this, where someone's applying in an orderly manner at a port of entry - few people would have cared.
hattmall · 41d ago
>If they had simply booted her back across the border
They can't. And this is entirely her fault for trying to enter through Mexico. Telling them she will return to Canada isn't helpful because what are they supposed to do? Tell her ok, go get an Uber to the Airport and just let her go? Mexico would not issue her a VISA either so her only option is US or Mexican Detention. When the agent said "You aren't a criminal" is when she saw that Mexico had denied her re-entry and she was flagged for detention.
Now, I mean, personally I think it would be fine to just let her go because who really cares, but the point of rules/laws/procedures is for them to be followed.
Why did she go to Mexico first? Because she was denied entry in Canada and thought there would be less scrutiny at the Southern Border for Canadians. She was correct, because it worked the first time when she would have likely been denied at the Canadian border for her second crossing, but her initial denial flagged her.
I feel for her, and the situation sucks, but she 100% knows she's trying to game the system, and that's not even bringing up the issues of her self-sponsored TN visa which is dubious.
SpicyLemonZest · 41d ago
Is it true that Mexico denied her re-entry? The source article doesn't say anything about that, and I'm not sure why it would happen - Canadian nationals generally have visa-free entry for short trips to Mexico.
hattmall · 41d ago
Yes, the agent saying "We have to send you back to Canada" is because she wasn't allowed in Mexico. By default her tourist card would have only covered entry from from Canada. The first CBP agent almost certainly attempted to get her back into Mexico which is why it took "hours." If she already had a valid VISA for Mexico then the default would be to return her. The article doesn't even really make it clear that she flew to Mexico first and then tried to enter the US. To the uninformed it would seem she may have flown into San Diego or something. She wouldn't be able to return to Mexico on an asylum claim either of course.
footy · 41d ago
Canadians don't need a visa to travel to Mexico though [1], assuming they won't be doing any work or studying. Going to the airport to go back to Canada is not work.
Yes, but if she HAD a VISA she would have been allowed to return to Mexico. She entered Mexico with a Temporary Tourist Card for entry from Canada to exit through the US with specified dates or less than 72 hours. That card became invalid when she left Mexico. The border agents most certainly tried to get her back into Mexico, but "denied entry into the US" is going to cause a manual administrative review in Mexico and that appears to have been denied. The only thing different under Biden / Obama would have been that she may have been processed faster because their was less backlog.
She gambled on trying to to game the immigration system and lost. It sucks but 12 days in custody isn't world ending. The most amazing part to me is people with no experience with "the system" find themselves incarcerated and think not eating sounds like a good idea.
apwell23 · 41d ago
Yep this person clearly tried to manipulate the system and had the gall to admit that in public because she knew some many ppl wouldn't care and would support her regardless. this comment thread is proof of that.
causal · 41d ago
Disingenuous take, did you even read the article?
1) She was not detained in connection with any crime whatsoever. At no point was her company's use of THC stated as a reason for detainment.
2) You have invented the idea that her second job was fake. If it were, then fraud could have been a crime and reason for detainment- but again, the article makes it clear no crime was charged or cited.
3) You are right that plenty of non-white people are also going through this. I wish that was also enough to motivate people to care.
The point is that removing due process for anyone is a threat to everyone. It could be you next. You might think, "Not if I'm a citizen and not a criminal" - but the whole point of due process is getting the opportunity to prove that you are in fact a citizen and not a criminal. That right is eroding.
apwell23 · 41d ago
After a long interrogation, the officer told me it seemed “shady” and that my visa hadn’t been properly processed. He claimed I also couldn’t work for a company in the US that made use of hemp – one of the beverage ingredients.
i don't know what hemp is or how is related to THC.
projectazorian · 41d ago
Hemp is a lower THC variant of cannabis that has a variety of non-psychoactive uses. It was legalized in the US in 2018.
beart · 41d ago
Hemp is a type of cannabis. Historically in the US, it contained extremely small amounts of THC. With the legalization/decriminalization of THC across many states, I don't know if that's still true.
zabzonk · 41d ago
Hemp and cannabis are both varieties of the plant Cannabis sativa. Hemp contains less THC, and is used for things like making rope.
What about the new job offer makes you think it is fake?
transcriptase · 42d ago
You run a company in LA.
Your visa is revoked.
You show up at a different border shortly after with a novel job offer.
Is it a genuine job offer or are you going back to run your company?
jmb99 · 41d ago
If that is all the evidence presented, then under the wild new concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” yes it is.
troad · 41d ago
That's never been the standard at the border.
The starting assumption when crossing any[0] international border is that you don't have a right to enter the country, until you prove otherwise.
People from wealthy Western countries are generally used to just waving their passports and passing through, but that is not nor has it ever been some kind of automatic right. People are questioned and denied entry all the time, should they fail to satisfy the border official of their eligibility for entry under the exact terms of their visa (or the relevant visa waiver program).
I'm very sympathetic to the idea that border officials should have less discretion to deny people entry without very solid reasons, but if you start talking about 'innocent until proven guilty' at a border today, you're not going to have a good time.
[0] International agreements can of course modify this default assumption, e.g. Schengen.
apwell23 · 41d ago
ppl here are so freaking annoying and ignorant about how immigration works in any country.
you are right, for immigration its your responsibility to prove that you are not coming in to violate terms of entry. Onus is not them to prove that you are coming to work on tourist visa.
yencabulator · 39d ago
She expected to buy a return flight back to Canada, but was instead imprisoned.
slekker · 41d ago
Can you share the part of the article where this is mentioned or a source?
apwell23 · 41d ago
"stayed in Canada for the next few months, and was eventually offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand."
When i google "holy water" first few links for me are some sort of THC infused liquid. But i think this person was working for one without thc?
foogazi · 38d ago
> She was treated like anyone else would
How is it OK to treat everyone like that ?
seec · 37d ago
Exactly. From her own story you can also infer that pretty much everyone who was detained with her was in fact illegal.
Nobody cares about them because they don't have the reach of this white woman; not that anyone would care, because they can't make up a bullshit story to pretend that they got unfairly detained.
It may not seem right, but enforcing laws is kind of the point of having borders and cops and things like that. I'm amazed how many people are complaining.
This woman is clearly shady and got what she deserved and that's that.
diebeforei485 · 41d ago
Hemp is not THC. And hemp was legalized in 2019 federally.
apwell23 · 41d ago
only if thc content is below a certain %
jmpz · 41d ago
Source?
HideousKojima · 41d ago
>The specifics of this case are largely irrelevant to me, the fact is I am scared to cross the border into the US at this point.
"I don't know Homer Simpson. I never met Homer Simpson or had any contact with him, but--
I'm sorry. I-- I can't go on."
"That's okay. Your tears say more than real evidence ever could."
BrandoElFollito · 42d ago
I traveled to the US (from my country -France- and many others) for 12 years. About a trip every month. The last time was 10 years ago.
I never had any problems (outside the horrible behaviour of border officers who show you that you are not welcome). I was stopped once by a policeman when I did an illegal car maneuver (which is tolerated in France), and when he realized I was a tourist with family, he just said, "Be careful, have a nice trip."
Today I am seriously considering never going to the US anymore because it looks like it is not a good destination anymore. I may be wrong though, I hope.
gs17 · 41d ago
> outside the horrible behaviour of border officers who show you that you are not welcome
They've always (in my life, which is largely post 9/11) done that to US citizens too. Going into Canada it was "where are you going to? the beach, eh? have a nice day!", coming back seemed to be performed under the suspicion that our passports were fake and our car was made out of drugs. Despite doing nothing wrong, we were always afraid of getting in trouble because a border agent felt like it.
dowager_dan99 · 41d ago
As a Canadian travelling throughout much of the world, border controls aside from the US always seem much more concerned with imported goods (tax collection and protecting agriculture, etc) than imported people.
rsanek · 41d ago
never experienced this as a us citizen and I travel often. usually it is a polite "welcome home", otherwise it's a bored "ok you're good"
riizade · 41d ago
I got a light interrogation as a US citizen. For the record, I have Global Entry, NEXUS, and TSA Pre-Check.
I handed the border agent my US passport and the conversation went like this
"why are you entering the country?"
"I live here"
"do you have legal status in the US?"
"I'm a citizen, you're holding my passport"
"have you ever overstayed a visa in the US in the past?"
"I was born here, so no"
"do you intend to do any work while you're in the US?"
"yes, I'm a US citizen and I have a job"
I didn't get pulled off to the side or anything, it was just standard questioning at entry processing when flying in, but it was just bizarre
the border agent kept looking me up and down suspiciously like I was hiding something, but he had my passport the whole time
even when I got questioned on my way to Canada (I would've stopped me too), they were much nicer about the whole process, it's an air of "we're just double checking cuz making a mistake here would be real bad, but as long as everything's legit, no worries, I hope you have a nice stay in Canada"
entering the US the vibe is "you're a violent criminal and it's my job to ask you questions until you slip up and admit that fact, the US is magnanimous for allowing you to touch our great country's land with your disgusting feet, and you should remember that every day you're here or we'll detain you so you won't forget again"
I'm a little surprised you've only had positive experiences.
jkaplowitz · 41d ago
That is indeed quite bizarre. Most of those questions literally don't matter for a citizen, and if you were somehow falsely claiming to be a citizen, the other questions also don't matter because a false claim to US citizenship is punished more harshly by US immigration law than the other things they were worried about. (Such false claims make one permanently ineligible for permanent immigration to the US, with no waiver available, and require a waiver for any kind of nonimmigrant admission.)
BrandoElFollito · 41d ago
> I'm a little surprised you've only had positive experiences.
I was talking about the experiences within the country. The border is horrendous, exactly like Russia. Same vibe of "we hate you, kneel before stepping into my country"
For a foreigner, even one that knows the US pretty well, there is a background feeling of "if it goes bad, it will go vey bad". This is mostly because of movies and news like this article but the everyday life was more or less friction free. I did not get into anything serious, though.
gs17 · 41d ago
Are you flying or driving? These were at land borders in Michigan, maybe they're more strict when you try to bring in a whole vehicle instead of a few suitcases that have gone through inspections.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
YMMV on so many factors. Which border, how you look and carry yourself, your vehicle or airline, etc.
dhsysusbsjsi · 42d ago
I've already made the decision not to go to the US again for the foreseeable future.
nicbou · 42d ago
Same. The president is repeatedly threatening to annex my country. I was already avoiding the US because TSA is creepy, but now I'm actively divesting from it.
BizarreByte · 42d ago
Same for me as well. I've also gone as far as moving any paying business away from the US. I have completely moved off paid US services as of about a month ago to Canadian or EU equivalents.
apwell23 · 41d ago
thank you. curious whats making you so emotional about it though ? why so angry?
dowager_dan99 · 41d ago
I cancelled a vacation to Arizona last month. It makes political AND economic sense. Now I just need a reliable source of winter greens...
greatpatton · 42d ago
Same, will not risk my mental health for a trip to the US.
We have 10 times as many illegal immigrants per capita as France does.
account42 · 41d ago
I'd be careful comparing statistics like this between jurisdictions. What might be counted as a "illegal immigrant" is likely different between the EU and US.
cship2 · 42d ago
Same has being happening in UK for quite sometimes post 911. The facilities looks very similar. Some one line Cornell Correction must be making a killing in US.
yimby2001 · 41d ago
You travelled to the US every once a month for 10 years? 10 years ago? and now you’re considering not going back buddy you already stopped coming
BrandoElFollito · 41d ago
No, I took a break with extensive travelling and now that my kids are older I am getting back to that.
Spending money in a country that obviously is not happy to see me is not likely to happen. We went for the rest of the world for now.
ThePowerOfFuet · 42d ago
"Seriously considering"? Êtes-vous fou ? Restez en Europe !
blindriver · 42d ago
Yes. This is the reality of how it is. It’s unfair that this woman was caught in this but CBP have ultimate power crossing the border can be scary.
My friend got her visa stripped and given a 10 year ban under Obama because of jokes in her text messages about a GC marriage. She didn’t get thrown in jail but she was refused entry back into the US and had to get someone to sell all her stuff while she flew back to her home country.
Most of you have no idea about how life is because you’re probably citizens but this is the reality at the border. It’s even worse in other countries.
Someone I know is from Australia and she said if you overstay your visa they track you down, arrest you and send you to jails outside of Australia mainland until you are eventually deported. Every country treats their border extremely strictly.
CORRECTION: I pinged my friend and I was wrong. They arrest them but don’t send to offshore jails. Those are for illegal immgrants that arrive on boats.
ssijak · 42d ago
"It’s even worse in other countries."
It's not. I take you are comparing to western countries. If you have a valid visa and behave even remotely normal to the border agents you will have no issues. Only in the USA some border agents have the attitude of "I'm gonna get you" or making you feel unwelcome for no reason. Hell, even in "authoritarian" countries like UAE or Quatar I never experience anything but pleasant interactions on the border.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 42d ago
> Hell, even in "authoritarian" countries like UAE or Quatar I never experience anything but pleasant interactions on the border.
Unfortunately that table has already started changing for the worse on the particular case of the United States :(
Be strong.
dowager_dan99 · 41d ago
>> If you have a valid visa and behave even remotely normal to the border agents you will have no issues.
This is the crux IMO: it should be an OR not an AND. Having to behave "remotely normal" where this is determined solely at the discretion of the TSA is impossible.
No comments yet
blindriver · 42d ago
You are ignorant about how life is crossing into other countries. In the 1990s, my friend who is a white Canadian drove into Buffalo for dinner with his family, and on his way back the Canadian border patrol asked him where he was going. He answered “Canada” instead of Toronto and based on that they detained him for hours and ripped apart his car.
Just recently a woman from the UK was denied entry into Canada and because of that was denied entry back into the US and found herself in the same mess as the person in the article.
This happens all the time, you just don’t hear about it until the news decides to make a thing about it.
ssijak · 42d ago
"woman from the UK was denied entry into Canada and because of that was denied entry back into the US"
You are proving my point, she was again detained by USA for 3 weeks when it could have been resolved much better and faster.
blindriver · 42d ago
Yes we agree then. Every country is strict at the border. That’s my point.
footy · 41d ago
there's a difference between sending someone back where they came from (what Canada did) and torturing them (what the US is doing, sleep deprivation is torture).
jkaplowitz · 42d ago
> Someone I know is from Australia and she said if you overstay your visa they track you down, arrest you and send you to jails outside of Australia mainland until you are eventually deported. Every country treats their border extremely strictly.
Honestly, this kind of abusive approach is predominant among certain of the major anglophone countries only, at least within the world of fully developed democratic countries, likely for reasons of shared media ownership/viewership and overlapping cultural/political attitudes but I don’t know for sure.
Yes, several other fully developed democratic countries do of course treat their borders strictly in the sense of who’s allowed in and under what circumstances, but not with these kinds of abusive treatment as a common pattern. And I do frequently read news in three languages plus a fourth occasionally, so I don’t think this is just me being biased toward news from countries that share of my native language of English.
eagleislandsong · 42d ago
> I do frequently read news in three languages plus a fourth occasionally
Impressive. Can you speak or understand by listening these languages as well? And if I may ask out of curiosity, which languages are they?
jkaplowitz · 41d ago
Yes, though the degree varies by language. I'm a native US English speaker, usefully bilingual in French at least when things are being spoken relatively standardly, and have partial degrees of proficiency with German (hello from Berlin) and Spanish which nobody would confuse for fluency but which are still useful levels of each language.
stephen_g · 42d ago
The offshore detention we do here in Australia is abominable, but it’s not accurate to say it’s “if you overstay your visa”, it’s generally only used for people who can’t be deported for whatever reason (usually around asylum claims, being stateless, etc.).
If you just overstay a visa you will just be deported fairly quickly, you aren’t going to go into offshore detention…
That’s not a defence of the practice, offshore detention should absolutely be abolished, it’s just worth being accurate.
blindriver · 42d ago
My friend went to University of NSW early 2000s and she said when her friends disappeared for a while, they knew they were caught by the border patrol and deported because of some sort of overstayed visas. They all knew how aggressive Australia was at enforcing visa violations. Maybe they changed the process since then but she said everyone knew they sent visa overstayers to the offshore jails to scare them and send a message to everyone else.
CORRECTION: you are right. I got my story mixed up so I was wrong. It’s illegal immigrants who arrived by boat that were sent to offshore jails. My friends friend was sent to a regular jail. He had a student visa and stopped going to uni so he got arrested and deported because his visa got cancelled.
jon_adler · 42d ago
AFAIK, the Australian system doesn’t operate like this for visa overstays. Your friend may be confused with asylum applications for those who arrive by boat (which isn’t often used in practice).
Yes they arrest them and throw them in jail but not offshore jails. I was wrong about that, I checked with my friend.
account42 · 41d ago
Detention for overstaying your visa is pretty reasonable. That's not something you do on accident.
account42 · 41d ago
> Most of you have no idea about how life is because you’re probably citizens but this is the reality at the border.
The reality is that you can be denied entry for pretty dubious reasons, but most people with a valid visa/visa exemption who don't do sketchy shit like the woman in TFA don't get randomly denied or even interrogated beyond the basic purpose of visit questions. All my entries into the US (as well as other countries I have been to) have been pleasant except for the long queues.
> Every country treats their border extremely strictly.
Unfortunately not every country. Much of the EU has gotten used to lax borders.
Strict enforcement of borders is mostly in countries that get lots of people trying to enter illegally or overstay their visa. E.g. those with neighbors that are significantly less well off.
ThePowerOfFuet · 42d ago
>because of jokes in her text messages about a [Green Card] marriage
Let this be a lesson to all those who think it's fine to unlock their phone and hand it to cops.
tunapizza · 29d ago
It's either that, or get denied. Interestingly enough, however, it's quite easy to "prepare" for a phone search in advance since border agents can only search the actual content of your phone. You just need to delete apps and reinstall them after you passed the border. Their "advanced" forensics tools would likely find traces of those deleted apps, though.
"CBP officers can only search and access data stored on the device’s hard drive or operating system. The search does not include data that is stored remotely in a Cloud format. The officer must ensure that data and network connections are disabled before starting the search, for example, by asking the traveler to turn the device into airplane mode and disabling Wi-Fi."
I'm not sure what customs and border patrol would do if you refused to unlock your phone for them. I doubt they would just let you go.
blindriver · 41d ago
You would be detained and eventually denied entry. You have no rights when you cross the border no matter which country you're in. China and other countries have just as draconian enforcement.
account42 · 41d ago
ESTA applications ask for your social media accounts even before you get to border patrol. You can of course omit them but that may or may not backfire. I have only ever listed GitHub since I don't really use anything else they have in the drop down.
gorbachev · 41d ago
"It’s even worse in other countries."
I imagine it would be, if you visited South Sudan.
It is not "even worse" in any of the western countries. The border control people in most western countries are actually friendly. They are polite, sometimes even, gasp, smile at you.
account42 · 41d ago
> It is not "even worse" in any of the western countries. The border control people in most western countries are actually friendly. They are polite, sometimes even, gasp, smile at you.
That has also been my experience with the US. YMMV of course.
TriangleEdge · 41d ago
I've been issued a five year bar for visiting someone in the US while unemployed. My immigration lawyer told me it's the weakest case he had ever seen. It took two years for the appeal to be approved. I had worked in the US on TN visas twice before, and never overstayed. It felt like they were just trying to meet a quota.
Edit: I had applied for a GC years before this happened, so I think the officer thought I didn't want to leave. This was not the case however. The case had been approved but not processed.
leereeves · 41d ago
When did that happen? If it took two years for the appeal to be approved, it must have happened a while ago.
TriangleEdge · 41d ago
About three years ago. My lawyer told me it used to take one year, but got bumped to two recently.
mgh2 · 41d ago
Do you care to share more details? What questions did they ask and what were your replies?
TriangleEdge · 41d ago
The officers were "dirty". They brought me in a room to do an interrogation where one officer asked questions and the other took notes on an old computer. I literally told them: "I am not going to stay past my return date" and the officer asking questions told the officer taking notes to not write that down. They asked who my parents were, how much money I had, my employment history, what I did in the US while working on my previous TN, if I was in danger, etc.. They asked if I was applying for jobs and I said yes because I was unemployed. They then asked if the jobs were in the US and I said I would accept another TN job if I could. They call the process a "sworn statement".
For those of you who go through that, don't agree to the statement if they modified it, like mine. There's no cameras or recording devices so they can be dirty, and they abuse that fact. You have no rights at all at the border, and your assumptions on decency and honesty are not correct.
My assumption to this day is that they thought I was trying to work illegally, but this is not the case.
gruez · 41d ago
>They asked if I was applying for jobs and I said yes because I was unemployed. They then asked if the jobs were in the US and I said I would accept another TN job if I could. They call the process a "sworn statement".
So you told them that you were there for visiting/tourism, and they alleged you were coming to the US to work, on the basis that you're applying to jobs in the US?
ElevenLathe · 41d ago
I would like to remind everyone assuming that some kind of hassles at the border are normal and necessary (even if the specifics of this one make you mad) that this is NOT the case.
Our current international regime of widespread passports, residency permits, visas, and border checks is barely 100 years old. Even in my lifetime (pre-9/11) the US-Canada border was a passport-free affair: just show the border guard your drivers' license (if you were the driver) and tell them you had nothing to declare -- they knew you were lying but didn't care.
It is not an iron law that international borders have to be dystopian "papers please" civil-liberties-optional free-fire zones. There is little point in the US policing either land border at all, but hassling NAFTA citizens (aka Canadians and Mexicans) traveling on business is especially absurd. A Schengen-style regime in North America (it's only THREE countries, should be pretty easy!) is way beyond overdue, but it seems like we're instead headed in the opposite direction as fast as we possibly can.
Open borders are the default state of the world. Anything interfering with our ability to travel should be in response to a specific, real problem. Instead, we've handed the door keys to our whole country to a handful of cops and private contractors who get paid more when they hassle us more.
reportgunner · 41d ago
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
stewx · 42d ago
My takeaway from this is that laws and rules don't matter if the officials on the ground are incompetent, ignorant, and have contempt for you.
There is a lot of unnecessary cruelty and lack of due process in this story.
freehorse · 42d ago
I sort of disagree. There _is_ a process, which optimises for holding people as long as possible for the prison industrial complex to make money. When you privatise these kind of social services, this is what happens. This is not due to a few officials on the ground that just happened by chance to be "incompetent, ignorant, and have contempt for you". As the article concludes,
> The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
> Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
> The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.
ethbr1 · 42d ago
It's a couple things.
One is the private prison industry being incentivized to hold as many people as possible.
But there's also a bureaucracy (ICE and State) with little to no pressure to perform better for this particular population (because who cares about criminals?).
Consequently, you get an industry that's perfectly happy to warehouse people... coupled with a slow and ineffective government controlling the keys to their release.
Private detention facilities should be banned.
But the government also needs KPIs with consequences tied to them. E.g. average holding time, average response time to filing, etc. And leaders get fired / budgets cut if targets are missed.
freehorse · 42d ago
At this point, I am not sure if we can exclude that lobbying from private prisons does not affect the way bureaucracy runs, from the stage of legislation to the point of how said legislation is executed. Thus I am not sure that these two are in truly independent.
But otherwise I agree; even in places where detention facilities are not privatised, bureaucracy can still pose a lot of issues because, as you say, "who cares about criminals", or because certain traits are overrepresented in the group of people who take up these jobs.
ethbr1 · 42d ago
The "I don't know"s in the article smack of bureaucratic ineffectiveness more than deliberate obsfuscation.
To wit, that no one actually cares about doing anything.
And granted, that's long been a consequence of low morale in the prison and ICE employee pool, but now it's coupled with a removal of even the least pressure from above to do the job well.
In short, I don't think "Be cruel to people" needs to be messaged from above: "We don't care about anyone you're holding" is sufficient for low-level employees to be their worst selves.
csa · 41d ago
> The "I don't know"s in the article smack of bureaucratic ineffectiveness more than deliberate obsfuscation.
I’m pretty sure it’s not either.
In situations like this, it’s simply conflict avoidance and sticking to the responsibilities of your pay grade. Any given ICE employee may have a good idea where someone is likely to go or not go, but they almost certainly don’t know enough about any specific case to make a comment about it in a way that may have legal ramifications.
This may sound like punting responsibility, but if an ICE employee says something incorrect to someone being held, that could come back to haunt them via legal consequences. As such, if it’s not their job to answer questions about a detainee’s status, it’s probably prudent for them not to answer.
Let me be clear, I think that this is a racket. I also think that any person with decent morals and ethics should consider not working at these places.
That said, I don’t think it’s necessarily reasonable to criticize the ICE folks for staying in their lane when on the job.
derbOac · 42d ago
Well, now those incentives work in the opposite direction. There have been many reports of Trump being livid that his deportation quotas aren't being met.
When the incentive is a quota rather than just adjudication, you end up with what's going on now.
almostgotcaught · 42d ago
> There _is_ a process, which optimises for holding people as long as possible for the prison industrial complex to make money
"due process" is what you are due - it is what is afforded to you by the 4th amendment and habeus corpus. Op is correct.
pjc50 · 42d ago
However, the US has long been very clear: constitutional rights only apply to citizens. US law is perfectly happy with arbitrary brutality towards non-citizens.
(ECHR is different on this, which has caused a lot of controversy in the UK from people who want to be arbitrarily brutal towards non-citizens)
almostgotcaught · 42d ago
> constitutional rights only apply to citizens.
This isn't true and what I wish more than anything in life is if people would stop repeating unadulterated propaganda because that literally normalizes it.
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments
And don't try to gotcha me either - yes the same article says they have qualified the extent of those rights but
1. The qualifications are not "you have to be a citizen" but whether you "developed substantial ties to this country."
2. This woman had a work visa - I'd call that pretty substantial ties
jcranmer · 42d ago
> However, the US has long been very clear: constitutional rights only apply to citizens.
Nope, most of the constitutional rights apply to all people under the jurisdiction of the US. It's why the Bush administration set up Guantanamo--to try to evade any hint of constitutional protection, and he still failed that. (Of course, as Guantanamo also shows, the remedies available to people whose constitutional rights have been grossly violated by the government are quite lacking.)
> Not within 100 miles of the border unfortunately.
Taken from your link:
> In practice, Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people. These problems are compounded by inadequate training for Border Patrol agents, a lack of oversight by CBP and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the consistent failure of CBP to hold agents accountable for abuse. No matter what CBP officers and Border Patrol agents think, our Constitution applies throughout the United States, including within this “100-mile border zone.”
It seems that non-US citizen still have rights, but abuse is rampant within the US border patrol.
tptacek · 41d ago
I'm waiting for 'jcranmer to respond to this, because it was a response to this claim years ago that started me following him, but, no: the "100 miles from the border constitution-free zone" thing is a myth.
jcranmer · 41d ago
I wasn't planning on responding to this, because the sibling comment already points out that the ACLU's own explainer page is walking back its original description of it as the "Constitution-free zone".
Although while I'm here, I will note that they still don't discuss the fact that--as far as I can tell--all the regulations and laws means the 100 miles start not from the water's edge, but from the international boundary, which is 12 miles out to sea. And which also means Chicago is not in the 100 mile border zone, since the actual Canadian border is on the side of Michigan, well over 100 miles away.
tptacek · 41d ago
That's what I remember about your comment! The extreme maritime border nerdery.
canucker2016 · 41d ago
...except at border crossings (which may be at a US border crossing or at an international port of entry like an airport gate where US customs has a checkpoint).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) may search any electronic devices without probable cause at these points.
I was disagreeing that it is just a matter of some officials doing a bad job. And in any case it is not about who is right or wrong, OP is right in identifying that there is no due process, and I did not disagree with that.
tdb7893 · 41d ago
To some extent this has always been the case in the US fairly broadly. From living in cities in the Midwest I've heard stories from people I know and their interactions with police and luckily the stories aren't this bad but they are in the same vein of incompetence and cruelty with little recourse.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 42d ago
There's that proverb "You might have the right of way, but the semi truck will still kill you". We might have the Constitution, but it apparently is enforced on an honor system. (Plus non-citizens don't have any rights, so I guess they aren't inalienable human rights after all, eyeroll)
codexb · 41d ago
The San Diego port of entry is the busiest land border crossing in the western hemisphere. The takeaway here should be that the resources to handle immigration along the southern border are insufficient.
TheCoelacanth · 41d ago
Imprisoning someone takes far more resources than any other way of handling them, so I don't see how lack of resources can be blamed here.
codexb · 41d ago
If you’re deporting someone, they have to be in custody. They have to deport her to Canada, not Mexico. They likely deal with many other countries and have to arrange for transportation back to all those countries.
I don’t think anyone would have a problem if she was processed promptly and quickly deported or if the confinement accommodations were nicer. That’s purely a resources problem.
defrost · 41d ago
> They have to deport her to Canada, not Mexico.
In theory and past practice, perhaps.
Currently the USofA is comfortable deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador with no trial or other due process.
Venezuela has historically not cooperated with deportations. They also actively send their criminals to the US.
righthand · 42d ago
This country is sick in the head. We actively eschew healthcare for temporary satisfaction that we are locking some minority group up. Then the defense spend lobby comes back around riling people up so that they can make money and people can have temporary satisfaction that they are safe.
danso · 42d ago
> A woman asked me for the name of someone they could contact on my behalf. In moments like this, you realize you don’t actually know anyone’s phone number anymore. By some miracle, I had recently memorized my best friend Britt’s number because I had been putting my grocery points on her account.
I definitely would be screwed in this situation. Time to remember by sibling’s number
elicash · 42d ago
Reminds me of doing civil disobedience -- you write your attorney's phone number on your arm beforehand.
betaby · 42d ago
> your attorney's phone
Right, people have attorneys. Very common thing ... nowhere?
> Right, people have attorneys. Very common thing ... nowhere?
By the number of people asserting that this sort of abusive from border patrol agents runs rampant and people just need to be ok with being deported when trying to lawfully enter the US, what leads you to believe that lawyering up in preparation to enter the US is unheard of?
littlestymaar · 42d ago
Nobody does civil disobedience by themselves: you do it as a group and yes the group better find an attorney beforehand …
betaby · 42d ago
The article about a person crossing the border. Are they supposed to have an attorney in the destination country?
elicash · 42d ago
I was simply sharing an anecdote about how we don't remember phone numbers anymore, in reply to someone sharing they didn't know their sibling's number. You're reading more into my comment than was stated or intended.
To read me as somehow condemning the woman in the original story seems pretty willfully bad faith.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
>Are they supposed to have an attorney in the destination country?
in this case, this one did, yes. It seems like this will be more common after this incident.
pm3003 · 42d ago
Consulates can sometimes provide emergency lawyer services. Assuming you're from a first-world country.
diggan · 42d ago
I feel like remembering the phone number of a consulate is less useful than remembering the number of your spouse/partner/close friend, for various scenarios.
Oh, well if DHS says so on X The Everything Site it must be true
yks · 41d ago
In a blink of an eye Americans went from "the government is out there to oppress you" to "if the government says the undisclosed people it snatches from the streets and deports are criminals, it must be true".
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
It's not necessarily an american thing. People will always have biased towards whatever fits their pre-conceived notions, and we seem to be in a post-truth society.
Ironically, it's not focused a lot more on feelz, no realz. People don't seem to want to remember that reality is in fact, often disappointing.
Vilian · 41d ago
Us-america are simply to ignorant to see that, they parrot what their sweet sweet propaganda say, it's just a shift from whoever is on power
> to help launch an American brand of health tonics called Holy! Water
> contained hemp
The actual company name is hempandhoneynj? That sells “ HIGH THC IS FOR EXPERIENCED CANNABIS USERS”.
I don’t think weed is legal yet on the federal level. There is some grey ares are on the THC vs weed classification, but note that also harsher laws - like dealing drugs - could have applied here.
diggan · 42d ago
The THC is derived from legal hemp it seems, which is why they call it "Hemp" and not "Cannabis" in the article, I'm guessing.
> Our Delta 9 THC is legal according to federal law and many state laws. All Delta 9 THC extract being offered is 100% derived from legal hemp and does not contain more than 0.3% ∆9THC.
So no, "harsher laws" couldn't apply here, as there are no scheduled drugs involved in either the process or final product.
hartator · 41d ago
That’s their claim on their website.
How is it different from a local dealer: trust me cops won’t care?
Federal law allowance on that 3% rule is very very narrow. And it’s highly likely that the THC is being re-enrich post haverst which then it is still not legal.
“Harsher laws” are pretty harsh. Even if no violence just “easing distribution”, it’s a max sentence of 10-year.
diggan · 41d ago
I dunno, if we start making up things like "She said she isn't a criminal, but what if she actually launders money" and not take the article for what it says, what's the point of discussing all of this at all?
hartator · 41d ago
This immigration employee did decide to classify this enriched hemp as a controlled substance, yes.
This doesn’t a crazy out of line interpretation of that 3% THC rule that seems like a legal hoop-hole, but it is just of the lack of enforcement of the law by other branches of the government that makes feel this way. It means to be accidental THC not laboratory enriched THC. Which is obviously the case here.
diggan · 41d ago
> This immigration employee did decide to classify this enriched hemp as a controlled substance, yes.
As far as I can tell, the submission article doesn't mention THC at all, and the only time hemp is mentioned is in this context:
> He claimed I also couldn’t work for a company in the US that made use of hemp – one of the beverage ingredients. He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.
Seems he was OK with the hemp, he was just not OK with the part where there was a Canadian working with a US company that used hemp.
Where are you getting the part that this individual chose to classify some hemp as cannabis from? Wouldn't he try to alert some of his boss in that case, rather than take back this woman's visa?
myvoiceismypass · 41d ago
Hemp And Honey seems to be a store that happens to sell Holy! Water. They seem to carry a lot of brands.
This appears to be their site: https://enjoyholywater.com/ - You can see they seem to focus on nootropics, mushrooms, herbs, etc with a little bit of hemp in it. Not so nefarious. This stuff is carried in mainstream stores all over the place.
JKCalhoun · 41d ago
I see Hemp Gummies on Amazon.
culebron21 · 42d ago
In 1992, I could only dream of going to the US.
When I got money and thought of travelling, I quickly realized it's too hard and humiliating to get visa, and preferred EU instead. And visa-free countries afterwards.
Then I planned to have kids and started contemplating what are costs, social security payments, public kindergartens, sick leaves, costs of ambulance (like if you break a spine), or giving a birth... and the US suddenly turned very, very unattractive. Even without these horror stories.
Gigachad · 42d ago
Governments need to start putting out travel warnings on the US. It’s becoming an increasingly dangerous place to visit.
ben_w · 42d ago
They are.
Germany:
"""Innenpolitische Lage
Amerikanische Großstädte sind landesweit mit einem Anstieg der Gewaltkriminalität konfrontiert. Es besteht auch weiterhin eine erhöhte Gefahr politisch motivierter Gewalt."""
Translation:
"""Domestic political situation
Major American cities are facing an increase in violent crime nationwide. There is still an increased risk of politically motivated violence."""
Quid pro quo.
Hurt the current administration's popularity by inconveniencing US citizens.
And in general, Visa free travel is a mutually beneficial deal. If the US stops giving the EU benefits, why shouldn't the EU reciprocate.
Personally, I get it but don't support it. I still appreciate my American brethren, just not their administration. We should hit back at the establishment, not the population. Big point there is reducing weapons import, and adding export tarrifs on F35 parts, perhaps ASML machines aswell.
mdp2021 · 42d ago
> Quid pro quo ... inconveniencing
Hitting the innocent is downright criminal.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
By that logic, couttries shouldn't counter tarriff the U.S. and take it on the chin.
Sadly the innocent are always the victims under leadership decisions. The method here involves angering them and hopefully overhtrowing the leaders who caused this. we'll see how it goes here.
mdp2021 · 41d ago
> Sadly the innocent are always the victims under leadership decisions
What you have stated is that, following your view, "people should impale leaders".
> angering them and hopefully overhtrowing the leaders
And that you would pester John to turn him against Jack. What should happen instead is that John will rightfully react against you (possibly both of you), with justification.
It is very basic lucid plain logic.
mdp2021 · 41d ago
So, sniper, any arguments? Now you look as if I denounced a vile perspective and some responded with a vile action.
anthomtb · 41d ago
My in-laws only obtained passports in their late 60's. They took one trip to Canada, which was their only international trip, ever. My FIL is quite proud of having never seen the Pacific Ocean. They are also 3-time Trump voters. If they survive the next 3.5 years while rejection of the constitution continues, will likely be 4-time Trump voters.
These are the types of people who 1) support the policies from TFA and 2) will not notice the loss of visa-free travel.
Perhaps your idea isn't to punish the Trump voters, but to galvanize the non-Trump voters?
apwell23 · 42d ago
would make european tourist spots so much clamer and nicer
The article is rather funny as French are supposedly "terrible at foreign languages", but try to find a Briton that can speak anything else than English, it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
bloak · 42d ago
People say that, but do we have any proper data, preferably on assessed language knowledge rather than claimed language knowledge?
There's some crap going on in France that English is specified as a requirement for many jobs even when it quite obviously isn't needed. So people lie and nobody cares. On the other hand, it seems to me that people in England are overly modest about their language abilities. I think if you handed out written instructions in French or German on how to win £1000 then a lot of people who wouldn't normally claim to know any foreign languages would successfully follow the instructions.
ben_w · 41d ago
It's hard for me to be exactly confident when comparing my 25-year-old GCSE grade C (or was it D?) in French to the current numerical grading system, but I think it's it's somewhere around the peaks of these graphs: https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2024/04/languages-are-sti...
My grasp of French is so monumentally bad, that last time I tried to say "I can't speak French" in French, the French woman next to me didn't understand because I said it wrong.
My German is coming along OK, but only because I've been living in Berlin since late 2018.
lenerdenator · 42d ago
... and that sort of attitude towards Americans is part of why Trump is able to play Europeans as a ambivalent-at-best bunch.
refurb · 41d ago
They should put travel warnings on every country then.
The woman in question tried to self-sponsor a TN visa after being denied earlier at the Canadian border. I can understand why USCBP starts to think “this woman is trying to commit fraud” not “innocent mistake”.
I know most countries would detain and deport people attempting to commit immigration fraud.
Not sure why people should hold the US to a higher standard than other countries.
jkrshnmenon · 41d ago
Most countries don't have for profit prisons or detention centers.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
Not even higher standard. Just a standard would be a good start for the US.
Vilian · 41d ago
Most country are 't fascists wanna be
rayiner · 41d ago
This lady is sketchy as hell. First, the U.S. revoked her visa:
> He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.
She's Canadian and lives in Canada, so she returned to Canada. But instead of applying for a visa again, she apparently flew to Mexico and tried to get in through the southern border:
> I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it.
Last I checked San Diego doesn't share a border with Canada. Why is a Canadian with a revoked Visa flying to Mexico to try and enter the U.S. through the southern border?
elorm · 42d ago
This whole debacle scares me.
It’s almost impossible to figure out the official reason she was flagged by the first border officer.
She had a prior denial for a work visa. Then flew into San Diego to apply the second time and got it.
Apparently, she should’ve applied via her consulate instead because of the prior denial ?
Can someone explain in non legal terms why this resulted in a visa revocation and detention?
everfrustrated · 41d ago
If you've previously been denied a visa you're no longer able to use the visa on arrival system. Hence you need to apply for a visa before you travel.
mjevans · 41d ago
I think the question is: why were they even let in at the border crossing if it wasn't a valid entry? Shouldn't they have been turned back there?
deskamess · 41d ago
Very likely, that as a Canadian, you can enter the US without a visa as long as you do not work. You need a TN visa+status to work. So probably entered US on passport (no visa status) and then applied for TN... during which things went poorly.
abeppu · 42d ago
Her point about private contractors being paid by the number of people detained is an important larger warning. Privatized systems are not magically more efficient; they can just as easily be the driver of the bureaucratic labyrinth.
javcasas · 41d ago
Perverse incentives. Someone didn't think about it, or maybe they did.
FireBeyond · 41d ago
Hell, even without the private aspect.
Prison guard unions universally and almost exclusively oppose any legalization and decriminalization efforts, regardless of the subject.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
oh they very much did. There's still a lot of people in the country that want any excuse to practice cruelty without consequence.
rdm_blackhole · 41d ago
It's not just the US that has these draconian and abusive laws.
In the UK you can be detained at the border without being given any reasons why, you don't have the right to a lawyer and you don't have the right to NOT answer the questions of the border agents. You also have to disclose the passwords to your phone and computer.
Then,they usually seize your devices for an arbitrary amount of time before eventually releasing you.
This applies to British citizens or foreigners.
It seems that the world is slowly but surely sliding in the wrong direction.
parliament32 · 40d ago
The story is good, but there are some interesting bits they mention in passing. Keys for why this all went so wrong:
"I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt... I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply."
So: she tried to get a work visa, was denied. Hired a San Diego lawyer, entered from Mexico, got her visa granted. Went home, tried to enter the country again, got her visa revoked and told to speak to a consulate. Then tried to enter again from Mexico, at that point she got detained.
Maybe all this could've been avoided if she did the visa paperwork through the consulate, like she was told to do, instead of showing up at a land crossing after her visa was revoked? A land crossing from a country she has no status in (Mexico), especially. Presumably she was detained because they couldn't just turn her around back into Mexico.
lurk2 · 40d ago
I read this story and it struck me as suspicious for the same reason. Peter Roberts (an immigration attorney) commented on it here a few days ago:
> That's extraordinarily unusual and in my experience has only happened when CBP believes that the applicant was lying or has a criminal record so I wouldn't base the decision on where/how to apply on this very low risk. Depending on the TN application, there are better and worse ways to apply for a TN and from an outcome standpoint, sometimes it's better to apply with CBP at the border or with CBP at a U.S. airport by flying directly to the U.S.
Yea that's scary. I was in a similar situation, but thankfully they just interrogated me for 5 hours and then sent me back to Canada.
My name was marked from that point, so everytime I re-entered US I had to get pulled into secondary.
blindriver · 42d ago
My sister accidentally brought a banana across the border from Canada into the US 20 years ago and because of that she gets secondary inspection every time.
littlestymaar · 42d ago
The part when you learn that these detention centers are for profit businesses really is the cherry on top of the dystopia.
ethagnawl · 42d ago
Why was this flagged? Aside from being absolutely terrifying (even as an American), it's directly relevant to large swaths of HN who are/might consider coming to the US to work on an H1B or similar visa or are looking to hire people in the same way.
bloopernova · 41d ago
Bad actors like to suppress discussion uncomfortable to them. They use ambiguity in rules to cover their actions as "just following the rules!" They know full well what they're doing and why.
Fizzadar · 42d ago
When I was younger I used to dream of living/working in the US. Now I’m hesitant to even visit as a tourist, despite many trips as a child (which we absolutely loved). Not worth the risk.
bloopernova · 42d ago
As a lawful permanent resident, I'm terrified of the country I've called home for a quarter century.
I don't think I would have survived what the Canadian woman went through.
EDIT: please call your congressperson and your senators. Tell them to stop this cruelty.
xtracto · 41d ago
Not sure if you read the whole article. But what REALLY scared me is not this women's experience, but the stories of the other people she met there:
>I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.
That, and a couple of other stories of people stuck there in the ICE concentration camps are crazy! I am scared right now because in a couple of months I have to travel to LA (on a tourist visa) for a connecting flight to Japan ... to think that I can be "disappeared" at immigration just because the immigration agent doesn't like me is chilling.
bloopernova · 41d ago
Make sure you have as much documentation as possible printed in triplicate.
Where you're staying, for how long, receipts and booking confirmation. Be very careful with any text messages that might sound "shady" to the very paranoid customs people.
Have an exact itinerary showing step by step where, when, who.
realo · 41d ago
Ok... so if I understand you correctly, traveling to the US under the current regime is about the same as traveling to North Korea.
Thank you for the heads up.
adamc · 42d ago
That people are flagging this as somehow irrelevant says a lot of bad things about the audience at hacker news.
ookblah · 42d ago
I don't know if it's just more media attention recently or what not, but I used to joke about not wanting to go to China because of these similar reasons. Strange feeling to recommend to friends visiting the US to now be just as careful. That story is honestly insane.
the_af · 42d ago
Why do people want to live in the US and jump through all these hoops and be subject to arbitrary detentions, anyway? The bureaucracy is hellish. Many other countries have decent living conditions and don't randomly mistreat the people trying to make a living, nor do they behave understanding or cruel at the whim of whoever's in office. Or if they do, it's not as bad as in the US.
Is it just that the US is closer to these people than other, saner countries? I can understand if that's the actual reason.
Also: why do border officers have so much power? It seems wrong. They are low level employees, they shouldn't be able to change your life (or trip plans) just because they feel bored and want to spice things up.
oefrha · 42d ago
> Why do people want to live in the US and jump through all these hoops and be subject to arbitrary detentions, anyway?
Lots of people, especially those from third world countries, don’t know what they are getting into. They’ve been brainwashed into believing “the American dream” (that anyone can find good jobs, be homeowners, etc.) by movies, television, social media, and other immigrants making money in the immigration business (many of whom were, ironically, lured in by their predecessors and ended up not able to find the dream jobs they were promised). This is why you hear about people blowing $10-100k on gang trafficking services to get in from Mexico, which is super puzzling otherwise when you consider that kind of money goes a long way in their home countries.
fads_go · 41d ago
I would again refer you to the Statue of Liberty, and what America once stood for. You might be right about the brainwashing from media, but there is an older, deeper story and promise of the United States as the land of the free.
I think there is even a song about it, "land of the free home of the brave" or something like that. I hear it occasionally at sporting events.
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
And it was written while slavery was still in full swing, right? And long before women were given any say in the democratic process. When did the genocides of the natives come into the picture, were they also counted among the free and the brave?
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 42d ago
> Also: why do border officers have so much power? It seems wrong.
The US democratic process is not good at protecting small groups of disenfranchised people: Non-citizens, LGBTQ people, prisoners, etc.
Those people get the burden of making their own allies and fighting their whole lives for rights, while most voters prefer not to think about them.
Hell, black people are 12% of the population and their rights have been on the frontline for over 100 years. So many groups are even smaller.
I'm not sure if any other country does this perfectly. Rawls' veil of ignorance is extremely hard to enforce in practice, no wonder we all live in Omelas.
dfedbeef · 42d ago
Yep. The police in the US are out of control; local, state and federal.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 42d ago
I like the idea of making cops wear bright pastel colors. It will have a chilling effect on the macho freaks
Febra33 · 42d ago
I have family in the US that I used to visit on a yearly basis, and as of this year I am afraid to visit them ever again. I'm an engineer with a very good income and a very stable life where I live. I would never immigrate illegally to the US to do some illegal job for scraps. And yet here we are, no one is safe. Anyone can end up in one of these hellholes.
account42 · 41d ago
No one is safe from putting fear in their own minds, yes. But you don't have to do that.
Febra33 · 39d ago
I'd rather not play stupid games for barely a prize worth it. With other words, I don't want US immigrations officers going through my phone, seeing a Trump critical message and throwing me into a hole for two weeks. I'd rather pick safer destinations :)
drumhead · 42d ago
If the objective is to scare people off from going to the USA, then they're doing a magnificent job. I've heard other cases of people with green cards being arrested and put in terrible conditions, with absolutely no reason given. This woman was ready to go back home and not enter the US, but instead she was dragged through hell and only released because she was Canadian. All those with different passports get subjected to their own more oppressive and never ending hells, like being deported to a prison camp in Ecuador with no idea when you'd ever be released.
New America is absolutely terrifying.
swat535 · 42d ago
New America? I beg to differ.
The United States has always been hostile to outsiders—what’s different now is that they’re not even trying to hide it.
As a naturalized Canadian, crossing the U.S. border has always been a frustrating ordeal. Despite holding a valid Canadian passport, I’m routinely subjected to an extra hour of “security” questioning. Maybe I’m just unlucky. Or maybe it’s because I was born in an "undesirable" Middle Eastern country and have brown skin. One time I was detained for 5 hours and were questioned about "Islam" (ironically, I'm a Christian so I couldn't answer their questions).
My belongings are always searched, and I’m treated as less than human by CBP. I suspect that if you’re white, crossing from EU or elsewhere, you were used to an easier time until now.
The gloves are off.
yolo666999420 · 41d ago
For whatever it's worth, I'm treated this way as a white American. I'm selected for extra screening every single time I reenter the country. Though, I don't think it's ever been longer that 30 minutes or so. I don't know why but some combination of having a beard, being naturally anxious and having traveled to "unusual" countries -- at least by American standards. Crossing the border makes for a guaranteed panic attack and I've let my passport expire. It's a damn shame, too, because it's depriving my kids of invaluable life experiences and has brought my relationship with my spouse (who loves to travel) to the brink on multiple occasions.
mrmlz · 41d ago
US Border control is always worse than any EU-country (as a white EU-resident I might add). We have lots of umlauts in our names äöå etc. which can seriously mess up you ESTA or travel booking unless you double and triple check :)
But still India had the absolute worst border control I've ever experienced. I probably rather sleep on a cold prison floor a couple of days than having to manually reenter all my information eight times!
stackskipton · 41d ago
I mean, as US citizen I find my interactions with CBP to be easy but it’s because their options are admit me or arrest me vs German guard who questioned me for 15 minutes if my personal laptop was because I was planning on working. Anytime you are entering a country you have right to be in, it’s generally easier.
neves · 41d ago
I'm curious: which were the unusual countries?
yolo666999420 · 41d ago
Turkey and India, afaict.
graemep · 41d ago
> Or maybe it’s because I was born in an "undesirable" Middle Eastern country and have brown skin. One time I was detained for 5 hours and were questioned about "Islam" (ironically, I'm a Christian so I couldn't answer their questions).
Scary levels of prejudice and ignorance there. Prejudice against Muslims and I am guessing not knowing about Middle Eastern Christians exist.
diggan · 42d ago
I've never been to the US, because I've been scared of these things, for decades, after reading stories about it. I've traveled to Canada and Mexico multiple times, but one time I made the mistake of having a connecting flight in Florida (first and last time).
As expected, I was interrogated by police-looking people about my motivations, yelled at by some other ones to walk faster and use some machine faster, and almost missed my connecting flight because of the "some questions", even though I never actually intended to enter the US, since I was on my way to Mexico.
graemep · 41d ago
Me too. A lot of people who are widely travelled have told me that the US is the most hostile country to enter so, although there are places and people I would love to visit, I have never been.
vlovich123 · 41d ago
Was traveling to the US that fraught before 9/11? I think people forget just how much 9/11 damaged the national psyche which to me honestly explains things like Trump.
creaturemachine · 41d ago
Pre 9/11 we could cross with nothing more than a driver's license, making trips with no reason other than to goof off. I even did the same to Mexico. Passports were for overseas or countries that required visas.
neves · 41d ago
Does it mean that Al Qaeda won?
kdmtctl · 41d ago
That was my first thought. The goal was fear. Here it is.
busterarm · 41d ago
It's mutual for Americans going the other way and has been for at least the 20 years plus that I've been regularly visiting Canada.
freehorse · 42d ago
This whole situation -coupled with the outright bans or obstacles in giving visas to people from several countries- cannot but have unpredictable consequences. For example, right now, I cannot imagine any big academic international conference keep taking place in the US. And if they do, they should get boycotted. US right now is neither accessible nor safe for foreign citizens. And I bet recruiting or holding to highly skilled labour force will start being a problem too.
firefax · 41d ago
The venue I published in before dropping out of my PhD purposefully alternated between the US and international locations for these reasons. (Some folks would complain that Canada "didn't count", which would of course greatly offend the Canadians present.)
One prominent professor was screamed at, nearly tazed, and had their car torn apart because the CBP thought they were homeless, which would be amusing if this senior researcher had not been obviously traumatized by the experience.
I have heard terrible stories from Canadian academics for years through presidencies of "both sides", and I'm glad this story is getting the traction it deserves but we also need to be mindful we did not arrive at this moment overnight.
jcranmer · 42d ago
> For example, right now, I cannot imagine any big academic international conference keep taking place in the US.
There is a language standards committee meeting that was going to take place in the US that is now not because too many attendees think the US is no longer a safe place to travel to. We're already seeing this damage take place.
fc417fc802 · 41d ago
Really sad the sibling comment got flagged to death. I code in English! Everyone should code in English! No more C++, no more language standards committees, no more nonstandard languages!
freehorse · 41d ago
We should actually call it American, not English! The fact that several centuries ago some people in England spoke this language does not give them rights to call it with their place's name, when AMERICA is NOW so GREAT. I code in American, and AMERICAN is the greatest language of all!
And plus we do not need any standards committee for that, just an executive order.
femiagbabiaka · 41d ago
It’s not just foreign citizens: it’s anyone who doesn’t look white. If you’re a U.S. citizen maybe you’ll get the privilege of being let go in less than a week.
> For example, right now, I cannot imagine any big academic international conference keep taking place in the US.
I’m not sure what area you work in, but there are still many in computer science and optimization.
freehorse · 41d ago
Which were already planned. And still, right now increasingly more people cannot go or wont go to them. Let's see after this summer how things are gonna go.
ssijak · 42d ago
Objective is to earn as much money as possible without regard for people. Those detention centers and prisons are privately owned.
danmaz74 · 42d ago
From the article: "Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts."
She wasn't released because she was Canadian. She was released because it was becoming a PR issue.
elicash · 42d ago
One thing I'm keeping an eye on is if Canada eventually updates its travel advisory warning for the United States https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/united-states (Currently still at 'normal precautions')
(The forced labor camp is in El Salvador, not Ecuador).
apples_oranges · 42d ago
I wonder why agents in the field, customs, immigration etc, seem so eager to implement these changes.
forinti · 42d ago
I'm not a psychologist, but I'm pretty sure all police forces should have very strong and active civilian oversight, because they seem to attract (or maybe even nurture) some very aggressive people.
In my country, some police forces have skulls on their uniforms and vehicles. How twisted is that?
rayiner · 42d ago
But the civilian oversight voted for the guy who promised mass deportations.
genewitch · 41d ago
Police reform as a platform is career suicide in the US, because the blue lobby is huge. Not as big as AARP or AIPAC but it's up there.
No comments yet
somenameforme · 41d ago
You'll find people of Mexican ethnicity widely represented in ICE, Border Patrol, and other such orgs. People looking in from the outside might find this odd, but it's really quite simple. Getting into the US legally is hard, expensive, time consuming, and oh god - the paperwork. And eventually gaining citizenship makes gaining entry look like the easiest thing ever. So you go through all of this, and then somebody else pays some smugglers (enriching some of the worst of humanity), crosses illegally and now 'Yay - Yo soy Americano, hombre!' How do you think the former is going to feel about the latter?
It's also not just some American or Mexican thing. The same is true in many expat communities (of Americans) around the world. Actually maintaining your visa and other stuff in many places is frequently a massive PITA, expensive, time consuming, and so on. If somebody's there with the claim 'No you see bro, don't you understand I'm just an "undocumented migrant"', he's going to be held in very poor regard by most people there legally.
So even at the most basic level - illegal immigration is deeply unfair to people we want in the country. And that's just one aspect among many. The tales of things gone wrong, or simply of the emotional appeal of somebody trying to make a better life for themselves, can be very appealing - but it's but one dimension of an issue that has affects many, and has many consequences.
Among the first questions: are they well trained? Some countries cut corners over expenses...
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
In the case of the regular officers who were given ICE powers earlier this year they weren't specifically trained at all.
pjc50 · 42d ago
Rhetorical question, or are you genuinely asking?
juujian · 41d ago
I wonder why they chose to work for ICE...
projectazorian · 41d ago
ICE is often the employer of last resort for wannabe cops who can't get jobs at other agencies due to low IQ, poor physical fitness, criminal history, misconduct, etc.
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
Many of them didn't, the right to act as ICE was extended beyond the service itself through executive order.
toomuchtodo · 41d ago
Position of authority and power.
apples_oranges · 42d ago
Genuinely. Are they all Trump fans that say "finally we can do what we always wanted to do" or what?
I mean there's the law or some executive order but there's also leeway in implementing. I am not qualified to judge but it just seems to be some sort of preemptive obedience.
blindriver · 42d ago
Obama deported more people than any president in history.
exe34 · 42d ago
I get the impression that a lot of school bullies get into law enforcement. they don't have the skills/credentials to do anything else and they have the streak of cruelty that you need to fit in.
MisterTea · 41d ago
I knew a guy in my early 20's, not white, who wanted to be a cop. Once he told me "If I have a bad day, everyone gonna have a bad day." I dont talk to him anymore because he became a cop and turned into a fucking asshole.
cratermoon · 41d ago
ACAB
genewitch · 41d ago
"The bishop's smile, a gilded, hollow thing, hides taxman's greed, and whispers of the king; the knight's sworn oath, a rusted, broken chain, while village elders plot for whispered, selfish gain; no judge's word, nor lord's decree rings true, in thirteen twelve, what's left for us to do?"
cratermoon · 40d ago
1312!
MisterTea · 41d ago
Where is this quoted from?
d3nj4l · 42d ago
> Genuinely. Are they all Trump fans that say "finally we can do what we always wanted to do" or what?
Yes. It's trivial to tell if you're not a citizen and go through customs.
otikik · 42d ago
"Just following orders"
ta1243 · 42d ago
Was due to go to meet our new local hires post April. Standard ESTA. No way I'm going now.
pjc50 · 42d ago
Sensible - meeting new hires counts as "work", which is strictly not included under just the ESTA, so you'd have to decide whether to lie to the border guards about it or risk this treatment.
ta1243 · 42d ago
Hell just answering a phonecall from HQ would be a risk.
toomuchtodo · 41d ago
Onboard them somewhere safe outside the US? Retreat style.
elif · 42d ago
RIP due process 1776-2025
cratermoon · 41d ago
A substantial portion of US citizens would not date the beginning of due process back to 1776.
lavelganzu · 41d ago
Technically the "due process" clause is in the 14th Amendment, ratified 1868. ;)
cafard · 41d ago
"nor shall any person ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
is in the Fifth Amendment.
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
Many might say the 19th, which took effect in 1920.
jajko · 42d ago
Smart immigrants shouldn't migrate to US anymore, period. Not if you have more than just very short-sighted dollar signs on your eyes. Its just plain out stupid thing to do, to be treated worse than garbage. This is how institutionalized xenophobia looks like.
The fact is, I've read very similar articles about how US treats any non-US citizens a decade or two ago. Nothing changed dramatically, people just bring these up now due to current admin. In US, if you are not a citizen, you are subhuman and treated as such, directly by government. Why the fuck would anybody with any amount of dignity cause it upon themselves willingly?
Europe can offer you tons of opportunities and treat you with dignity. Good quality of life and happiness is much easier to achieve, much less stress, your health and education of your kids will be taken care of. Or Australia. Heck, almost any other free place but current US, and many places experience much more actual personal freedom currently.
We can certainly do more than just boycott some nazi ev cars.
pjc50 · 42d ago
As a Brit: be careful about bigging up how Europe treats immigrants, because the Mediterranean issue has really upped the brutality of immigration enforcement and has resulted in some countries making it illegal to rescue drowning people.
twUewhag · 42d ago
The charges are that they facilitated trafficking by rescuing people that didn't need rescuing:
Ironically somewhat corroborated by the photo in the article. What is the solution for Italy and Greece with these massive coast lines and islands? The refugees deliberately lose their passports. If the rescuers dumped them in a random North African country, everything would be fine. But they want to import as many as possible for ideological reasons.
tpm · 41d ago
> What is the solution for Italy and Greece with these massive coast lines and islands?
The solution is to once again enable applying for asylum at the embassies and consulates. Then nobody has to drown.
> If the rescuers dumped them in a random North African country, everything would be fine.
Apart from the many people being killed by random North African country, like what is happening currently with migrants in Libya. That's not fine at all.
> But they want to import as many as possible for ideological reasons.
Humanitarian reasons, not ideological.
account42 · 41d ago
> The solution is to once again enable applying for asylum at the embassies and consulates. Then nobody has to drown.
So you think if those countries don't accept everyone that wants to enter then it's ok for people to try to enter illegally? That's not how borders work.
> Apart from the many people being killed by random North African country, like what is happening currently with migrants in Libya. That's not fine at all.
They can go to a neighboring country without being "stranded" at sea where they need "rescuing".
> Humanitarian reasons, not ideological.
Humanitarian reasons do not require you to pick up people near the coast of Africa and and instead of taking them back back to where they came from bring them to ports much further away. That's purely ideological. One could even call it treasonous.
tpm · 41d ago
> The solution is to once again enable applying for asylum at the embassies and consulates. Then nobody has to drown.
> So you think if those countries don't accept everyone that wants to enter then it's ok for people to try to enter illegally?
Right, so let's unpack this. There is no way to apply for asylum at embassies. It was previously possible, but it's not possible anymore. If you want to apply for asylum, you have to be physically present in the country where you want to apply. Since applying for asylum is legal (it's a guaranteed human right and some countries try to respect at least a subset of human rights, wonder for how long), it is also legal to enter a country for the purpose of applying for asylum, no matter what everyone else says.
> countries don't accept everyone
This is not about accepting anyone. Asylum is a totally different legal concept than migration. Asylum is granted (or not), not accepted. People that are drowning in the Med. sea are applying for asylum, if they survive. For most of them, it will not be granted, but they are exercising their rights. People have a right to apply for asylum, countries have a right to grant or refuse at will.
> They can go to a neighboring country without being "stranded" at sea where they need "rescuing".
Everyone has the right not to be killed. Just a basic respect to other human beings would be welcome at this stage.
> Humanitarian reasons do not require you to pick up people near the coast of Africa...
Yes they do, there are again legal reasons for that. The laws can be changed, but until then it is indeed the only legal thing to do. And also some people don't enjoy seeing other people drowning.
queuebert · 42d ago
> Why the fuck would anybody with any amount of dignity cause it upon themselves willingly?
Presumably because their home country treats them even worse? At least that's the point of the refugee program.
diggan · 42d ago
> Presumably because their home country treats them even worse
True or not, the important part of why people emigrate is because they believe it to be better. US has been really good at propaganda for a long time, and many outsiders (used to) believe that the US truly is the land of the free, although all the evidence pointed in the other direction.
motorest · 41d ago
> Presumably because their home country treats them even worse? At least that's the point of the refugee program.
I personally know multiple non-US citizens who did their PhD at MIT. Most of them faced the requirement to temporarily move to the US as a major but necessary nuisance. I also know others who explicitly opted to skip their MIT application to enroll instead in an European program, with all the hoop jumping required to apply for visas being a major factor.
This was a decade or so ago. I assure you that right now things are not looking at better.
Also, people like you should really try to touch grass and try to learn how things are back in the real world. For a few decades now the US is far from being the top choice. In fact, the US doesn't even feature in the world's top 20 in quality of life, in spite of everything. What exactly do you think is happening?
rangestransform · 41d ago
> Its just plain out stupid thing to do, to be treated worse than garbage.
My home country and the EU treat me even worse because of the lack of 200k+ USD jobs for my experience level
account42 · 41d ago
That's a real first world problem. Most of the world, including most people in western countries don't earn that much.
d3nj4l · 42d ago
> Smart immigrants shouldn't migrate to US anymore, period. Not if you have more than just very short-sighted dollar signs on your eyes. Its just plain out stupid thing to do, to be treated worse than garbage. This is how institutionalized xenophobia looks like.
No. The US is still the best place in the world for immigrants. There's no other place in the world (barring maybe Canada) where as many people from as many other countries and ethnicities can feel welcome and a part of society. I have several friends who move to European countries (mostly Germany but also the Netherlands) and they never felt like they belonged, while in the US I feel like everyone else. What's going on right now is a temporary shift in this policy, but hopefully the pendulum will swing back.
richev · 42d ago
Nonsense.
Saying that as a European who lived in the US for a few years, now residing in Australia.
d3nj4l · 42d ago
You're European - you don't understand what it's like as an immigrant from the third world.
A_D_E_P_T · 41d ago
London at this point is mostly immigrants from the third world. Huge swaths of Frankfurt and Paris are the same way.
Sure, if you immigrate to a random town (population = 1500) in the French Alps from Africa, I grant that you'll never fit in. But the same goes if you immigrate to a small Iowa farming town (population = 1500) from Ecquador.
southernplaces7 · 41d ago
>Europe can offer you tons of opportunities and treat you with dignity. Good quality of life and happiness is much easier to achieve
I was wondering how long it would take for this post to generate comments from the smug "as a European" crowd of people with deluded notions of superiority for the complex European continent.
I detest the screaming orangutan politics of Trump and his hardcore followers but the U.S. as a whole mostly remains a fantastic melting pot destination for immigrants like it's always been. One 4-year presidency (after a largely ineffectual and sometimes laughable previous one) does not have to mold the history or legacy of a country. By that logic, barely a state in Europe would be worth recommending at all given the continent's none too distant history or barbaric mistreatment of immigrants.
Even in modern Europe, no, treatment with dignity is not very guaranteed. The old racism of many European countries is seething just below the surface and if it¿s applied even to other Europeans, you can imagine how it might be felt by immigrants from the many countries that have for decades migrated to the U.S and integrated amazingly well for the most part.
Shitting on the U.S has always been de jure in certain circles, and now more than previously (partly deserved thanks to Trump) but it shouldn't happen at the expense of reality.
Vilian · 41d ago
>I was wondering how long it would take for this post to generate comments from the smug "as a European" crowd of people with deluded notions of superiority for the complex European continent.
Dozen of country are better than US, people point that out, us-american get offended lmao, relax, we didn't even started pointing to oceania and Asian as better alternative than US
nickd2001 · 41d ago
"One 4-year presidency does not have to mold the history or legacy of a country." What actually happens after 4 years though? Isn't the concern, the supreme court ruling that the president is above the law? So laws like, you can't run for more than 2 terms, you must have a democratic election where everyone gets a vote, basically all laws around elections, no longer need be followed. Or for that matter any other laws. A president could seemingly behave like Hitler and face no justice. Trump won't live forever, but what's to stop him handing over to someone similar? (BTW to your main point, I agree indeed Europe has its major issues too)
twUewhag · 42d ago
Thanks, the EU is full and has enough immigrants. Why should EU citizens pay outrageous rents, compete against the whole world with their degrees, get lower wages and have prime property bought up by Chinese and Russian oligarchs?
(This does not mean that people should be treated brutally at the border.)
otikik · 42d ago
> Thanks, the EU is full and has enough immigrants
EU is full of old people and not enough children. The population pyramid looks like a bullet:
It's not difficult to see where that leads to, if we stop accepting immigrants.
account42 · 41d ago
Lack of offspring is a direct result of cultural and financial policies that tell people they shouldn't settle down and prevent them from affording it. You can fix that instead of giving up your country's identity.
imtringued · 41d ago
The "immigration crisis" is silently saving the retirement programs of EU countries. People are xenophobic to the point of willingly engaging in self sabotaging their countries.
mrguyorama · 41d ago
People would literally rather die impoverished, uncared for, and with no dignity in a failing system than maybe have a few brown people around who casually speak a different language and yet, by the testimony of everyone I've ever asked work ten times harder than any local for literally anything.
Like, it's not a perfect solution, there are growing pains, but an adult someone else paid to give a high school education is an insanely good resource. The US's entire gimmick and history has been getting millions of poor immigrants with different ideas and a shred of hope and putting them to work building our country.
But nononono we definitely didn't do this bullshit already with chinese, japanese, german, italian, irish, african, jewish, polish, etc etc etc people. Don't you know it's utterly impossible for people from another country to ever get along with locals? They definitely don't consider themselves just "American" after three generations very reliably, no that would be too easy!
God forbid people in ten generations have slightly darker skin I guess.
account42 · 41d ago
> People would literally rather die impoverished, uncared for, and with no dignity in a failing system
False equivalence. You don't have to give up your country to fix it.
> than maybe have a few brown people around who casually speak a different language
The state of most larger european cities is already well beyond that, bringing with it tons of problems.
> "work ten times harder than any local for literally anything"
That's literally saying they help companies regress the standard of living that locals have fought for.
Meanwhile overall these economic migrants are a net negative financial impact overall because most of them do not come to work but to benefit from generous social programs that they have never paid into.
thomasingalls · 40d ago
What country are you even talking about? You seem very determined to tell everyone this is the way the world is, but steadfastly fail to show any evidence.
seanw444 · 41d ago
People don't want the responsibility of having kids and raising them properly, so they substitute their posterity for foreigners as a bandaid fix. EU is truly a yikes.
otikik · 41d ago
That is an extremely simplistic view.
Vilian · 41d ago
Excellent summary of how a us-american think
twUewhag · 42d ago
If the rents go up and a native couple that still remembers the living standards of their parents is forced to raise a family in two rooms, they will not have children. Immigrants used to that situation might.
There are other solutions, e.g. that the wealthy boomers pay with their houses for their retirements or are forced to rent out their huge properties.
The retirement ponzi scheme needs to stop at some point anyway. With automation one might also need fewer workers.
Most importantly, many immigrants receive social security and are not employed.
ethbr1 · 42d ago
There are multiple simultaneous problems:
- A political unwillingness to reign in private capital that's exacerbating resident housing shortages / rent increases (read: AirBnb)
- An infrastructure underinvestment in building sufficient new housing (or motivating current housing owners to densify)
- An underappreciation (Germany) that one can't switch energy mix at nation-scale without first building replacement capacity
- (Europe at least has far more child-rearing-friendly policies than the US)
But all of that is a "maintain demographic shape AND ___" problem.
Countries with inverted demographic pyramids go financially south very quickly.
At best, there are some extremely hard compromises to make (higher taxes on a smaller working base, or decreased social/retirement benefits).
At worst, there are no solutions to balancing a budget and things spiral out of control quickly.
It's underappreciated that "young immigrant labor is funding the country".
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 42d ago
Guess I'll die, can't find a country that will take me and my partners
adamc · 42d ago
I hate this new world and the rise of selfishness.
mdp2021 · 42d ago
Which has now become a political programme ("(We won't do what is right, ) we will do what is in our interest").
tpm · 41d ago
> we will do what is in our interest
if that at least was true, but often it is not
rangestransform · 40d ago
I like that people are starting to realize that their first world countries should not give up their resources and power altruistically
How the plunders are divided domestically is another issue but I’d be damned if my country was altruistic internationally
thomasingalls · 41d ago
Isn't it obvious that this has more to do with oligarchs hoarding wealth than it does with "being full" of immigrants? Immigrants are nowhere near numerous enough to be doing the kind of damage you claim, but the extremely wealthy do have a stranglehold on resources.
account42 · 41d ago
It's both. And immigrants help the wealthy class become even richer by providing cheap labor while everyone makes up the rest in social security payments.
thomasingalls · 40d ago
Are you making the frequently repeated but always false assertion that immigrants don't pay into social security?
You know who's not paying their fair share into social security in any country? It's the rich, yo! It's the rich! By a wide margin!
To be perfectly clear, I don't care one way or the other about more immigration or less immigration.
What I am saying is that compound interest and the ability to purchase assets is going to continue to draw wealth away from everyone except the ultra wealthy, and immigration policy has effectively nothing to do with that.
Calling on everyone to hate each other is going to prevent us from acting together to solve this problem. We could instead work together, unionize, vote for policies and politicians that won't let the ultra wealthy continue to hoard their gold like dragons.
qoez · 41d ago
As a non american: America can get away with a lot more than this and still be an attractive place to try to move to. SF and many other places offer job opportunities the EU can't, and despite this and much more pain of trying to work there it's still worth it.
diggan · 41d ago
> SF and many other places offer job opportunities the EU can't,
Besides a job that just pays more money, what sort of unique opportunities exists in the US that doesn't exist anywhere in Europe? Genuinely curious, as I can't seem to think of any on my own.
LPisGood · 41d ago
Lots of the best colleges in the world are in USA. That’s not to say some aren’t in the EU, but by numbers USA has Europe thoroughly outclassed.
diggan · 41d ago
Judging by the "intellectual purge" that just started, I'm not sure working as a professor at a college (world class or not) is such a great job opportunity. But I'm not close to academia at all, so maybe I'm wrong.
disgruntledphd2 · 41d ago
It's important to note that basically all university rankings are massively, massively skewed by the native English speaking countries.
Additionally, lots of UK and US universities have huge endowments which definitely helps.
That's not to say that there aren't great Universities there, but really international students go to the US (and some of the EU) so that they have a better chance of working there post study.
LPisGood · 40d ago
“They come to US so they have a better chance of working in US” seems like it isn’t a counter point.
mschuster91 · 42d ago
> New America is absolutely terrifying.
New? I have advised people to not go to the US ever since they instituted the requirement to provide any and all social media profiles they ever had. Way too many chances for some off-context tweet from a decade or two ago to lead to getting refused at the border by CBP with no recourse.
Additionally, anyone who ever got arrested in their life - and be it a conviction for marijuana smoking as a kid and no matter if you actually got convicted, released or the records expunged/sealed - will either have to lie on their application (which is a bad idea because no one knows if the NSA doesn't have taps on other countries' judiciary systems) or have an additional arbitrary hurdle to pass at the border.
And on top of that you're in a conundrum: you have to book hotels, cars and flights prior to applying for a visa because you need that to prove you're not going to overstay... but if your visa/ESTA application fails, you're out a lot of money for nothing.
It's not just permanent or temporary immigration, tourists have been affected as well for years. But hey, the US seems to be willing to lose thousands of dollars for each tourist they scare off, so if it's worth it for them, I'll gladly spend my money somewhere I feel welcomed instead of like a threat.
All the 45th/47th admin has done is adding even more uncertainty to an already steaming hot pile of dung. At least our government has reacted and updated the hints on travels to the US [1], but shied away for now from issuing an official travel warning.
A better advice would be to avoid social media. You don't have to broadcast your private life to the world but if you do you need to live with the fact that the world includes border control - and it included them even before they started asking for your accounts explicitly.
mschuster91 · 40d ago
That a) doesn't undo past or even deleted social media profiles. Library of Congress has archived the Twitter firehose for years.
And b) it helps nothing against the host of other issues I raised.
mdp2021 · 42d ago
Sorry, but only modalities are a new thing, not the discretionary part with all disregard to proportion. Already decades ago people (and high profile people) were stopped at the custom and sent back without justification (reconstructed as "apparent dislike") with the first flight.
No comments yet
Mashimo · 42d ago
What is the benefit of leaving the lights on 24/7?
You weaken the inmate, but how does the prison make more profit from that?
ta1243 · 42d ago
It's punishment, which leads to the average american cheering and saying "yes, more!", meaning more support to the system.
themaninthedark · 42d ago
If they turn off or down the light and someone injures another or gets seriously sick then there is a lawsuit.
Layers claim the guards didn't notice because the low light.
Jury finds that is a factor and awards.
Now it is policy in all detention centers to keep light on.
stackskipton · 41d ago
Lowers guard costs. If you turn down the lights, you need more guards and they are more at risk. Lights on, they can easily see and react so you need fewer.
b3lvedere · 41d ago
More detuctable costs
Weakened inmates hopefully will not start a riot.
steviedotboston · 41d ago
Her visa was revoked, and then she entered the US again. That's an immigration offense that can get you detained at the border (any international airport).
deskamess · 41d ago
Correct me if I am wrong... she was actually in the US to apply for a new visa with a new company and not on business with the old company.
steviedotboston · 41d ago
You apply for a visa in your country of residence. If you are in the US already you need to have a valid visa.
Karsteski · 42d ago
Wow this sort of scenario is my nightmare. I'm an immigrant in Canada and even though I've been able to go to the US for years, I really have no interest in going, partially due to fear of something like this happening to me.
I could easily drive to the US in less than two hours, but no thanks.
pm3003 · 42d ago
As a young man I travelled a lot (US only twice, Canada once) in democracies and authoritarian regimes and quickly took the habit of always having some sort of paper on me (passport, copy of the visa and passport, city/tax registration...) depending on the place.
I was controlled countless times, I thought at the time I didn't stand out much but I probably did. I was always unlikely to be detained, but vehicle / luggage searches, questions etc can be a huge waste of time so better show some paperwork that will cut the questioning short and not risk missing your bus/flight/train/meeting etc. It sometimes even helped to get into nightclubs...
rapphil · 42d ago
I avoid even connection flights going through the US.
almostgotcaught · 42d ago
> That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”
If you don't understand the threat of an authoritarian dictatorship for its inhabitants, this is it; a state apparatus that is completely opaque, offers no explanation for its actions (other than jingoistic rhetoric), and provides no recourse and certainly no remedy.
people okay with this (and there are many on hn that are as bas been made evident in the last months) simply do not understand that none of their privilege (education/money/status) has any effect on the implacable "I don't know"; if you get snapped up for whatever reason, whatever small innocuous infraction or perceived grievance (or manipulation of the system by someone that doesn't like you), you will go into the same blackhole. they will be telling your lawyers, your family, the (remaining) press "I don't know" and you will be rotting until some whim sets you free (or not).
CaffeineLD50 · 42d ago
I suspect they are under pressure to juke their stats and they could get a gold star for "deporting" her.
Ergo "you aren't a criminal. Come with me. You're being deported."
Gigachad · 42d ago
This is what America did in the Middle East after 9/11. Just collect up some random people. Claim they are terrorists and send them to Guantanamo bay where they are tortured and raped for a few years for no reason other than to claim they are solving terrorism.
ttyprintk · 42d ago
There was an interesting prelude: once the flight restrictions were lifted after 9/11, the FBI packed up 140-160 relatives of Osama Bin Laden living in USA and quietly flew them out of the country.
Etheryte · 42d ago
This sounds odd, how does someone even have 140-160 relatives who are alive?
Depends on what you consider related, but that's about how many I'd expect to show up at a family reunion.
Etheryte · 41d ago
Assuming four generations attend, that would work out to over four kids per couple. Older generations often had a lot of kids, but that still sounds like a pretty high number to me.
First gen: 1 person, plus 1 spouse, for 2 people.
Second gen: 4 children of the 1st gen, plus 4 spouses, for 8 additional people.
Third gen: 16 children of the 2nd gen, plus 16 spouses, for 32 additional people.
Fourth gen: 64 young children, no spouses.
Adds up to 106 people in total. For 140-160 people, that would be even more children per couple. Unless I mixed the numbers up somewhere, that sounds like a lot of kids, no?
9rx · 41d ago
> Assuming four generations attend
In my neck of the woods that would only be considered a "family gathering". You will see that group on a fairly regular basis (holidays, birthdays, quiet weekend, etc.) A "family reunion", indicating reuniting of family that doesn't see each other so often, extends further – at least five or even six generations.
But also 4 kids is nothing for a Bin Laden. Maybe if you multiply by 10...!
Etheryte · 41d ago
I'm assuming there's a mixup here with what you take the word "generation" to mean? A generation is generally all the people of a rough age group, so your parents and your spouse's parents are from the same generation. A generation is usually considered to be roughly 25-30 years wide, since that's about when people have kids. I wouldn't really say it's realistic for six generations to attend, that would mean everyone involved had their kids once they turned 18 and the oldest one attending is still 108 years old.
9rx · 41d ago
No mixup, but the intent was to mean where the most recent common ancestor goes back five, maybe six generations. The eldest generations may not be in attendance (or alive), but their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great-great grandchildren... That is the point where, around here, family starts to fragment enough that they rarely see each other but still maintain enough ties to want to occasionally reunite.
linuxftw · 42d ago
Truly despicable what we did to those people. Obama promised to shut it down, but once in office he did little to nothing.
themaninthedark · 42d ago
There are others commenting that she was employed in a business that sold illegal(federal level) drugs(THC).
Learning that, the declaration of "you aren't a criminal " seems welcome since they aren't jailing and trying her for distribution or some other bull.
I am interested in what the actual deportation order says... i.e. the cause for deportation.
CaffeineLD50 · 41d ago
That's possible. Are the feds going after THC/CBD links? Or is it like she was caught trafficking anything?
But good point, maybe that was the pretense for her deportation. A mini Pablo Escobar no doubt.
querez · 42d ago
You didn't read the article, did you? Hint: it's in the last third.
peterpost2 · 42d ago
Is this what is meant with "Make America great again"?
dandanua · 42d ago
For bullies of all kinds - absolutely.
danmaz74 · 42d ago
While reading, I felt such strong Kafka vibes in this story.
freen · 38d ago
Question for folks not in the USA: has your willingness to travel to the United States changed? Would you attend a conference/meeting/university in the US?
America First means America Isolated.
Also, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen “America first” as a political slogan, and, well, Dr Seuss said it best.
This is normal immigration. People caught in these "constitution free"/immigration zones need to be processed a lot faster.
It's a safe bet this girl got out "fast" because of the outside pressure. We need to be hiring a lot more immigration judges/personnel that adjudicate and process these people out of the public/private prison complex.
slekker · 41d ago
Did you read the article? It was precisely because of the media attention that she got out fast, she even said so herself.
RobertRoberts · 41d ago
I have a close relationship with a Chinese national that is going through the US immigration process.
His view on situations like this are enlightening.
He knows the difference between true dictatorships and political wranglings in the news. No system is perfect, and bad things happen to good people every day.
In this circumstance, it looks like this person didn't follow all the appropriate rules related to the entering the US. (visa issues)
My Chinese friend does not understand why people try to break the rules, get caught, and cry foul. Your treatment in his home country would be considerably worse. He is following all the laws to get US citizenship. Should his due diligence be considered a waste of time?
I also had a relative that overstayed her visa in a foreign country and was constantly afraid of being deported. Why should the expectations of foreigners in US be different from every other country in the world?
jeromegv · 41d ago
She was refused to enter the US, which is fine, this is the US rights to deny if you don't follow due process. But she didn't try to hide it or overstay her visa, she was coming through the border and was forthcoming about applying for the visa.
But instead of sending her back, they put her in jail for 2 weeks. Could have been longer without media attention. There was no process for her, once within the walls, to get herself out.
> Why should the expectations of foreigners in US be different from every other country in the world?
Are you telling me this is common in any other country in the world to be denied entry and then put in jail instead of just be sent back?
llm_nerd · 41d ago
The norm pretty much worldwide is that if you present yourself at a border crossing and are found inadmissible, you are refused entry and turned around. Some people have wrongly used the word "deport", but that isn't what it is: Technically she will have never even been in the country until granted entry, so she should have just been refused entry.
She didn't sneak into the US and get caught walking through the desert. She didn't overstay an expired visa. She did what she was legally required to do and presented herself at a lawful border crossing to apply for the necessary visa. And for those who note that she previously had been refused the same visa, by her story the conditions of her visa had changed leading to a new, unrelated application, which again is how it is supposed to work.
And when they refuse that visa, thus denying entry, they say "sorry, you can't come in" and you have to go back to where you came from, which in this case was Mexico. Even if she flew in on an international flight and they refused entry they would make her stay in the international terminal (which is technically not "in" country) until a flight out happens.
That she was quite literally arrested on some unknown pretence is bizarre, and seems like the "feed the private prison" ploy.
Of course police in the US are now demanding that Canadians answer the question "Canada or the United States", so zero Canadians should be travelling in that country. Law has broken down into some bizarre, hyper-partisan charade, and the end result is going to be civil war.
maxglute · 41d ago
> treatment in his home country would be considerably worse.
If you enter PRC on bad VISA you chill at the airport transit area and deported on next available flight. None of this for profit multi week detention to milk ICE contracts.
account42 · 41d ago
And if you come back and try again at a different location? Customs checks aren't perfect so it makes sense to up the consequences if you are found to be trying to work around them.
footy · 41d ago
because fear of being deported is not the same as "fear of being held in a for-profit prison without being given any information"
account42 · 41d ago
Detention for being in the country without a visa is not uncommon around the world.
casenmgreen · 41d ago
Guardian is a reputable, sound left-wing newspaper in the UK.
I'm not a fan, because I'm not in favour of State-run services, but they make what seems to me to be a sound point; that where ICE is private, but State funded, processing people takes the longest possible time because the longer the process takes, the more money they earn. This would also be why conditions are brutal and so inhumane; it's cheaper.
Charlie Munger I think wrote something like if you give people stupid incentives, you get stupid outcomes.
On the face of it, this looks like that, with the added complication the lunatics now running place would say this treatment is desirable.
Question then is how do you set up a State-funded privately run system to behave in the ways you do want, with rapid processing and humane treatment of people.
adamc · 42d ago
Why do people flag posts like this?
mdp2021 · 42d ago
There is a surge about flagging submissions that some may find uncomfortable. This could be related to a surge of uncomfortable pieces of news.
culebron21 · 42d ago
Right-wing snowflakes fighting for safe spaces? /s
croes · 42d ago
So why does it take to weeks to deport a Canadian to Canada?
Are those detainment cells privately owned?
ethbr1 · 42d ago
>> The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
>> Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
Filligree · 42d ago
> Are those detainment cells privately owned?
Yes; it's a billion dollar business.
jonathantf2 · 42d ago
Yeah, the prisons are privately operated. The cynic in me would bet that the agents have some sort of KPI or even kickback from these companies for filling the cells and costing the taxpayer $$$.
themaninthedark · 42d ago
How busy are officials in Canada?
They need to (at a minimum) verify her passport, let Canada know they are deporting her, any due process stuff that has to happen in US to deport....
refurb · 41d ago
Apparently she broke several rules and it’s bordering on fraud.
- She worked in LA on a TN that was revoked
- She applied for a TN visa at the Canadian border and was denied
- She then flew to Mexico to try again at the San Diego border (USCBP can see this and explicitly say not to “crossing shop”)
- Her new TN was sponsored by a company she owns for another drinks company she also owns (you can’t self-sponsor a TN visa)
- The company she was consulting for was making THC drinks which are still illegal under USA federal law
My guess is she was questioned and determined to be committing immigration fraud and was detained until she could be deported
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
So deny her entry and let her airline deal with returning her? Why did she need to be imprisoned? International Law says that if you're denied entry the onus is on your flight carrier to return you, which is a private matter between you and the carrier.
lazerpants · 41d ago
She was at the land border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego. Still not an excuse for her uncontested deportation to take two weeks though.
account42 · 41d ago
Denying entry is for honest mistakes. If someone is actively committing fraud you need to up the consequences in order to effectively deter others from trying their luck.
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
If she was suspected of fraud then inform, arrest her and make plans for this suspicion to be tested by trial, no? As I understand it she was "detained" rather than arrested, told outright that she had not committed a criminal offence, and was offered no further insight into her situation or when/where/how she would be released.
refurb · 41d ago
She crossed the land border - there is no airline.
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
Ah, even easier then, just tell her to turn around.
refurb · 40d ago
USCBP can't deport someone to a country they aren't a citizen of.
Mexico doesn't want that problem dumped on them.
defrost · 40d ago
Currently the USofA is deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador with no trial or other due process.
They are in custody of the USCBP for being in the country illegally and are awaiting final disposition.
moltar · 41d ago
That’s exactly why, as a Canadian, I don’t travel to US, or even transit through US. Border was always a terrible and hostile experience. I’ll fly longer and pay more to avoid this.
sireat · 41d ago
I actually spent two days of "quality" time at Otay Mesa detention center (or the male version of it nearby) some 20+ years ago.
I shudder to think what it would be like in the current climate.
I had overstayed my student visa but that was the extent of my crime. For that I had the pleasure of being shackled and bussed from the inland checkpoint (the one on 5 freeway) to the detention center.
The worst part is the uncertainty, once you are at a detention center - you have no idea what/when is something going to happen.
There is no information flow besides my one phone call.
You have to be happy with your daily burritos and then hope you make some friends and no enemies. Weird thing happens to your brain in these type of uncertain places, you sort of dissociate from what is happening to you. Some sort of defense mechanism I suppose.
I mean how do you respond when the boyfriend of the "main" guy at the facility asks "Don't I know you from somewhere?".
In the end I was incredibly lucky - I actually knew a lawyer to call - and that must have helped me. Most of the people inside had been in detention for weeks with only rough knowledge that at some point they would be deported or possibly set free.
So I had my hearing in front of judge some months later and I agreed for "voluntary departure" and 10 year ban.
Since then I am on some sort of blacklist for life.
Each time I've come back to US, I've have had to spend 2-3 hours at CPB interview room, which if you want to hear human misery from around the world is the place to be. There is some sort of queue but it is rather haphazard.
Again you have this incredible uncertainty when you will get out of this room.
Again, I am extremely lucky, I've had very pleasant CPB officers so far and they are either indifferent or sympathetic to my case.
Last time I was simply given passport without explanation after 2 hour wait with no interview at all!
Then again I've only traveled to US when current administration is not aggressively posturing.
elephanlemon · 42d ago
“All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months.”
Is this an error or was some of this going on during the previous administration?
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 42d ago
It's always been bad, but the difference is that Republicans want it to be bad and get worse. They delight in cruelty and anyone who doesn't see that has been sold a lie
ainiriand · 42d ago
Yeah basically the US is no-visit now. It is too risky.
There was another similar story reported previously [1].
On that same week, I traveled to Canada. I'm from America but not the US, I have a tourist visa for Canada valid for the next 5 years or so. I've entered Canada many times in the past, zero issues. Zero criminal records, not even traffic violations on my record in any country whatsoever.
Upon scanning my passport I was immediately sent to a different queue for inspection. Similar behavior, when the border officer asked me why I am in Canada I told them I was visiting, when they asked what I do for a living I told them I didn't have a job, I have a healthy dose of savings that allow me to not work for a while and just travel, as I have done several times in the past.
They told me that was "shady", I was interrogated by two officers for about an hour, they asked me about everything, then was sent to a room to wait (it was a comfortable place, to their favor), about half an hour later they come back and tell me I'm allowed to enter but I have to report back to them, physically, in a month and leave the country the same day.
Obviously I didn't have it as bad as these two girls, but in my own timeline, it was definitely the worse border crossing experience I've ever had.
A few weeks before that I was in Mexico, and the border officers where also quite intrusive and thorough with everybody. This almost never happens in Mexico, everyone just goes in, no questions asked.
Since all of this has happened during these past weeks, my conclusion is that, in general, border officials in North America have been told to be very though with all immigrants, perhaps fueled by the demands of the Trump administration. I also think, unfortunately, that this situation will only get worse as borders and international travel will become more and more scrutinized.
Absolutely terrifying. I'm sure it doesn't technically class as "kidnapping" since the law must have some loophole saying they can detain you indefinitely for any reason (or none at all in this case) but it's what I'd call it.
486sx33 · 40d ago
And her business is selling drinks infused with hemp which is federally illegal.
A TN visa is a non immigrant visa, you should not be building a life in the US with it.
linuxftw · 42d ago
Don't come to the US, it's a police state.
Those people are stuck in detention for weeks and months at a time because there's thousands upon thousands of them, and they all get to have a hearing of some sort. Those hearings take time to process.
> I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations.
This is code for 'illegal alien.' Previous administrations were willfully not enforcing the law, granting temporary status to those who weren't actually eligible. The new administration is not playing that game. Catch and release is over. If you're here unlawfully, you're going to be detained until you have a hearing, which is going to send you back to where you came from most likely.
ThePowerOfFuet · 42d ago
The work authorization meant they were there legally.
linuxftw · 41d ago
No, it just means they were awaiting a hearing, and had a temporary authorization. That's what you get when you show up to the country and say 'asylum.'
ThePowerOfFuet · 39d ago
Yes, the authorization means they were... authorized.
> The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare.
Why is it so hard to write "ICE" ? It is an acronym.
dragonwriter · 41d ago
> Why is it so hard to write "ICE" ? It is an acronym.
Setting acronyms in all-caps is a common American stylistic choice, but far from universal in English language writing; initial-cap for acronyms and all-caps for non-acronym initialisms is also a common style, globally, in written English.
I remember when people used to put dots after each letter, making it very clear.
Now the burden is on the reader.
qwertox · 41d ago
> The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadn’t been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.
"If she stays so kind and accepts what she's been told without protesting, she must be hiding something. That's criminal enough for us."
heraldgeezer · 42d ago
>There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.
Okay so, not legal then?
These articles are always like this. "omg I just overstayed a little bit!!! uwu"
Btw, I am European and will never hopefully have to visit the USA again.
danso · 41d ago
> There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.
Do you seriously believe that because this student technically violated the law before rectifying her paperwork, that throwing her in an overcrowded detainment center is good practice?
No comments yet
apwell23 · 42d ago
> These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions.
They took responsibility for their actions so they should't have been put there.
punishing ppl even after they take responsibility is not what ppl voted for.
I-M-S · 42d ago
What does "taking responsibility for their actions" mean in this context?
apwell23 · 41d ago
saying "i take responsibility" to officers
account42 · 41d ago
What do you expect, that anyone can violate the law and get off without consequences as long as they say "sorry"? Taking responsibility includes accepting consequences.
sejje · 42d ago
Wasn't it their responsibility to leave on their own?
heraldgeezer · 41d ago
>punishing ppl even after they take responsibility is not what ppl voted for.
Trump made his intentions very clear. This is exactly what people want.
liendolucas · 42d ago
These things wouldn't definitely happen if a reciprocity policy would be in effect. The problem is that if you apply this policy against the US, a country pays its consequences either directly or indirectly. If all countries at least in America agree on to apply reciprocity, maybe things would change a little.
Tostino · 42d ago
I think boycotting the US would be a more effective option, and I say that as someone who lives in FL (which depends on international tourism heavily).
brailsafe · 41d ago
I already generally hate the experience of travelling through ports of entry into the U.S, have been searched numerous times, and often on the way back into Canada but it's usually much less onerous; every country I've visited has been much more tolerable, regardless of Trump. I'm travelling in soon for a reason that's almost work for the first time—attending a work related event—and technically should be able to visa-free, but these stories are making me a bit nervous. Flying 10hrs back is not ideal, but being stuck for 2 weeks would fuck up my year.
anal_reactor · 42d ago
> That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”
I'm disappointed, but not surprised. Observing how Americans function, it's very common for them to just let someone higher-up in the system take the responsibility, until the decision reaches a person who is so far removed from the human element they cannot possibly care. Case in point: once I messaged on a public Slack channel "hey I did this thing X, not sure if that's what I was supposed to do". Nobody said anything to me, two weeks later I got scheduled "just a quick sync" with HR. The HR employee was obviously on a different continent.
reverendsteveii · 41d ago
There is no law in America, only money and violence.
nonford150 · 41d ago
One item not being discussed is this took place during the last administration - not Trump 2.0. None of this is new - it's being going on for years.
timbit42 · 41d ago
No, it took place earlier this month.
helaoban · 42d ago
I'm sorry, but the article seems to obscure a key fact, which is that she travelled to the US AFTER her initial visa was revoked.
It seems dumb to travel to a country that has explicitly revoked your visa without being granted a new one!
Nobody stopped her from getting on a plane because nobody checks if Canadians have a visa or not since they don't need one for short visits or stays. In this case her visa was revoked, so she was probably flagged in the system as temporarily not allowed in.
This is speculation, but maybe somebody here can weigh on the technicalities of the situation.
This is not to excuse the inhumane treatment, which if true is disgusting. Dealing with the CBP is always negative, even as a citizen (when returning from abroad).
Edit:
This really stretches credulity:
> I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: “Do you believe in God?”
Edit2 (more dumb):
> There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning
>Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?
Really? Not having your passport on you is the big mistake here?
Edit 3 (Even more dumb):
> One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to the US. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.
> Many of these women were highly educated and spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didn’t speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.
Trying to game the asylum system by lying to immigration authorities.
I'm not sure how all these cases are supposed to sustain the main thrust of the article, which is that all these people are innocent victims of some Kafkaesque nightmare for which they bear no responsibility. They clearly do.
We shouldn't be treating people like this period, but this is just really stupid behavior.
pm3003 · 42d ago
So she probably was alright with the law (short stay) but not with the system if I understand correctly. Still, wouldn't her detention be arbitrary and thus fall foul of habeas corpus principles which I have no doubt are in the US law?
helaoban · 41d ago
> Still, wouldn't her detention be arbitrary and thus fall foul of habeas corpus principles which I have no doubt are in the US law?
That's for a court to determine, and I'm sure it takes several weeks at least for something like this to make its way through the court system.
Tostino · 42d ago
I'm sorry, what? You think that stretches credulity?
Oh man you must be lucky to not live around these types of people.
I remember the first time I was told I was going to burn in hell for eternity. At my first job at 16 by some coworkers in their 20s and 30s because I wasn't participating in their constant religion talk so it made it clear I wasn't part of "the group".
helaoban · 42d ago
Yes, I think it's a generally rare occurrence to be confronted this way about one's belief in God in the US, having lived here most of my life. Perhaps the circumstances warrant it, but I think the statement that the nurse had "never seen a Canadian there before" and that her plight elicited that statement from the nurse is farfetched, seeing as the nurse would have seen much much worse from other detainees.
The story is pretty incredible on its face, so I don't see why some skepticism on the way it's being reported isn't justified, especially in the face of reflexive hysteria over a descent into fascism we're supposedly facing.
Again, if true, it is disgusting, and I'm negatively disposed towards ICE and the CPB in general. But I'd like to know whether this is a case of a really odd situation paired with bad judgement and/or bad advice, or something much worse.
Tostino · 41d ago
You think it's "reflexive hysteria" to be worried about fascism? Let me ask: when exactly would you recognize it? When would you "step in"?
In Italy, would it be in 1919 when Mussolini founded his party? Or 1922 when he marched on Rome? Maybe 1924 when opposition leader Matteotti was murdered? Or 1926 when all other parties were banned?
For Nazi Germany, was January 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor too early to worry? March 1933 when he got emergency powers? 1935 with the Nuremberg Laws? 1938 with Kristallnacht?
By the time it's obvious enough to satisfy skeptics like you, it's usually too late. What we're seeing now...invoking the Alien Enemies Act, mass detention, ideological purges of government workers, demonizing immigrants, these aren't random events. They're recognizable patterns.
History doesn't announce itself with a banner saying "THIS IS FASCISM NOW." It creeps in while people like you call concerns "hysteria."
helaoban · 41d ago
Sigh, when will people stop reaching for Hitler / Mussolini analogies to explain every political development they witness in their lives? It really is a remarkable achievement by the propaganda departments of the victors of the 2nd world war that 80 years later this is still the only framework by which their citizens understand the world.
History didn't start in 1918, and if you think the political situation in the US right now is anything like interwar Europe, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Tainnor · 41d ago
> It really is a remarkable achievement by the propaganda departments of the victors of the 2nd world war [...]
We know about the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in large part a) because of the survivors and their accounts of what they lived through and because b) the Nazis kept meticulous records of everything they were doing.
Your dismissal misses the point. I didn't claim "every political development" parallels fascism, I outlined specific concerning patterns: the Alien Enemies Act, mass detention, ideological purges, and demonizing outgroups.
History provides frameworks for recognizing dangerous patterns. If you prefer earlier examples: Consider the Roman Republic's fall where Sulla targeted political enemies, Caesar dismantled institutional checks, or Augustus centralized power while maintaining democratic facades. Or Napoleon's transformation from revolutionary to emperor using emergency powers and populist appeals.
The point isn't perfect historical parallels, it's recognizing warning signs before it's too late. Dismissing valid concerns with sighs and bridge-selling metaphors adds nothing substantive.
lawlessone · 41d ago
>Sigh, when will people stop reaching for Hitler / Mussolini analogies to explain every political development they witness in their lives?
They're currently transporting people to slave labor camps in El Salvador.. the analogy seems apt.
JeremyNT · 42d ago
Flagged, of course, to death.
This is an important story of US decline. This woman was here to do business. To work with Americans.
If you're flagging this because you're a part of the tech right, who thinks these policies are somehow good for you, maybe hold off on that flag button and let the discussion play out here. Think about what happens if people from the rest of the world are terrified of working within this country.
Balgair · 42d ago
I mean, at this point, do I just flag everything on the front page too? Is that the only recourse I have as a user in good faith? What other method do I have to show my displeasure with this subset of the community?
diggan · 42d ago
> do I just flag everything on the front page too?
Well, if it's all spam/off-topic, I guess flag it all. But unlikely it's all spam, this story certainly isn't, so not sure how it got flagged. Feels extremely relevant to various people who go to conferences, events and even just want to vacation.
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Edit: Since someone commented the "If they'd cover it on TV news it's offtopic" line from the rules but promptly deleted their comment, this is the section that might relevant too:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I'd personally consider lawful residents getting sent to detention-centers for no good reasons being "they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon", but we all think differently I suppose.
No comments yet
Febra33 · 42d ago
Sadly too many people on HN are part of the tech right, or straight up crypto bros and hate seeing these headlines.
greatpatton · 42d ago
I think I will just skip HN in the future. The number of relevant post to tech and business in the US now that are getting flagged is becoming ridiculous.
ethbr1 · 42d ago
I know it supposedly doesn't work, but @dang : brigade flagging (and user-based unflagging/vouching of submissions) really needs to be looked at, in light of the current political reality.
There's a substantive article here, and a substantive discussion, and it's user shadow-banned off HN because someone didn't like the political tilt.
HN is going to start shedding exactly the sort of quality users that make it great if this isn't addressed at scale.
adamc · 42d ago
Yes. Maybe PG doesn't care.
skyyler · 41d ago
does pg even think about this place these days?
mandmandam · 42d ago
It is ridiculous, extremely so. It's also bizarre, disturbing, and honestly kind of demeaning. Not to mention dangerous, for the tech community and many more.
And it is very likely being condoned right from the top. Garry Tan is a big DOGE fan on Twitter, as is PG.
It's embarrassing that to get to the content that technofascists don't want you to see, you need to visit a secret URL.
mdp2021 · 42d ago
Let me offer my approval (over the argument, not necessarily about the conclusion). It is not just about assessing reality, but _there is_ a large and greatly important component of, simply, assessing reality!
greggyb · 42d ago
Why is this flagged?
First of all, it's about an entrepreneur traveling to the US for a startup, which is directly relevant to a significant proportion of YCombinator founders themselves.
Beyond its direct relevance to the core founding audience of HN, it is not clickbait or wantonly inflammatory, and is clearly of interest to many based on the comment activity and votes.
kragen · 41d ago
Possibly because the comment section will inevitably collapse into a partisan flamewar.
fourside · 41d ago
This is ironic. I thought there was a big push from the right for less censorship and less moderation in social media. Now we’re flagging posts because the comment section may get heated.
kragen · 41d ago
This has been HN policy since the beginning, and while HN is usually still quite unpleasant, policies like this one are largely responsible for preventing it from being worse. There are social contexts where discussions of topics like US immigration policy can do good rather than harm, but HN is not one of them.
sillyfluke · 41d ago
>This has been HN policy since the beginning,
This is not true, at least according to dang if I recall correctly. There was a change in moderation strategy since the pg days. The way I remember dang's own explanation was that pg was more hands off in his moderation of political topics. Sure, you can say that it wasn't the same community back then, less flamewars etc, but the fact of the matter is the creator of this site moderated things slightly differently.
Maybe you won't find it ironic, but the creator of HN is often sharing posts on twitter that would be flagged to oblivion if someone other than him posted it on here. Regardless of all the reasonable explanations (this is a tech site, journalists/politicians are on twitter), it's still an interesting datapoint that the creator of this forum in this day and age thinks it's more important spending his own time talking politics on twitter more than talking tech on this forum. I'm going to go out on limb and bet that he does this not because he enjoys or prefers talking politics but because he feels compelled to do so more due to the unprecendented nature of certain events.
I think people who say "do it on twitter like pg, instead of HN" forget that pg's positive twitter experience is largely due to the fact that he has a million plus followers on twitter and people in other fields know who he is so he is able to get high value engagement that counteracts the trolls. Your average HN user is not going to have pg's twitter experience, and so they'd rather try their luck posting in the best forum that's hospitable to them, HN.
But that greatly predates the changes in moderation strategies or hiring dang and sctb.
Surely the understanding of the site's social dynamics has evolved over time, though, and so the reasons for the same guideline are different now.
sillyfluke · 41d ago
>But that greatly predates the changes in moderation strategies or hiring dang
dang explicitly states they do it differently than pg it:
when a thread turns into a political flamewar, we moderate it more than pg used to. There were many past submissions that neither users nor moderators would allow today [0]
Are you kidding? There are so many VCs here who have the resources to push for fair treatment of immigrants and foreign visitors! HN is the perfect place to discuss this.
kragen · 41d ago
I am not kidding. The problem is that the discussion collapses into an unpersuasive and uninformative partisan flamewar, so it does not improve the choices that those VCs will make. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413819 for a more in-depth discussion.
ok_dad · 41d ago
Sometimes things get messy discussing important topics, we should err on the side of sunshine rather than darkness for these discussions. HN has a lot of powerful and wealthy people who have a responsibility to protect the system they relied on to become rich and powerful, but instead these people ignore the discussion because it doesn’t mesh with their ideas that America is the greatest.
See my connect from a few comments ago where I mention how interesting it is we can discuss authoritarian slides everywhere else except when it happens in America. It’s almost a conspiracy, IMO.
Also, I can understand demonizing the current admin, they’re flaunting the most important laws that protect us, and for some here the USA is poised to upend their lives or worse.
In any case, this discussion isn’t interesting, and constant complaints of bad behavior are stifling the actual discussion more than those flagged, dead comments that started shit.
kragen · 41d ago
I deeply regret that you are providing such a perfect illustration of my point.
ok_dad · 41d ago
I regret that you think that, but I’m not explaining to you why you’re wrong, it’s as pointless as you trying to convince me that I’m demonizing anyone with that comment.
leereeves · 41d ago
> the comment section may get heated
Have you read this discussion? It was already heated, although the comments posted recently have been better.
Before greggyb asked why it was flagged, the top comments were about "the dumbest bully from their grade school" and "team grade school bullies". Does that not sound like flag-worthy discussion to you?
Name calling like that buries legitimate discussion, like the claim that she was not in fact eligible for a TN visa because she "worked for" a startup she co-founded (Holy! Water).
"NAFTA specifically prohibits self-employment for TN visa holders. This restriction poses challenges for entrepreneurs who wish to start a business in the United States."
When the people in charge are acting like the dumbest bully from my grade school, then yes, it does sound like valid critism and a legitimate point of discussion.
wasabi991011 · 41d ago
That seems like a reason to flag the comments, not the article.
neycoda · 41d ago
It's amazing how many people don't know how hypocritical and self-serving each side is when it comes to speech and censorship.
93po · 41d ago
this sort of comment is exactly why i flag this sort of content, to put it kindly, you're sort of missing the point and using a strawman argument
metabagel · 41d ago
Shouldn't be a partisan issue.
kazinator · 41d ago
It's a race issue. We only know about this story at all because the woman is a milk-white Canadian. It's not supposed to happen to people like her, which is makes it extra outrageous.
kragen · 41d ago
While I agree with you, it is observably true that many people take different positions on the issue and then demonize those who disagree with them, converting it into a partisan issue.
Another commenter (now deleted) made the claim that, saying an issue shouldn't be partisan is “just saying ‘everyone should believe what I do’ but in the lexicon of people who look down their nose at the general public.” They added, “The only nonpartisan issues are the most basic of things that all societies have like ‘don't murder people’ (but even then the minutia become debatable).” Although the comment has been deleted, I think this merits a little further exploration, because it's a widely held viewpoint, and there is some truth to it, though I disagree more than I agree.
There are definitely people who mean, "Shouldn't be a partisan issue," that way, but what I mean when I say it is that from the clash of opposing opinions comes the spark of insight, and partisan struggles in which arguments are soldiers do not permit that process to happen: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-c...
I have frequently observed variants of the following exchange in mathematics classrooms:
Professor [writing on blackboard]: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student sitting in the third row of the audience: No, it's x³ + a.
Professor: Hmm. [pauses]
Student: Because the x from substituting f doesn't cancel.
Professor: Yes, you're right. So you see that this just reduces down to x³ + a.
Sometimes it goes the other way, and the student is the mistaken one. Neither participant goes into the discussion on the premise that "everyone should believe what they do"; rather, they believe that by discussing the issue they can arrive at an agreement, which may involve changing their own mind. Converting the discussion into partisan struggle prevents that from happening. Imagine what would have happened in my example if the discussion had instead gone as follows:
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: No, it's x³ + a.
Professor: I don't remember paying tuition to come and see you lecture.
Or, alternatively:
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: You didn't even do a modicum of research. It's x³ + a.
Or, how about this?
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: No, it's x³ + a.
Professor: You're being manipulated into thinking that this factor is being canceled incorrectly by the horrible evil professor.
Or, how about this?
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: "x²" ? Êtes-vous fou ? Restez avec x³ !
This difference comes out in its purest form in mathematics, but it's also possible for discussion and consultation to reach agreement on empirical and even moral issues. But partisanship is an obstacle in that process.
morkalork · 41d ago
And here in lies the problem: wedge issues. Taking something, blowing it out of proportion and turning into a partisan issue on purpose. Abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration. It becomes impossible to have nuanced, rational discussion about those topics, and its on purpose. One side thrives off of making them emotional, hot-button issues. Shunning discussion of it here or elsewhere because it's an emotional, hot-button topic, is just conceding to the side making it like that.
kragen · 41d ago
Abortion, LGBTQ rights, and immigration are inherently deeply emotional issues, but that doesn't in itself make them partisan. It increases the risk that they will become partisan, but often enough and in enough places they have not been. Politicians—not just on one side or even on just two sides—generate support for themselves personally and for the political class as a whole by converting them into partisan issues. Venkatesh Rao has written a very thought-provoking analysis of the current dynamics of the situation in https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/.
ben_w · 41d ago
> They added, "The only nonpartisan issues are the most basic of things that all societies have like "don't murder people" (but even then the minutia become debatable)." Although the comment has been deleted, I think this merits a little further exploration, because there is some truth to it, though I disagree more than I agree.
I don't think there is anything to be gained from enumerating the cases when one or another society has condoned killing people, which are so numerous and diverse that they may have accounted for the majority of all of the people who have died. Everyone is aware that such cases exist, I think.
Tainnor · 41d ago
> While I agree with you, it is observably true that many people take different positions on the issue and then demonize those who disagree with them, converting it into a partisan issue.
Sure, but you have to draw a line somewhere. Even on HN, there are opinions that you can't express (repeatedly) without being banned, even though there are clearly people with such opinions. Otherwise it's the Nazi bar problem - everyone who's not a Nazi will eventually leave.
Where exactly to draw the line is left as an exercise to the reader, but I suspect that some people just don't like where the line is currently being drawn.
kragen · 41d ago
I am not sure what opinion you thought I was trying to express. Evidently some sort of anti-censorship argument? To the contrary, my comment was explaining that the issue of US immigration has become highly polarized, and discussing highly polarized issues on HN is generally destructive, so probably we shouldn't attempt to discuss the issue here. This is closer to being a pro-censorship argument than an anti-censorship argument. (Later I added an illustration of how well a discussion can go without polarization, and how radically that differs from the current comment thread, but you may not have seen that.)
Your comment begins by signaling partial disagreement ("Sure, but") but then makes no argument tending to show that the issue is not highly polarized or that HN is a good place to discuss highly polarized issues. Instead, it discusses other topics relating to social group dynamics, but not in a way that is relevant to the comment you were replying to.
Tainnor · 41d ago
You're advocating for avoiding polarised discussions because they degenerate quickly. I'm only pointing out that that's not the only option: you could allow these discussions while ruthlessly silencing bad faith actors (for whatever definition of "bad faith" you want to adopt). Those are both "pro-censorship" stances (although I prefer the word "moderation" to "censorship"), but they're going about it in different ways.
That's what I mean by the Nazi bar problem[0]: you can't solve it by just not allowing certain topics to be discussed, because eventually in some completely tangential situation, a nasty flamewar is going to erupt and people who are not Nazis will be appalled that there are Nazis here.
[0]: I'm explicitly not saying that certain opinions expressed on HN are literal Nazi opinions, the Nazi bar problem is just a convenient analogy for the situation when one group of people holds opinions that are utterly appalling to many other people that frequent the same space.
kragen · 40d ago
I see. Thank you for clarifying. I indeed had not understood you.
It sounds like you think the problem is the wrong sort of people. But almost everybody retreats into ego defense and partisan struggle under sufficiently threatening circumstances, even though some people are habitually more prone to that kind of thing than others. It's more about minimizing the frequency of the wrong sort of circumstances.
Additionally, though I think everyone is happy that I'm not the one running the site, I have observed elsewhere that your favored "ruthless silencing" approach has some side effects you may not be anticipating.
Tainnor · 40d ago
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for anything specific because I understand that the problem is hard. But I feel like some people want to have their cake and eat it too. If you don't silence certain types of discourse, you alienate certain participants (and HN understands this to a degree - you can't use racial slurs here, for example). Maybe that's acceptable - but you just have to be honest about it.
leereeves · 41d ago
Unfortunately, it also seems to be true that the guidelines aren't enforced on discussions about the Trump administration. We used to have informative, curious discussions about politics here, but it seems like Hacker News is no longer capable of that, so I think these flamewars are best left to one of the many willing political battlegrounds like reddit or X.
Tostino · 41d ago
I've noticed this a ton lately. So, so many posts completely brigaded. Regardless of if the flag is removed, it can easily stop discussion and visibility of the thread. I emailed Dang about it when I first noticed it happening, and the response...
```
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you—it's been a crazy last few days!
Users flagged that one. We can only guess why users flag things, but there have been so many posts about the current political goings-on that I think there's a lot of fatigue about it. In this case the article was more of an opinion piece than a factual report, so it's probably not one that we'd override the flags on.
Daniel (dang)
```
So the system is setup to allow this abuse. It's weaponizing the flag system. I'm sure this type of flagging is already automated by how fast some posts disappear on /new.
What's to stop someone from buying enough old accounts and mass flagging other topics to chill discussion / dissent? This could easily be done for a few grand. Rotate accounts doing the flagging and make sure they engage in some "high quality" discussion from time to time to avoid detection. Make sure the same groups of accounts aren't flagging the same posts, etc.
E.g. "I never want to see a freaking post about Rust again"...
Note: I had to wait hours to post this comment because my account was rate limited. I'm assuming because I'm involved in this discussion at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524
Now by the time I can actually post, this thread is well off the front page. This site is really good at effectively silencing people.
Dang, I'd like to know the specific comments where I am going over the line, or are too "low-quality". I have been called out once or twice over the last decade by you, and have agreed that I could have conducted myself better in those instances and tried not to fall back into those patterns.
pas · 41d ago
there's no need to buy old accounts (lol?), there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs, who continue to cheer on the Republican-backed express cruelty for whatever reasons, and some of these people are active on HN
There is if you want to do this systematically rather than adhoc.
> there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs
Totally understood, and know they are here and will flag things they disagree with while still being a real human.
I wasn't saying that is specifically what's happening with this post. I assume that's more what's happening when posts in /newest are flagged within a few min.
That part was just saying "this really wouldn't be hard to do if anyone put in just a little bit of effort, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening".
wswope · 41d ago
I’ve emailed Dan and received the same response. My suspicions completely mirror yours.
I find this line particularly weak:
> We can only guess why users flag things
It’s not that hard to do some clustering analysis to see if bad-faith actors are repeatedly flagging posts in a coordinated manner. Maybe he’s trying to avoid giving away anti-spam secret sauce, but that doesn’t seem likely given the language of the copypasta. Speaking for myself, I would like any sort of assurance that anything other than a 100% laissez-faire approach to flag abuse is happening.
Teever · 41d ago
I've become skeptical of Dang's ability to remain impartial in this kind of stuff given that this organisation works with Elon Musk:
Sure, you can take anything to the extreme and then they'll have to mop that up.
Until that's reality, the system mostly works. Let us know if you ever figure out the perfect flagging system where someone can't "buy old accounts en masse" or something
mateus1 · 41d ago
Musk, Trump and DOGE topics are all being flagged, even if they are relevant… The tech world has blessed this regime.
shirro · 41d ago
HN has never been unbiased. It is funded by a tech VC company and targeted at tech entrepreneurs. It has always promoted crypto and AI scams to an eager audience and pumped up one useless company that added nothing of value to the world after another.
Despite that there has been a general interest in "tech" and clever things and intelligent discussion here that appeals to a reasonably broad community so the place works.
The massive wealth concentration and power amongst a very few, the Paypal mafia, Andreeson etc has led them down a path that puts them at odds with the rest of us. Regardless of our diverse politics regular engineers aren't going to have more individual or economic freedom in a world controlled by a small group of oligarchs. They care about us about as much as we care about ants.
I wouldn't say the tech world has blessed the regime but many unquestionably revere the financiers of the tech world. We (techies) for all our talk of individual liberties have a problem with cult like thinking. Most of us aren't stupid and we can justify our positions, any position. And while some flagging of discussions might be sock puppets or bots, the truth is a lot of people still thoroughly believe the hype.
tim333 · 40d ago
I don't feel
>always promoted crypto and AI scams
is very accurate. In my experience it is pretty cynical about those
tim333 · 40d ago
Not sure it's that HN has blessed the regime so much as it's flagging them so it can get back to tech etc rather than 527 trump/musk stories. There's always reddit etc.
cutemonster · 41d ago
I don't think 51% of the readers here need to flag something for it to get flagged - maybe more like 5% or 15%?
I guess you can conclude that a few percent here likes Trump etc, but far from a majority
casenmgreen · 41d ago
It looks like Twitter is running hate and love bots and using them to support/attack posts according to what presumably is Elon's agenda.
Given this, we can reasonably expect hostile bots here, flagging according to agenda.
iinnPP · 41d ago
As someone on neither side of that aisle I can tell you it is the smothering effect of attempting any logical discussion in those topics. The smothering effect comes from one side more often than not.
The best part of it all is that you can post like the above with no clear side chosen and the people whom it applies to will react to it negatively as well.
ethbr1 · 41d ago
It is a good point, and I've long been a proponent of this, that everyone needs to flag the excessive elements of "their side" more in the current climate.
Humans are humans. Some humans are dumb and emotion-prone. Some humans who are dumb and emotion-prone think their bad behavior is justified because they're on the side of justice/righteousness.
It's not enough, in our current climate, to look the other way because someone is on a similar team...
Reinvigorating honest, fair discussion requires everyone interact more positively.
consteval · 41d ago
In my experience during this last Trump campaign, the most effective way to rile conservatives is not to lie, but rather to tell the truth. Meaning, taking Trump at his word and repeating the words he said, in direct quotes.
I think what's happening is that a lot of his constituents like him due to his personality, but they don't necessarily believe he is honest. So, they're betting on his dishonesty and using that as a justification for their support. Meaning, supporting Trump is really not so bad if you assume Trump isn't going to do half the things he says he is. Then, it's like you're supporting an almost normal candidate.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
Well, in that case Trummp has done a fantastic job proving those people wrong. But that still confuses me: who can like this personality when it's on the world platform, and not just a TV stereotype?
Could we at least elect someone likeable like Bill Nye if we're voting based on "personality"?
consteval · 40d ago
Most Americans don’t care for someone put together. That’s interpreted as pretentious.
They want someone a bit stupid, who says stupid things. They want someone who’s an asshole because asshole is basically synonymous with badass protagonist.
debo_ · 41d ago
I think there's also a reasonable proportion of readers who want "political" topics removed from HN, even if the topic intersects with HN-relevant topics.
(I'm not one of them, but I believe many are. I appreciate where they are coming from.)
AlecSchueler · 41d ago
This would be more easily believed if political posts unrelated to contemporary American politics were also being flagged, but they're not.
debo_ · 41d ago
I hadn't noticed that, but I believe it. Many Americans I know are in "blinders on" mode because the intensity and frequency of American political angst is overwhelming them.
johnnyanmac · 41d ago
I doubt it's even percentages. It may be as low as a dozen users lurking on /new (or automating the process) to flag based on keywords from the title or article.
mateus1 · 41d ago
I never said that, I meant tech leaders and founders, not the user base…
positr0n · 41d ago
I flag some stuff like that because I don't want to read the same political flamewars on HN over and over again, not because I like Trump.
Popeyes · 41d ago
If you post stuff that is negative to top-tier tech bros, like Musk. Then the fan base comes out and flags it.
thegrim33 · 41d ago
1) It violates the HN guideline that if it's covered by mainstream news it's likely off-topic.
2) It's too political in nature, and violates the HN guideline that political topics are likely off-topic.
3) It violates the HN guideline that the content should be things that good hackers would find intellectually satisfying. Raging partisan hate at each other about the latest political/social snafu is not intellectually satisfying. It has nothing to do with engineering, science, technology, etc., it's purely a social/political issue.
4) Such a submission only draws a mass amount of hate and partisan flamebait which, once again, does not belong on HN. You have every other site on the internet available to discuss political issues.
5) Your appeal to popularity, saying it has lots of engagement and therefore belongs here, has zero connection to the HN guidelines for what belongs here. I don't care if 1 person or 1 billion people engage with it. It doesn't change the fact that it's off-topic and decreases the quality of the site.
No comments yet
avereveard · 41d ago
It's about someone with an denied visa trying to work around due immigration process (going to a consulate) by attempting instead to get to a far away border crossing and attempting a crossing there because, in her own recollection of the events, she knew/assumed the office was less strict.
And while it's a non story it's framed as a scandal because it resonate with the current political climate and the character is sympathetic to the narrative (productive and upstanding character compared to the ones dominating the previous news cycle on the topic)
casenmgreen · 41d ago
That is a profound distortion of what happened.
I would advise readers to read the article.
ericzawo · 41d ago
A significant portion of HN readers, right now, are working and living in the United States on the visa that the author was trying to (re)apply for.
dagmx · 41d ago
I take it you have never applied for a work visa? You may get denied several times over things outside your control.
She is one of many, many people who have had a success visa after prior failed attempts.
footy · 41d ago
it's not a non-story because even if she was trying to get around something she didn't deserve to be _detained_ instead of simply being turned around.
sebstefan · 42d ago
>I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: “Do you believe in God?”
>“I believe God brought you here for a reason,” she said. “I know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be OK. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.”
You've got to be fucked in the head to think this is an appropriate thing to do as an agent that's part of a federal process. Keep your god out of work!
diggan · 42d ago
As an atheist, I too stopped and re-read that particular section to think how I felt about it.
In the end, we don't know the motivation of the nurse. Could be that the nurse isn't even religious herself, which is why she asked if Mooney believed in god first, and since Mooney said she does, the nurse tried to help her mentally in a way that spoke to her. If Mooney said she didn't believe in god, the nurse might have said something else.
I say this because as an atheist who used to work in elder-care, I've had many conversations with very religious old people, where I "play their game" because they respond better to it, and seemed happy about it. Even if I don't believe in god, talking with people as if I did, just makes sense in situations where people seemed to have lost all hope.
CivBase · 41d ago
The quotes from this comment suggest the nurse was trying to use her position to evangelize to Mooney, but that's clearly not the case when you read Mooney's full account. The nurse was clearly trying to comfort a person in distress. That's part of a nurse's job. "God brought you here for a reason" is not a line that would comfort me but it was evidently comforting to Mooney by her own account, so I'd say the nurse read the room accurately and did the best she could given the terrible situation and her position in it.
Christianity is a popular religion in Mexico, and most of the people that nurse has dealt with recently are probably facing potential deportation back to Mexico. There isn't much you can say to comfort a person in that situation. Appeals to faith could reasonably be one of the few methods the nurse has to offer comfort. That's certainly better than the nurse being cold and uncaring.
Or maybe I'm just "fucked in the head".
Missing context from Mooney's account:
> I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything.
> At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept. I felt like I had been sent an angel.
ctrlp · 41d ago
It is also clear that Mooney had already "found God," so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about for this woman to affirm her beliefs in this context. Politics aside, this woman was clearly a comfort to her in a very difficult time. Why anyone would begrudge someone comfort in such a situation is beyond me. It strikes me as a type of cruelty or even sadism.
cwmma · 41d ago
if your takeaway from this article is that the most objectionable thing was that somebody gave her some religious encouragement but only after first making sure she was actually religious, then I feel like you are giving the rest of us atheists a really bad name.
sebstefan · 41d ago
Why would you think it's the most objectionable thing? How likely is it that somebody exists who would even think that?
There were already 190+ comments when I wrote mine. I don't write comments if there's already one that expressed the same thought
mdp2021 · 42d ago
"Servers must be strict in expression and loose on interpretation" (RFCs); "Respond to the best possible interpretation" (guidelines)...
That person was apparently trying to be humane, in her own personal way. Possibly ingenuous, probably in good faith and intention.
I got confused on some words in my memory during the rush, sorry.
Did you understand any different reference?
No comments yet
otikik · 42d ago
> Keep your god out of work!
That is very easy to type from the comfort of your home on your mobile phone.
After several days of deprivations and hardships, including sleeping in a fully-lighted cold cell without even a blanket, you will get any help and support that you can get.
sebstefan · 42d ago
The entire country of France manages to have government workers that don't talk to you about their god just fine
otikik · 42d ago
And they make great baguettes. But you didn't get my point.
I am an atheist. I do think that what the nurse did is wrong and unprofessional.
My point is: I would still have absolutely clinged to it, if I was in the same situation as this woman. I would have talked with this nurse, and would have told her that yes, maybe God had something to do with it. And you would have too, probably.
If you are drowning in the ocean, you don't discard a piece of floating wood because it has growing fungi. Claiming virtue is very easy ... until you experience real hardship.
TheOtherHobbes · 41d ago
Coincidentally or not, this is a standard cult brainwashing technique - abuse someone for an extended period, then offer them a "friend."
See also, good cop vs bad cop.
otikik · 41d ago
Fully agree. It's abhorrent. It works, because we are human.
awnird · 42d ago
Proselytizing isn't help. A mentally ill woman shrieking about a wizard who lives in the sky isn't support.
otikik · 41d ago
Perhaps, but you would not have said that to her if you were there.
skyyler · 41d ago
I absolutely would have. I don't need the support of an imaginary friend when facing oppressive customs laws.
neither_color · 41d ago
Telling someone in a seemingly hopeless situation that there is a high probability that things will get better because their imaginary friend is more powerful than the machinations of a despotic state is actually preferable to telling them that there's no imaginary friend and nobody is coming to save them. It's a common enough theme in prison camp survival autobiographies.
The so-called "logical" thing to tell them in this hypothetical scenario is not the optimal thing, so maybe it's not the most logical thing to say/do.
skyyler · 41d ago
>their imaginary friend is more powerful than the machinations of a despotic state
This is the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense if you have an imaginary friend but sounds a little deranged if you don't.
otikik · 41d ago
The thing is, I know that you are not that kind of übermen. Because übermen don't waste their valuable time on Hacker News :).
skyyler · 41d ago
I don't think it takes a special kind of person to not be comforted by the imaginary when facing an uncaring machine ready to devour them.
hobs · 41d ago
Only because that person is an implicit threat, not because they are helping. My first thought would be akin to "oh fuck, the lizard people are here now."
LeifCarrotson · 41d ago
It's really a way for her to externalize the responsibility to blow the whistle on the injustice she sees, enables, and takes part in: In the mind of that nurse, God is in control, so she doesn't have to feel guilty that she's complicit in illegal activities because it must all somehow be part of God's masterful, inscrutable, but absolutely, by definition "good" plan.
CivBase · 41d ago
You're making a lot of unfair assumptions about this nurse. It's certainly possible that the nurse was a callus asshole who used her faith as justification for her actions. It's also very possible that the nurse was a sympathetic individual who didn't have the power to get Mooney out of her situation but did her best to comfort Mooney despite it.
If it's the latter, I think I'd prefer to have more people like her involved with immigration in the United States - not less.
ta1243 · 42d ago
America has always been a theocracy under a veneer of democracy. She's lucky she didn't get renamed to Offred.
dennis_jeeves2 · 41d ago
>America has always been a theocracy under a veneer of democracy.
Describes every govt out there.
ajkjk · 42d ago
yeah no it hasn't
diggan · 42d ago
Isn't the bible involved in the whole inauguration part? Besides, candidates routinely discuss their faith, and "In God We Trust" appears on the currency.
Edit: Hah, I just realized that congressional sessions open with prayer as well. Not sure what other countries does this?
ta1243 · 42d ago
Freedom of religion means you get to choose which sect of Christianity you worship, and if you're quiet about it you're allowed to be Jewish.
ToValueFunfetti · 41d ago
The bible is involved at the behest of the inauguree; we've had christian presidents, and so they've largely sworn in on the bible. John Quincy Adams used a book of laws, and Coolidge didn't use a book at all (there are a couple others, but they were unintentional).
Likewise, the US prayer is non-denominational (it typically is monotheistic though). Ireland, Canada, South Africa, and the UK also have parliamentary prayers.
UK currency often features the letters "D.G.", which are the initials to a latin phrase meaning "by the grace of God", but other European currency references to God have ended with the switch to the Euro.
The US certainly has above average entanglement of religiosity and governance, but hardly in a sense that makes it a theocracy. Politicians talking about faith and God is a very different thing from, eg, the country being run by the pope.
greatpatton · 41d ago
no but other countries don't invoke the bible all the time when debating laws.
TheOtherHobbes · 41d ago
Just wait until you see the two huge fasces in the House Chamber.
I-M-S · 42d ago
Yeah, I was thinking what would have I, an atheist, said in that situation. "There are five lights" indeed.
queuebert · 42d ago
Technically, that's not what the separation clause is about. That was not, however, professional behavior for a nurse, but I see extremely religious nurses on the reg. Much less so with doctors, but then again religiosity is inversely proportional to education.
mdp2021 · 42d ago
Superstition can be inversely proportional to education. Cultivation should be proportional to education.
That term you used is very slippery (actually, you used it as the opposite of a "superstition" - you gave it only the interpretation typical of later uses).
Yes, sorry, of course you meant that aspect. But the term remains too slippery, too far away from its real content - as can be apparent already in the stats you mention: first of all they are about a public expression, which are reasonably lower in some demographics for more reasons, and secondly they conflate very different phenomena (such as a very ambiguous idea of attributed "importance" vs the subscription to some dogmatic details).
There are also other reasons why you see different behaviours in doctors and nurses: already linguistically, the "nurse" "nourishes", the "doctor" remains the "learned" - one has a direct rapport, the other detached, out of the basic role construed. It just follows that the nurse more probably consoles and the doctor more probably communicates flatly.
mellosouls · 41d ago
And yet, it gave her great comfort. Perhaps she knows her job better than you?
mgh2 · 42d ago
Can more information be provided to make sure this is a true story or a political campaign ad? Is this why it is flagged?
diggan · 42d ago
> Can more information be provided to make sure this is a true story
124 re-edits of the same news wire does not equal 124 sources.
diggan · 40d ago
Agree, but that collection certainly amounts to more than 1 source, since many of the articles have first-hand reporting, and some even their own interviews with Mooney.
cafard · 41d ago
Campaign ad? The next federal elections are 20 months out.
That is not "my country". I am not saying they were right, but that she would be an idiot to submit herself to their jurisdiction yet again.
zx8080 · 41d ago
> It was unclear why Mooney’s earlier visa was revoked, or why she was at the southern border this month. However, she told ABC she got her first visa at the San Ysidro border crossing on the advice of a Los Angeles attorney, who met her at the border, and therefore may have thought it would work a second time at that location.
Is her incompetent attorney committing some violation here?
Or is it just a trash PR to grab some likes and subscribers?
apwell23 · 42d ago
> There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.
Yet they chose to feature this white person from a white country.
This article reminds of beginning of ukraine war when US press was showing white ppl and saying "we need to stand with them because they are like us".
Filligree · 41d ago
They told this woman’s story because she was the one who escaped.
The ones who are still being tortured aren’t available to be interviewed.
apwell23 · 41d ago
yea only one person ever "escaped".
I-M-S · 42d ago
I am a dual-nation Canadian, with the other nationality held in much lower regard by the USA administration, meaning American conduct toward much of the world is not news to me.
I believe a lot of resentment Canadians currently feel towards Americans boils down to being treated the way they treat any other undesirable country.
jeromegv · 41d ago
The resentment is also because there is a daily threat of annexion.
ctrlp · 41d ago
Ironically, that would certainly solve this woman's visa problems.
Filligree · 41d ago
…and the potential invasion?
I’d be worried about that in your place. I’m worried about that as a Norwegian.
apwell23 · 41d ago
most ppl in canada ( and usa) don't know where Norway is or if such a country actually exists.
why are you worried about someone who doesn't give a fuck about norway.
Why can't Norwegians mind their own business why is this so offensive to them that americans don't want to be friends with norway. totally entitled . " how dare you don't want to be friends, we are white too"
apwell23 · 41d ago
> I believe a lot of resentment Canadians currently feel towards Americans boils down to being treated the way they treat any other undesirable country.
yeah you nailed it perfectly. "how dare you deny us white status"
The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense."
Efforts to reduce the U.S. federal deficit could adversely affect our liquidity, results of operations and financial condition.
We partner with a limited number of governmental customers who account for a significant portion of our revenues. The loss of, or a significant decrease in revenues from, these customers could seriously harm our financial condition and results of operations.
We are subject to the loss of our facility management contracts, due to terminations, non-renewals or competitive re-bids, which could adversely affect our results of operations and liquidity, including our ability to secure new facility management contracts from other government customers.
and also - this amazing level of self-awareness:
Adverse publicity may negatively impact our ability to retain existing contracts and obtain new contracts.
I'm curious as a non American why no one stops this. I mean presumably both political parties have not bothered. Do people in the US think it's ok? I think if that stuff happened in the UK there would be a lot of protests.
It's cheaper, would be my guess.
These conditions though, it reads like the Standford experiment.
This is properly tantamount to prisoner abuse.
never-mind that we've had decades of initiatives using such prisons as a form of soft racism, something so longstanding that is publicly declassified information. And people still don't care.
I.e. - It’s gone from “you are too soft on crime”, to “you are supporting criminals.”
A lot worse happened in UK prisons in Northern Ireland and people in Great Britain widely cheered it on. Target the right minorities and there'd be no shortage of supporters in Westminster.
On the contrary. In the US in particular, there is a large and outspoken segment of the voting base that love to see this sort of thing.
> People must understand the depth of what’s happening here: the President of the United States has ordered a halt to deportations. ICE, a federal agency, is refusing to comply.
> There’s no reforming this rogue dept. It’s time for a new, just vision.
https://x.com/AOC/status/1354211627940384768
A month later she was criticizing DHS for still having Patriot act powers, and lumped ICE with the same criticism:
> People have been writing about the deeply concerning issues with the structure of DHS for a long time.
> This is from 3 years before I was even elected.
> It’s not “fringe” to ask why FEMA & ICE are in the same Dept operation. Or question ICE’s operations
https://x.com/AOC/status/1364619004921413633
A day earlier she called for the abolition of ICE:
> It’s only 2 mos into this admin & our fraught, unjust immigration system will not transform in that time.
> That’s why bold reimagination is so impt.
> DHS shouldn’t exist, agencies should be reorganized, ICE gotta go, ban for-profit detention, create climate refugee status & more.
This one is very apt given OP.
https://x.com/AOC/status/1364349732760518657
She continued, this on is in April 2021:
> A lot of people who are just now suddenly horrified at the dehumanizing conditions at our border are the same folks who dehumanize immigrants + helped build these cages in the 1st place.
> When we tried to stop this infrastructure over a year ago,we were overruled by BOTH parties.
> Fact is a lot of the politicians crying right now don’t work to solve either.
> They vote to grow ICE + CBP cages and they do everything to avoid addressing the root: US foreign policy and interventionism that destabilizes regions, the climate crisis, and unjust economic policy.
https://x.com/AOC/status/1377652851191787532
Your statement that Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez stopped protesting these private prisons while Biden was in office is simply factually wrong. And it was not hard to check it.
2) Tweets are even less meaningful when in real life she supported at every step the people who were actively propping up ICE. Including Bernie, who just recently said Biden could have done more on illegal immigration. (Biden deported more people than Trump 1).
AOC actually has a long track record of saying one thing and doing another, like the controversy over her “present” vote on weapons to Israel. This is the major reason why the Squad broke up. The most charitable interpretation of it is that she wants to gain cache within her party. But she doesn’t realize her party hates her.
If you want to continue to champion someone like that, I have no problem with it, at the least she’s effective at bringing people to the left after they are inevitably disillusioned by something her or Bernie does.
Hence why I'd rather revamp the incentives towards punishing recidivism and completely nailing petty imprisonments.
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Interesting, it was the opposite for me, US citizen with CA work permit circa 2016. CBP seemed to not care while CBSA was often irrationally aggressive and suspicious. The closest thing I got to an explanation once after being freed was “We just like you” with a grin.
I was grilled in Vancouver about whether the purpose of my visit was work or pleasure, after I helpfully told the officer that my dad was attending a work conference and I was traveling with him but sightseeing.
"Well which one is it, work or pleasure?!"
I don't know, dude. I just explained the situation: you're supposed to be the expert!
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/sor-2002-227...
I haven't been on a shopping trip like that in a while though, and I find it hard to believe I'll ever do it again now. I feel bad for Watertown, but with the tariffs and the risk of detention, its not worth it.
Given that I've NEVER had what I would call a great interaction with a US border guard, it warms my heart to hear that at least they could be kind to some one ;-)
Anyway: it’s still moot. What she did, even based on your account, is not illegal.
It’s not illegal to apply for TN, period. If the application is rejected, that doesn’t make the application retroactively illegal.
It’s not even illegal for a Canadian to apply for a TN at the border crossing, have their application rejected, and keep driving right into the US. I know this because it happened to me. As Canadians don’t need work permits to enter the US, entering the country wasn’t the question - only working in it.
Unless she’d previously been given paperwork that had banned her from entry to the US - and she hadn’t been - there was nothing illegal with reapplying. She was told to reapply.
Whether she did anything “wrong” is debatable, but whether she did anything illegal isn’t.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413758
Oh being young, stupid and crossing boarders without a clue.
What is exactly wrong here? They checked your passport and went on their way, that is how it works.
French: laughing and talking, checking everyone's passports
Swiss: eyes scanning the car, papers please
HOW shit goes down is really important. When systems reduce people to cogs in a machine they lose empathy and personal responsibility. This is why we end up with guards who know nothing, treat people like cattle, and are "just doing their job". It does not lead to good results.
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Going from France to UK is like that, and before Shenzen, it was like that from EU country to EU country. When I was young, we had to wait for 2 hours with my parents while they checked everything was in order for a Spain border crossing (we were in a big RV so it makes sense).
People on HN have very soft views of the world, being too idealistic libertarian or some sort of socialist derived ideology. Most people may not be criminal but you have to process everyone crossing the border as if because otherwise it's pointless and you will never catch the criminals...
For the foreseeable future I will not be travelling to the US for any reason. Canada is safe and there is nothing in the US worth risking my freedom for. I will remain here and I will continue to avoid travel to America as well as spending money on American goods/services.
Instead she flew to Mexico and tried to enter there with new and obviously fake job offer. She was treated like anyone else would, but it’s international news because she’s a pretty white woman.
Would you travel to a country where its leader is constantly making threats against your country, some as serious as repeatedly calling for your annexation? The current US administration has made it very clear how it feels about me and my countrymen.
I don't consider the US safe and I do not need someone to americansplain to me. You aren't exceptional, you're a threat.
The Canadian media and Canadian businesses have been drumming up fear and patriotic rhetoric to drive domestic industries. That’s great - the last 10 years of “Canada is a post-national state with no culture or identity” narrative that Trudeau championed wasn’t doing us any favours anyway.
Trump may be a buffoon and what he’s doing is clearly not acceptable with respect to Canada, but to fear visiting or considering the U.S. unsafe when it’s objectively far safer than visiting any all-inclusive hotspot in the Caribbean that Canadians are still flocking to like they do every winter is, well, removed from reality.
Then you perhaps aren't looking closely. The US is undergoing one of the fastest democratic backslides (democratic sinkhole?) the world has yet to see [0], deportations and detentions are happening with zero regard to the rule of law [1], and our _sovereignty_ is under attack daily.
If that doesn't make you blink, like most Canadians have [2], then perhaps nothing would.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.74863...
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-admin-ignores-judges-order-b...
[2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/03/18/ctv-national-news-ho...
Let's hope you never get unlucky, it only takes one border agent having a bad day after all. I've been to the US many, many times and as I said I no longer consider it safe, but we all have different risk tolerance levels.
> when it’s objectively far safer than visiting any all-inclusive hotspot in the Caribbean
I don't visit those places either.
Cry to someone else about how it's all media based fear while ignoring the very real changes in attitudes, policy, and atmosphere, but I personally see no reason to take the risk when I could...just stay in Canada and be safe.
Thats the attitude of drivers towards laws on streets of bangalore.
They can't. And this is entirely her fault for trying to enter through Mexico. Telling them she will return to Canada isn't helpful because what are they supposed to do? Tell her ok, go get an Uber to the Airport and just let her go? Mexico would not issue her a VISA either so her only option is US or Mexican Detention. When the agent said "You aren't a criminal" is when she saw that Mexico had denied her re-entry and she was flagged for detention.
Now, I mean, personally I think it would be fine to just let her go because who really cares, but the point of rules/laws/procedures is for them to be followed.
Why did she go to Mexico first? Because she was denied entry in Canada and thought there would be less scrutiny at the Southern Border for Canadians. She was correct, because it worked the first time when she would have likely been denied at the Canadian border for her second crossing, but her initial denial flagged her.
I feel for her, and the situation sucks, but she 100% knows she's trying to game the system, and that's not even bringing up the issues of her self-sponsored TN visa which is dubious.
[1] https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/mexico
She gambled on trying to to game the immigration system and lost. It sucks but 12 days in custody isn't world ending. The most amazing part to me is people with no experience with "the system" find themselves incarcerated and think not eating sounds like a good idea.
1) She was not detained in connection with any crime whatsoever. At no point was her company's use of THC stated as a reason for detainment.
2) You have invented the idea that her second job was fake. If it were, then fraud could have been a crime and reason for detainment- but again, the article makes it clear no crime was charged or cited.
3) You are right that plenty of non-white people are also going through this. I wish that was also enough to motivate people to care.
The point is that removing due process for anyone is a threat to everyone. It could be you next. You might think, "Not if I'm a citizen and not a criminal" - but the whole point of due process is getting the opportunity to prove that you are in fact a citizen and not a criminal. That right is eroding.
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The starting assumption when crossing any[0] international border is that you don't have a right to enter the country, until you prove otherwise.
People from wealthy Western countries are generally used to just waving their passports and passing through, but that is not nor has it ever been some kind of automatic right. People are questioned and denied entry all the time, should they fail to satisfy the border official of their eligibility for entry under the exact terms of their visa (or the relevant visa waiver program).
I'm very sympathetic to the idea that border officials should have less discretion to deny people entry without very solid reasons, but if you start talking about 'innocent until proven guilty' at a border today, you're not going to have a good time.
[0] International agreements can of course modify this default assumption, e.g. Schengen.
you are right, for immigration its your responsibility to prove that you are not coming in to violate terms of entry. Onus is not them to prove that you are coming to work on tourist visa.
When i google "holy water" first few links for me are some sort of THC infused liquid. But i think this person was working for one without thc?
How is it OK to treat everyone like that ?
It may not seem right, but enforcing laws is kind of the point of having borders and cops and things like that. I'm amazed how many people are complaining.
This woman is clearly shady and got what she deserved and that's that.
"I don't know Homer Simpson. I never met Homer Simpson or had any contact with him, but-- I'm sorry. I-- I can't go on."
"That's okay. Your tears say more than real evidence ever could."
I never had any problems (outside the horrible behaviour of border officers who show you that you are not welcome). I was stopped once by a policeman when I did an illegal car maneuver (which is tolerated in France), and when he realized I was a tourist with family, he just said, "Be careful, have a nice trip."
Today I am seriously considering never going to the US anymore because it looks like it is not a good destination anymore. I may be wrong though, I hope.
They've always (in my life, which is largely post 9/11) done that to US citizens too. Going into Canada it was "where are you going to? the beach, eh? have a nice day!", coming back seemed to be performed under the suspicion that our passports were fake and our car was made out of drugs. Despite doing nothing wrong, we were always afraid of getting in trouble because a border agent felt like it.
I handed the border agent my US passport and the conversation went like this
"why are you entering the country?"
"I live here"
"do you have legal status in the US?"
"I'm a citizen, you're holding my passport"
"have you ever overstayed a visa in the US in the past?"
"I was born here, so no"
"do you intend to do any work while you're in the US?"
"yes, I'm a US citizen and I have a job"
I didn't get pulled off to the side or anything, it was just standard questioning at entry processing when flying in, but it was just bizarre
the border agent kept looking me up and down suspiciously like I was hiding something, but he had my passport the whole time
even when I got questioned on my way to Canada (I would've stopped me too), they were much nicer about the whole process, it's an air of "we're just double checking cuz making a mistake here would be real bad, but as long as everything's legit, no worries, I hope you have a nice stay in Canada"
entering the US the vibe is "you're a violent criminal and it's my job to ask you questions until you slip up and admit that fact, the US is magnanimous for allowing you to touch our great country's land with your disgusting feet, and you should remember that every day you're here or we'll detain you so you won't forget again"
I'm a little surprised you've only had positive experiences.
I was talking about the experiences within the country. The border is horrendous, exactly like Russia. Same vibe of "we hate you, kneel before stepping into my country"
For a foreigner, even one that knows the US pretty well, there is a background feeling of "if it goes bad, it will go vey bad". This is mostly because of movies and news like this article but the everyday life was more or less friction free. I did not get into anything serious, though.
In 2017, Pew estimated that the EU had peaked around 5 million illegal immigrants: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/11/13/europes-unauth....
IN 2018, a Yale study estimated the U.S. had around 22 million illegal immigrants: https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twic....
France during the same period was estimated to have 300-400k illegal immigrants: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/11/13/four-co....
We have 10 times as many illegal immigrants per capita as France does.
Spending money in a country that obviously is not happy to see me is not likely to happen. We went for the rest of the world for now.
My friend got her visa stripped and given a 10 year ban under Obama because of jokes in her text messages about a GC marriage. She didn’t get thrown in jail but she was refused entry back into the US and had to get someone to sell all her stuff while she flew back to her home country.
Most of you have no idea about how life is because you’re probably citizens but this is the reality at the border. It’s even worse in other countries.
Someone I know is from Australia and she said if you overstay your visa they track you down, arrest you and send you to jails outside of Australia mainland until you are eventually deported. Every country treats their border extremely strictly.
CORRECTION: I pinged my friend and I was wrong. They arrest them but don’t send to offshore jails. Those are for illegal immgrants that arrive on boats.
It's not. I take you are comparing to western countries. If you have a valid visa and behave even remotely normal to the border agents you will have no issues. Only in the USA some border agents have the attitude of "I'm gonna get you" or making you feel unwelcome for no reason. Hell, even in "authoritarian" countries like UAE or Quatar I never experience anything but pleasant interactions on the border.
Wikipedia seems to indicate I couldn't go to the UAE because I'm transgender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_by_country_or_ter...
Be strong.
This is the crux IMO: it should be an OR not an AND. Having to behave "remotely normal" where this is determined solely at the discretion of the TSA is impossible.
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Just recently a woman from the UK was denied entry into Canada and because of that was denied entry back into the US and found herself in the same mess as the person in the article.
This happens all the time, you just don’t hear about it until the news decides to make a thing about it.
You are proving my point, she was again detained by USA for 3 weeks when it could have been resolved much better and faster.
Honestly, this kind of abusive approach is predominant among certain of the major anglophone countries only, at least within the world of fully developed democratic countries, likely for reasons of shared media ownership/viewership and overlapping cultural/political attitudes but I don’t know for sure.
Yes, several other fully developed democratic countries do of course treat their borders strictly in the sense of who’s allowed in and under what circumstances, but not with these kinds of abusive treatment as a common pattern. And I do frequently read news in three languages plus a fourth occasionally, so I don’t think this is just me being biased toward news from countries that share of my native language of English.
Impressive. Can you speak or understand by listening these languages as well? And if I may ask out of curiosity, which languages are they?
If you just overstay a visa you will just be deported fairly quickly, you aren’t going to go into offshore detention…
That’s not a defence of the practice, offshore detention should absolutely be abolished, it’s just worth being accurate.
CORRECTION: you are right. I got my story mixed up so I was wrong. It’s illegal immigrants who arrived by boat that were sent to offshore jails. My friends friend was sent to a regular jail. He had a student visa and stopped going to uni so he got arrested and deported because his visa got cancelled.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/content/dam/pdfs/law/kaldor/factshee...
The reality is that you can be denied entry for pretty dubious reasons, but most people with a valid visa/visa exemption who don't do sketchy shit like the woman in TFA don't get randomly denied or even interrogated beyond the basic purpose of visit questions. All my entries into the US (as well as other countries I have been to) have been pleasant except for the long queues.
> Every country treats their border extremely strictly.
Unfortunately not every country. Much of the EU has gotten used to lax borders.
Strict enforcement of borders is mostly in countries that get lots of people trying to enter illegally or overstay their visa. E.g. those with neighbors that are significantly less well off.
Let this be a lesson to all those who think it's fine to unlock their phone and hand it to cops.
"CBP officers can only search and access data stored on the device’s hard drive or operating system. The search does not include data that is stored remotely in a Cloud format. The officer must ensure that data and network connections are disabled before starting the search, for example, by asking the traveler to turn the device into airplane mode and disabling Wi-Fi."
[https://hselaw.com/news-and-information/legalcurrents/prepar...]
I imagine it would be, if you visited South Sudan.
It is not "even worse" in any of the western countries. The border control people in most western countries are actually friendly. They are polite, sometimes even, gasp, smile at you.
That has also been my experience with the US. YMMV of course.
Edit: I had applied for a GC years before this happened, so I think the officer thought I didn't want to leave. This was not the case however. The case had been approved but not processed.
For those of you who go through that, don't agree to the statement if they modified it, like mine. There's no cameras or recording devices so they can be dirty, and they abuse that fact. You have no rights at all at the border, and your assumptions on decency and honesty are not correct.
My assumption to this day is that they thought I was trying to work illegally, but this is not the case.
So you told them that you were there for visiting/tourism, and they alleged you were coming to the US to work, on the basis that you're applying to jobs in the US?
Our current international regime of widespread passports, residency permits, visas, and border checks is barely 100 years old. Even in my lifetime (pre-9/11) the US-Canada border was a passport-free affair: just show the border guard your drivers' license (if you were the driver) and tell them you had nothing to declare -- they knew you were lying but didn't care.
It is not an iron law that international borders have to be dystopian "papers please" civil-liberties-optional free-fire zones. There is little point in the US policing either land border at all, but hassling NAFTA citizens (aka Canadians and Mexicans) traveling on business is especially absurd. A Schengen-style regime in North America (it's only THREE countries, should be pretty easy!) is way beyond overdue, but it seems like we're instead headed in the opposite direction as fast as we possibly can.
Open borders are the default state of the world. Anything interfering with our ability to travel should be in response to a specific, real problem. Instead, we've handed the door keys to our whole country to a handful of cops and private contractors who get paid more when they hassle us more.
There is a lot of unnecessary cruelty and lack of due process in this story.
> The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
> Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
> The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.
One is the private prison industry being incentivized to hold as many people as possible.
But there's also a bureaucracy (ICE and State) with little to no pressure to perform better for this particular population (because who cares about criminals?).
Consequently, you get an industry that's perfectly happy to warehouse people... coupled with a slow and ineffective government controlling the keys to their release.
Private detention facilities should be banned.
But the government also needs KPIs with consequences tied to them. E.g. average holding time, average response time to filing, etc. And leaders get fired / budgets cut if targets are missed.
But otherwise I agree; even in places where detention facilities are not privatised, bureaucracy can still pose a lot of issues because, as you say, "who cares about criminals", or because certain traits are overrepresented in the group of people who take up these jobs.
To wit, that no one actually cares about doing anything.
And granted, that's long been a consequence of low morale in the prison and ICE employee pool, but now it's coupled with a removal of even the least pressure from above to do the job well.
In short, I don't think "Be cruel to people" needs to be messaged from above: "We don't care about anyone you're holding" is sufficient for low-level employees to be their worst selves.
I’m pretty sure it’s not either.
In situations like this, it’s simply conflict avoidance and sticking to the responsibilities of your pay grade. Any given ICE employee may have a good idea where someone is likely to go or not go, but they almost certainly don’t know enough about any specific case to make a comment about it in a way that may have legal ramifications.
This may sound like punting responsibility, but if an ICE employee says something incorrect to someone being held, that could come back to haunt them via legal consequences. As such, if it’s not their job to answer questions about a detainee’s status, it’s probably prudent for them not to answer.
Let me be clear, I think that this is a racket. I also think that any person with decent morals and ethics should consider not working at these places.
That said, I don’t think it’s necessarily reasonable to criticize the ICE folks for staying in their lane when on the job.
When the incentive is a quota rather than just adjudication, you end up with what's going on now.
"due process" is what you are due - it is what is afforded to you by the 4th amendment and habeus corpus. Op is correct.
(ECHR is different on this, which has caused a lot of controversy in the UK from people who want to be arbitrarily brutal towards non-citizens)
This isn't true and what I wish more than anything in life is if people would stop repeating unadulterated propaganda because that literally normalizes it.
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...
And don't try to gotcha me either - yes the same article says they have qualified the extent of those rights but
1. The qualifications are not "you have to be a citizen" but whether you "developed substantial ties to this country."
2. This woman had a work visa - I'd call that pretty substantial ties
Nope, most of the constitutional rights apply to all people under the jurisdiction of the US. It's why the Bush administration set up Guantanamo--to try to evade any hint of constitutional protection, and he still failed that. (Of course, as Guantanamo also shows, the remedies available to people whose constitutional rights have been grossly violated by the government are quite lacking.)
Not within 100 miles of the border unfortunately. https://www.aclu.org/documents/constitution-100-mile-border-...
Taken from your link:
> In practice, Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people. These problems are compounded by inadequate training for Border Patrol agents, a lack of oversight by CBP and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the consistent failure of CBP to hold agents accountable for abuse. No matter what CBP officers and Border Patrol agents think, our Constitution applies throughout the United States, including within this “100-mile border zone.”
It seems that non-US citizen still have rights, but abuse is rampant within the US border patrol.
Although while I'm here, I will note that they still don't discuss the fact that--as far as I can tell--all the regulations and laws means the 100 miles start not from the water's edge, but from the international boundary, which is 12 miles out to sea. And which also means Chicago is not in the 100 mile border zone, since the actual Canadian border is on the side of Michigan, well over 100 miles away.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) may search any electronic devices without probable cause at these points.
see https://informationsecurity.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toru...
and
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/usa-border-phones-search-1.4...
Canada doesn't behave this way - https://www.harrisonpensa.com/new-limits-imposed-on-border-s...
I don’t think anyone would have a problem if she was processed promptly and quickly deported or if the confinement accommodations were nicer. That’s purely a resources problem.
In theory and past practice, perhaps.
Currently the USofA is comfortable deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador with no trial or other due process.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz032xjyyzyo
I definitely would be screwed in this situation. Time to remember by sibling’s number
Right, people have attorneys. Very common thing ... nowhere?
[Lawyer, Passport, Locksmith, Gun by DeviantOllam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihrGNGesfI)
By the number of people asserting that this sort of abusive from border patrol agents runs rampant and people just need to be ok with being deported when trying to lawfully enter the US, what leads you to believe that lawyering up in preparation to enter the US is unheard of?
To read me as somehow condemning the woman in the original story seems pretty willfully bad faith.
in this case, this one did, yes. It seems like this will be more common after this incident.
> Dr Alawieh had traveled last month to Lebanon, her home country, to visit relatives.
No, she did not; she attended the funeral of a leader of a US-designated terror organization.
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1901668299793899705
Ironically, it's not focused a lot more on feelz, no realz. People don't seem to want to remember that reality is in fact, often disappointing.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/us/brown-university-doctor-de...
> contained hemp
The actual company name is hempandhoneynj? That sells “ HIGH THC IS FOR EXPERIENCED CANNABIS USERS”.
I don’t think weed is legal yet on the federal level. There is some grey ares are on the THC vs weed classification, but note that also harsher laws - like dealing drugs - could have applied here.
> Our Delta 9 THC is legal according to federal law and many state laws. All Delta 9 THC extract being offered is 100% derived from legal hemp and does not contain more than 0.3% ∆9THC.
https://www.hempandhoneynj.com/product/holy-water-euphoric-k...
So no, "harsher laws" couldn't apply here, as there are no scheduled drugs involved in either the process or final product.
How is it different from a local dealer: trust me cops won’t care?
Federal law allowance on that 3% rule is very very narrow. And it’s highly likely that the THC is being re-enrich post haverst which then it is still not legal.
“Harsher laws” are pretty harsh. Even if no violence just “easing distribution”, it’s a max sentence of 10-year.
This doesn’t a crazy out of line interpretation of that 3% THC rule that seems like a legal hoop-hole, but it is just of the lack of enforcement of the law by other branches of the government that makes feel this way. It means to be accidental THC not laboratory enriched THC. Which is obviously the case here.
As far as I can tell, the submission article doesn't mention THC at all, and the only time hemp is mentioned is in this context:
> He claimed I also couldn’t work for a company in the US that made use of hemp – one of the beverage ingredients. He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.
Seems he was OK with the hemp, he was just not OK with the part where there was a Canadian working with a US company that used hemp.
Where are you getting the part that this individual chose to classify some hemp as cannabis from? Wouldn't he try to alert some of his boss in that case, rather than take back this woman's visa?
This appears to be their site: https://enjoyholywater.com/ - You can see they seem to focus on nootropics, mushrooms, herbs, etc with a little bit of hemp in it. Not so nefarious. This stuff is carried in mainstream stores all over the place.
When I got money and thought of travelling, I quickly realized it's too hard and humiliating to get visa, and preferred EU instead. And visa-free countries afterwards.
Then I planned to have kids and started contemplating what are costs, social security payments, public kindergartens, sick leaves, costs of ambulance (like if you break a spine), or giving a birth... and the US suddenly turned very, very unattractive. Even without these horror stories.
Germany:
"""Innenpolitische Lage
Amerikanische Großstädte sind landesweit mit einem Anstieg der Gewaltkriminalität konfrontiert. Es besteht auch weiterhin eine erhöhte Gefahr politisch motivierter Gewalt."""
Translation:
"""Domestic political situation
Major American cities are facing an increase in violent crime nationwide. There is still an increased risk of politically motivated violence."""
- https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/reiseundsicherheit/usaver...
Personally, I get it but don't support it. I still appreciate my American brethren, just not their administration. We should hit back at the establishment, not the population. Big point there is reducing weapons import, and adding export tarrifs on F35 parts, perhaps ASML machines aswell.
Hitting the innocent is downright criminal.
Sadly the innocent are always the victims under leadership decisions. The method here involves angering them and hopefully overhtrowing the leaders who caused this. we'll see how it goes here.
What you have stated is that, following your view, "people should impale leaders".
> angering them and hopefully overhtrowing the leaders
And that you would pester John to turn him against Jack. What should happen instead is that John will rightfully react against you (possibly both of you), with justification.
It is very basic lucid plain logic.
These are the types of people who 1) support the policies from TFA and 2) will not notice the loss of visa-free travel.
Perhaps your idea isn't to punish the Trump voters, but to galvanize the non-Trump voters?
There's some crap going on in France that English is specified as a requirement for many jobs even when it quite obviously isn't needed. So people lie and nobody cares. On the other hand, it seems to me that people in England are overly modest about their language abilities. I think if you handed out written instructions in French or German on how to win £1000 then a lot of people who wouldn't normally claim to know any foreign languages would successfully follow the instructions.
My grasp of French is so monumentally bad, that last time I tried to say "I can't speak French" in French, the French woman next to me didn't understand because I said it wrong.
My German is coming along OK, but only because I've been living in Berlin since late 2018.
The woman in question tried to self-sponsor a TN visa after being denied earlier at the Canadian border. I can understand why USCBP starts to think “this woman is trying to commit fraud” not “innocent mistake”.
I know most countries would detain and deport people attempting to commit immigration fraud.
Not sure why people should hold the US to a higher standard than other countries.
> He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.
She's Canadian and lives in Canada, so she returned to Canada. But instead of applying for a visa again, she apparently flew to Mexico and tried to get in through the southern border:
> I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it.
Last I checked San Diego doesn't share a border with Canada. Why is a Canadian with a revoked Visa flying to Mexico to try and enter the U.S. through the southern border?
She had a prior denial for a work visa. Then flew into San Diego to apply the second time and got it. Apparently, she should’ve applied via her consulate instead because of the prior denial ?
Can someone explain in non legal terms why this resulted in a visa revocation and detention?
Prison guard unions universally and almost exclusively oppose any legalization and decriminalization efforts, regardless of the subject.
In the UK you can be detained at the border without being given any reasons why, you don't have the right to a lawyer and you don't have the right to NOT answer the questions of the border agents. You also have to disclose the passwords to your phone and computer.
Then,they usually seize your devices for an arbitrary amount of time before eventually releasing you.
This applies to British citizens or foreigners.
It seems that the world is slowly but surely sliding in the wrong direction.
"I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt... I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply."
So: she tried to get a work visa, was denied. Hired a San Diego lawyer, entered from Mexico, got her visa granted. Went home, tried to enter the country again, got her visa revoked and told to speak to a consulate. Then tried to enter again from Mexico, at that point she got detained.
Maybe all this could've been avoided if she did the visa paperwork through the consulate, like she was told to do, instead of showing up at a land crossing after her visa was revoked? A land crossing from a country she has no status in (Mexico), especially. Presumably she was detained because they couldn't just turn her around back into Mexico.
> That's extraordinarily unusual and in my experience has only happened when CBP believes that the applicant was lying or has a criminal record so I wouldn't base the decision on where/how to apply on this very low risk. Depending on the TN application, there are better and worse ways to apply for a TN and from an outcome standpoint, sometimes it's better to apply with CBP at the border or with CBP at a U.S. airport by flying directly to the U.S.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43363854
My name was marked from that point, so everytime I re-entered US I had to get pulled into secondary.
I don't think I would have survived what the Canadian woman went through.
EDIT: please call your congressperson and your senators. Tell them to stop this cruelty.
>I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.
That, and a couple of other stories of people stuck there in the ICE concentration camps are crazy! I am scared right now because in a couple of months I have to travel to LA (on a tourist visa) for a connecting flight to Japan ... to think that I can be "disappeared" at immigration just because the immigration agent doesn't like me is chilling.
Where you're staying, for how long, receipts and booking confirmation. Be very careful with any text messages that might sound "shady" to the very paranoid customs people.
Have an exact itinerary showing step by step where, when, who.
Thank you for the heads up.
Is it just that the US is closer to these people than other, saner countries? I can understand if that's the actual reason.
Also: why do border officers have so much power? It seems wrong. They are low level employees, they shouldn't be able to change your life (or trip plans) just because they feel bored and want to spice things up.
Lots of people, especially those from third world countries, don’t know what they are getting into. They’ve been brainwashed into believing “the American dream” (that anyone can find good jobs, be homeowners, etc.) by movies, television, social media, and other immigrants making money in the immigration business (many of whom were, ironically, lured in by their predecessors and ended up not able to find the dream jobs they were promised). This is why you hear about people blowing $10-100k on gang trafficking services to get in from Mexico, which is super puzzling otherwise when you consider that kind of money goes a long way in their home countries.
I think there is even a song about it, "land of the free home of the brave" or something like that. I hear it occasionally at sporting events.
The US democratic process is not good at protecting small groups of disenfranchised people: Non-citizens, LGBTQ people, prisoners, etc.
Those people get the burden of making their own allies and fighting their whole lives for rights, while most voters prefer not to think about them.
Hell, black people are 12% of the population and their rights have been on the frontline for over 100 years. So many groups are even smaller.
I'm not sure if any other country does this perfectly. Rawls' veil of ignorance is extremely hard to enforce in practice, no wonder we all live in Omelas.
New America is absolutely terrifying.
The United States has always been hostile to outsiders—what’s different now is that they’re not even trying to hide it.
As a naturalized Canadian, crossing the U.S. border has always been a frustrating ordeal. Despite holding a valid Canadian passport, I’m routinely subjected to an extra hour of “security” questioning. Maybe I’m just unlucky. Or maybe it’s because I was born in an "undesirable" Middle Eastern country and have brown skin. One time I was detained for 5 hours and were questioned about "Islam" (ironically, I'm a Christian so I couldn't answer their questions).
My belongings are always searched, and I’m treated as less than human by CBP. I suspect that if you’re white, crossing from EU or elsewhere, you were used to an easier time until now.
The gloves are off.
But still India had the absolute worst border control I've ever experienced. I probably rather sleep on a cold prison floor a couple of days than having to manually reenter all my information eight times!
Scary levels of prejudice and ignorance there. Prejudice against Muslims and I am guessing not knowing about Middle Eastern Christians exist.
As expected, I was interrogated by police-looking people about my motivations, yelled at by some other ones to walk faster and use some machine faster, and almost missed my connecting flight because of the "some questions", even though I never actually intended to enter the US, since I was on my way to Mexico.
One prominent professor was screamed at, nearly tazed, and had their car torn apart because the CBP thought they were homeless, which would be amusing if this senior researcher had not been obviously traumatized by the experience.
I have heard terrible stories from Canadian academics for years through presidencies of "both sides", and I'm glad this story is getting the traction it deserves but we also need to be mindful we did not arrive at this moment overnight.
There is a language standards committee meeting that was going to take place in the US that is now not because too many attendees think the US is no longer a safe place to travel to. We're already seeing this damage take place.
And plus we do not need any standards committee for that, just an executive order.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/03/14/us-citiz...
I’m not sure what area you work in, but there are still many in computer science and optimization.
In my country, some police forces have skulls on their uniforms and vehicles. How twisted is that?
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It's also not just some American or Mexican thing. The same is true in many expat communities (of Americans) around the world. Actually maintaining your visa and other stuff in many places is frequently a massive PITA, expensive, time consuming, and so on. If somebody's there with the claim 'No you see bro, don't you understand I'm just an "undocumented migrant"', he's going to be held in very poor regard by most people there legally.
So even at the most basic level - illegal immigration is deeply unfair to people we want in the country. And that's just one aspect among many. The tales of things gone wrong, or simply of the emotional appeal of somebody trying to make a better life for themselves, can be very appealing - but it's but one dimension of an issue that has affects many, and has many consequences.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%22Working_Towards...
I mean there's the law or some executive order but there's also leeway in implementing. I am not qualified to judge but it just seems to be some sort of preemptive obedience.
Yes. It's trivial to tell if you're not a citizen and go through customs.
is in the Fifth Amendment.
The fact is, I've read very similar articles about how US treats any non-US citizens a decade or two ago. Nothing changed dramatically, people just bring these up now due to current admin. In US, if you are not a citizen, you are subhuman and treated as such, directly by government. Why the fuck would anybody with any amount of dignity cause it upon themselves willingly?
Europe can offer you tons of opportunities and treat you with dignity. Good quality of life and happiness is much easier to achieve, much less stress, your health and education of your kids will be taken care of. Or Australia. Heck, almost any other free place but current US, and many places experience much more actual personal freedom currently.
We can certainly do more than just boycott some nazi ev cars.
https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/30/these-people-face-20-yea...
Ironically somewhat corroborated by the photo in the article. What is the solution for Italy and Greece with these massive coast lines and islands? The refugees deliberately lose their passports. If the rescuers dumped them in a random North African country, everything would be fine. But they want to import as many as possible for ideological reasons.
The solution is to once again enable applying for asylum at the embassies and consulates. Then nobody has to drown.
> If the rescuers dumped them in a random North African country, everything would be fine.
Apart from the many people being killed by random North African country, like what is happening currently with migrants in Libya. That's not fine at all.
> But they want to import as many as possible for ideological reasons.
Humanitarian reasons, not ideological.
So you think if those countries don't accept everyone that wants to enter then it's ok for people to try to enter illegally? That's not how borders work.
> Apart from the many people being killed by random North African country, like what is happening currently with migrants in Libya. That's not fine at all.
They can go to a neighboring country without being "stranded" at sea where they need "rescuing".
> Humanitarian reasons, not ideological.
Humanitarian reasons do not require you to pick up people near the coast of Africa and and instead of taking them back back to where they came from bring them to ports much further away. That's purely ideological. One could even call it treasonous.
Right, so let's unpack this. There is no way to apply for asylum at embassies. It was previously possible, but it's not possible anymore. If you want to apply for asylum, you have to be physically present in the country where you want to apply. Since applying for asylum is legal (it's a guaranteed human right and some countries try to respect at least a subset of human rights, wonder for how long), it is also legal to enter a country for the purpose of applying for asylum, no matter what everyone else says.
> countries don't accept everyone
This is not about accepting anyone. Asylum is a totally different legal concept than migration. Asylum is granted (or not), not accepted. People that are drowning in the Med. sea are applying for asylum, if they survive. For most of them, it will not be granted, but they are exercising their rights. People have a right to apply for asylum, countries have a right to grant or refuse at will.
> They can go to a neighboring country without being "stranded" at sea where they need "rescuing".
Everyone has the right not to be killed. Just a basic respect to other human beings would be welcome at this stage.
> Humanitarian reasons do not require you to pick up people near the coast of Africa...
Yes they do, there are again legal reasons for that. The laws can be changed, but until then it is indeed the only legal thing to do. And also some people don't enjoy seeing other people drowning.
Presumably because their home country treats them even worse? At least that's the point of the refugee program.
True or not, the important part of why people emigrate is because they believe it to be better. US has been really good at propaganda for a long time, and many outsiders (used to) believe that the US truly is the land of the free, although all the evidence pointed in the other direction.
I personally know multiple non-US citizens who did their PhD at MIT. Most of them faced the requirement to temporarily move to the US as a major but necessary nuisance. I also know others who explicitly opted to skip their MIT application to enroll instead in an European program, with all the hoop jumping required to apply for visas being a major factor.
This was a decade or so ago. I assure you that right now things are not looking at better.
Also, people like you should really try to touch grass and try to learn how things are back in the real world. For a few decades now the US is far from being the top choice. In fact, the US doesn't even feature in the world's top 20 in quality of life, in spite of everything. What exactly do you think is happening?
My home country and the EU treat me even worse because of the lack of 200k+ USD jobs for my experience level
No. The US is still the best place in the world for immigrants. There's no other place in the world (barring maybe Canada) where as many people from as many other countries and ethnicities can feel welcome and a part of society. I have several friends who move to European countries (mostly Germany but also the Netherlands) and they never felt like they belonged, while in the US I feel like everyone else. What's going on right now is a temporary shift in this policy, but hopefully the pendulum will swing back.
Saying that as a European who lived in the US for a few years, now residing in Australia.
Sure, if you immigrate to a random town (population = 1500) in the French Alps from Africa, I grant that you'll never fit in. But the same goes if you immigrate to a small Iowa farming town (population = 1500) from Ecquador.
I was wondering how long it would take for this post to generate comments from the smug "as a European" crowd of people with deluded notions of superiority for the complex European continent.
I detest the screaming orangutan politics of Trump and his hardcore followers but the U.S. as a whole mostly remains a fantastic melting pot destination for immigrants like it's always been. One 4-year presidency (after a largely ineffectual and sometimes laughable previous one) does not have to mold the history or legacy of a country. By that logic, barely a state in Europe would be worth recommending at all given the continent's none too distant history or barbaric mistreatment of immigrants.
Even in modern Europe, no, treatment with dignity is not very guaranteed. The old racism of many European countries is seething just below the surface and if it¿s applied even to other Europeans, you can imagine how it might be felt by immigrants from the many countries that have for decades migrated to the U.S and integrated amazingly well for the most part.
Shitting on the U.S has always been de jure in certain circles, and now more than previously (partly deserved thanks to Trump) but it shouldn't happen at the expense of reality.
Dozen of country are better than US, people point that out, us-american get offended lmao, relax, we didn't even started pointing to oceania and Asian as better alternative than US
(This does not mean that people should be treated brutally at the border.)
EU is full of old people and not enough children. The population pyramid looks like a bullet:
https://www.populationpyramid.net/europe/2024/
It's not difficult to see where that leads to, if we stop accepting immigrants.
Like, it's not a perfect solution, there are growing pains, but an adult someone else paid to give a high school education is an insanely good resource. The US's entire gimmick and history has been getting millions of poor immigrants with different ideas and a shred of hope and putting them to work building our country.
But nononono we definitely didn't do this bullshit already with chinese, japanese, german, italian, irish, african, jewish, polish, etc etc etc people. Don't you know it's utterly impossible for people from another country to ever get along with locals? They definitely don't consider themselves just "American" after three generations very reliably, no that would be too easy!
God forbid people in ten generations have slightly darker skin I guess.
False equivalence. You don't have to give up your country to fix it.
> than maybe have a few brown people around who casually speak a different language
The state of most larger european cities is already well beyond that, bringing with it tons of problems.
> "work ten times harder than any local for literally anything"
That's literally saying they help companies regress the standard of living that locals have fought for.
Meanwhile overall these economic migrants are a net negative financial impact overall because most of them do not come to work but to benefit from generous social programs that they have never paid into.
There are other solutions, e.g. that the wealthy boomers pay with their houses for their retirements or are forced to rent out their huge properties.
The retirement ponzi scheme needs to stop at some point anyway. With automation one might also need fewer workers.
Most importantly, many immigrants receive social security and are not employed.
- A political unwillingness to reign in private capital that's exacerbating resident housing shortages / rent increases (read: AirBnb)
- An infrastructure underinvestment in building sufficient new housing (or motivating current housing owners to densify)
- An underappreciation (Germany) that one can't switch energy mix at nation-scale without first building replacement capacity
- (Europe at least has far more child-rearing-friendly policies than the US)
But all of that is a "maintain demographic shape AND ___" problem.
Countries with inverted demographic pyramids go financially south very quickly.
At best, there are some extremely hard compromises to make (higher taxes on a smaller working base, or decreased social/retirement benefits).
At worst, there are no solutions to balancing a budget and things spiral out of control quickly.
It's underappreciated that "young immigrant labor is funding the country".
if that at least was true, but often it is not
How the plunders are divided domestically is another issue but I’d be damned if my country was altruistic internationally
You know who's not paying their fair share into social security in any country? It's the rich, yo! It's the rich! By a wide margin!
To be perfectly clear, I don't care one way or the other about more immigration or less immigration.
What I am saying is that compound interest and the ability to purchase assets is going to continue to draw wealth away from everyone except the ultra wealthy, and immigration policy has effectively nothing to do with that.
Calling on everyone to hate each other is going to prevent us from acting together to solve this problem. We could instead work together, unionize, vote for policies and politicians that won't let the ultra wealthy continue to hoard their gold like dragons.
Besides a job that just pays more money, what sort of unique opportunities exists in the US that doesn't exist anywhere in Europe? Genuinely curious, as I can't seem to think of any on my own.
Additionally, lots of UK and US universities have huge endowments which definitely helps.
That's not to say that there aren't great Universities there, but really international students go to the US (and some of the EU) so that they have a better chance of working there post study.
New? I have advised people to not go to the US ever since they instituted the requirement to provide any and all social media profiles they ever had. Way too many chances for some off-context tweet from a decade or two ago to lead to getting refused at the border by CBP with no recourse.
Additionally, anyone who ever got arrested in their life - and be it a conviction for marijuana smoking as a kid and no matter if you actually got convicted, released or the records expunged/sealed - will either have to lie on their application (which is a bad idea because no one knows if the NSA doesn't have taps on other countries' judiciary systems) or have an additional arbitrary hurdle to pass at the border.
And on top of that you're in a conundrum: you have to book hotels, cars and flights prior to applying for a visa because you need that to prove you're not going to overstay... but if your visa/ESTA application fails, you're out a lot of money for nothing.
It's not just permanent or temporary immigration, tourists have been affected as well for years. But hey, the US seems to be willing to lose thousands of dollars for each tourist they scare off, so if it's worth it for them, I'll gladly spend my money somewhere I feel welcomed instead of like a threat.
All the 45th/47th admin has done is adding even more uncertainty to an already steaming hot pile of dung. At least our government has reacted and updated the hints on travels to the US [1], but shied away for now from issuing an official travel warning.
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/usa-auswaertiges-amt-verschae...
And b) it helps nothing against the host of other issues I raised.
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You weaken the inmate, but how does the prison make more profit from that?
Layers claim the guards didn't notice because the low light.
Jury finds that is a factor and awards.
Now it is policy in all detention centers to keep light on.
Weakened inmates hopefully will not start a riot.
I could easily drive to the US in less than two hours, but no thanks.
I was controlled countless times, I thought at the time I didn't stand out much but I probably did. I was always unlikely to be detained, but vehicle / luggage searches, questions etc can be a huge waste of time so better show some paperwork that will cut the questioning short and not risk missing your bus/flight/train/meeting etc. It sometimes even helped to get into nightclubs...
If you don't understand the threat of an authoritarian dictatorship for its inhabitants, this is it; a state apparatus that is completely opaque, offers no explanation for its actions (other than jingoistic rhetoric), and provides no recourse and certainly no remedy.
people okay with this (and there are many on hn that are as bas been made evident in the last months) simply do not understand that none of their privilege (education/money/status) has any effect on the implacable "I don't know"; if you get snapped up for whatever reason, whatever small innocuous infraction or perceived grievance (or manipulation of the system by someone that doesn't like you), you will go into the same blackhole. they will be telling your lawyers, your family, the (remaining) press "I don't know" and you will be rotting until some whim sets you free (or not).
Ergo "you aren't a criminal. Come with me. You're being deported."
Many of them are wealthy business owners.
______
† Not simultaneously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny_in_Islam
First gen: 1 person, plus 1 spouse, for 2 people.
Second gen: 4 children of the 1st gen, plus 4 spouses, for 8 additional people.
Third gen: 16 children of the 2nd gen, plus 16 spouses, for 32 additional people.
Fourth gen: 64 young children, no spouses.
Adds up to 106 people in total. For 140-160 people, that would be even more children per couple. Unless I mixed the numbers up somewhere, that sounds like a lot of kids, no?
In my neck of the woods that would only be considered a "family gathering". You will see that group on a fairly regular basis (holidays, birthdays, quiet weekend, etc.) A "family reunion", indicating reuniting of family that doesn't see each other so often, extends further – at least five or even six generations.
But also 4 kids is nothing for a Bin Laden. Maybe if you multiply by 10...!
Learning that, the declaration of "you aren't a criminal " seems welcome since they aren't jailing and trying her for distribution or some other bull.
I am interested in what the actual deportation order says... i.e. the cause for deportation.
But good point, maybe that was the pretense for her deportation. A mini Pablo Escobar no doubt.
America First means America Isolated.
Also, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen “America first” as a political slogan, and, well, Dr Seuss said it best.
https://jimsmash.blogspot.com/2017/02/america-first-2-dr-seu...
The history of “America First”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee
It's a safe bet this girl got out "fast" because of the outside pressure. We need to be hiring a lot more immigration judges/personnel that adjudicate and process these people out of the public/private prison complex.
His view on situations like this are enlightening.
He knows the difference between true dictatorships and political wranglings in the news. No system is perfect, and bad things happen to good people every day.
In this circumstance, it looks like this person didn't follow all the appropriate rules related to the entering the US. (visa issues)
My Chinese friend does not understand why people try to break the rules, get caught, and cry foul. Your treatment in his home country would be considerably worse. He is following all the laws to get US citizenship. Should his due diligence be considered a waste of time?
I also had a relative that overstayed her visa in a foreign country and was constantly afraid of being deported. Why should the expectations of foreigners in US be different from every other country in the world?
But instead of sending her back, they put her in jail for 2 weeks. Could have been longer without media attention. There was no process for her, once within the walls, to get herself out.
> Why should the expectations of foreigners in US be different from every other country in the world?
Are you telling me this is common in any other country in the world to be denied entry and then put in jail instead of just be sent back?
She didn't sneak into the US and get caught walking through the desert. She didn't overstay an expired visa. She did what she was legally required to do and presented herself at a lawful border crossing to apply for the necessary visa. And for those who note that she previously had been refused the same visa, by her story the conditions of her visa had changed leading to a new, unrelated application, which again is how it is supposed to work.
And when they refuse that visa, thus denying entry, they say "sorry, you can't come in" and you have to go back to where you came from, which in this case was Mexico. Even if she flew in on an international flight and they refused entry they would make her stay in the international terminal (which is technically not "in" country) until a flight out happens.
That she was quite literally arrested on some unknown pretence is bizarre, and seems like the "feed the private prison" ploy.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-canadian-...
Of course police in the US are now demanding that Canadians answer the question "Canada or the United States", so zero Canadians should be travelling in that country. Law has broken down into some bizarre, hyper-partisan charade, and the end result is going to be civil war.
If you enter PRC on bad VISA you chill at the airport transit area and deported on next available flight. None of this for profit multi week detention to milk ICE contracts.
I'm not a fan, because I'm not in favour of State-run services, but they make what seems to me to be a sound point; that where ICE is private, but State funded, processing people takes the longest possible time because the longer the process takes, the more money they earn. This would also be why conditions are brutal and so inhumane; it's cheaper.
Charlie Munger I think wrote something like if you give people stupid incentives, you get stupid outcomes.
On the face of it, this looks like that, with the added complication the lunatics now running place would say this treatment is desirable.
Question then is how do you set up a State-funded privately run system to behave in the ways you do want, with rapid processing and humane treatment of people.
Are those detainment cells privately owned?
>> Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
Yes; it's a billion dollar business.
They need to (at a minimum) verify her passport, let Canada know they are deporting her, any due process stuff that has to happen in US to deport....
- She worked in LA on a TN that was revoked
- She applied for a TN visa at the Canadian border and was denied
- She then flew to Mexico to try again at the San Diego border (USCBP can see this and explicitly say not to “crossing shop”)
- Her new TN was sponsored by a company she owns for another drinks company she also owns (you can’t self-sponsor a TN visa)
- The company she was consulting for was making THC drinks which are still illegal under USA federal law
My guess is she was questioned and determined to be committing immigration fraud and was detained until she could be deported
Mexico doesn't want that problem dumped on them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz032xjyyzyo
I shudder to think what it would be like in the current climate.
I had overstayed my student visa but that was the extent of my crime. For that I had the pleasure of being shackled and bussed from the inland checkpoint (the one on 5 freeway) to the detention center.
The worst part is the uncertainty, once you are at a detention center - you have no idea what/when is something going to happen.
There is no information flow besides my one phone call.
You have to be happy with your daily burritos and then hope you make some friends and no enemies. Weird thing happens to your brain in these type of uncertain places, you sort of dissociate from what is happening to you. Some sort of defense mechanism I suppose.
I mean how do you respond when the boyfriend of the "main" guy at the facility asks "Don't I know you from somewhere?".
In the end I was incredibly lucky - I actually knew a lawyer to call - and that must have helped me. Most of the people inside had been in detention for weeks with only rough knowledge that at some point they would be deported or possibly set free.
So I had my hearing in front of judge some months later and I agreed for "voluntary departure" and 10 year ban.
Since then I am on some sort of blacklist for life.
Each time I've come back to US, I've have had to spend 2-3 hours at CPB interview room, which if you want to hear human misery from around the world is the place to be. There is some sort of queue but it is rather haphazard.
Again you have this incredible uncertainty when you will get out of this room.
Again, I am extremely lucky, I've had very pleasant CPB officers so far and they are either indifferent or sympathetic to my case.
Last time I was simply given passport without explanation after 2 hour wait with no interview at all!
Then again I've only traveled to US when current administration is not aggressively posturing.
Is this an error or was some of this going on during the previous administration?
There was another similar story reported previously [1].
On that same week, I traveled to Canada. I'm from America but not the US, I have a tourist visa for Canada valid for the next 5 years or so. I've entered Canada many times in the past, zero issues. Zero criminal records, not even traffic violations on my record in any country whatsoever.
Upon scanning my passport I was immediately sent to a different queue for inspection. Similar behavior, when the border officer asked me why I am in Canada I told them I was visiting, when they asked what I do for a living I told them I didn't have a job, I have a healthy dose of savings that allow me to not work for a while and just travel, as I have done several times in the past.
They told me that was "shady", I was interrogated by two officers for about an hour, they asked me about everything, then was sent to a room to wait (it was a comfortable place, to their favor), about half an hour later they come back and tell me I'm allowed to enter but I have to report back to them, physically, in a month and leave the country the same day.
Obviously I didn't have it as bad as these two girls, but in my own timeline, it was definitely the worse border crossing experience I've ever had.
A few weeks before that I was in Mexico, and the border officers where also quite intrusive and thorough with everybody. This almost never happens in Mexico, everyone just goes in, no questions asked.
Since all of this has happened during these past weeks, my conclusion is that, in general, border officials in North America have been told to be very though with all immigrants, perhaps fueled by the demands of the Trump administration. I also think, unfortunately, that this situation will only get worse as borders and international travel will become more and more scrutinized.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43324040
Those people are stuck in detention for weeks and months at a time because there's thousands upon thousands of them, and they all get to have a hearing of some sort. Those hearings take time to process.
> I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations.
This is code for 'illegal alien.' Previous administrations were willfully not enforcing the law, granting temporary status to those who weren't actually eligible. The new administration is not playing that game. Catch and release is over. If you're here unlawfully, you're going to be detained until you have a hearing, which is going to send you back to where you came from most likely.
Ergo, they were there legally.
Why is it so hard to write "ICE" ? It is an acronym.
Setting acronyms in all-caps is a common American stylistic choice, but far from universal in English language writing; initial-cap for acronyms and all-caps for non-acronym initialisms is also a common style, globally, in written English.
Thanks!
Now the burden is on the reader.
"If she stays so kind and accepts what she's been told without protesting, she must be hiding something. That's criminal enough for us."
Okay so, not legal then?
These articles are always like this. "omg I just overstayed a little bit!!! uwu"
Btw, I am European and will never hopefully have to visit the USA again.
Do you seriously believe that because this student technically violated the law before rectifying her paperwork, that throwing her in an overcrowded detainment center is good practice?
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They took responsibility for their actions so they should't have been put there.
punishing ppl even after they take responsibility is not what ppl voted for.
Trump made his intentions very clear. This is exactly what people want.
I'm disappointed, but not surprised. Observing how Americans function, it's very common for them to just let someone higher-up in the system take the responsibility, until the decision reaches a person who is so far removed from the human element they cannot possibly care. Case in point: once I messaged on a public Slack channel "hey I did this thing X, not sure if that's what I was supposed to do". Nobody said anything to me, two weeks later I got scheduled "just a quick sync" with HR. The HR employee was obviously on a different continent.
It seems dumb to travel to a country that has explicitly revoked your visa without being granted a new one!
Nobody stopped her from getting on a plane because nobody checks if Canadians have a visa or not since they don't need one for short visits or stays. In this case her visa was revoked, so she was probably flagged in the system as temporarily not allowed in.
This is speculation, but maybe somebody here can weigh on the technicalities of the situation.
This is not to excuse the inhumane treatment, which if true is disgusting. Dealing with the CBP is always negative, even as a citizen (when returning from abroad).
Edit:
This really stretches credulity:
> I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: “Do you believe in God?”
Edit2 (more dumb):
> There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning
>Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?
Really? Not having your passport on you is the big mistake here?
Edit 3 (Even more dumb):
> One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to the US. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.
> Many of these women were highly educated and spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didn’t speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.
Trying to game the asylum system by lying to immigration authorities.
I'm not sure how all these cases are supposed to sustain the main thrust of the article, which is that all these people are innocent victims of some Kafkaesque nightmare for which they bear no responsibility. They clearly do.
We shouldn't be treating people like this period, but this is just really stupid behavior.
That's for a court to determine, and I'm sure it takes several weeks at least for something like this to make its way through the court system.
Oh man you must be lucky to not live around these types of people.
I remember the first time I was told I was going to burn in hell for eternity. At my first job at 16 by some coworkers in their 20s and 30s because I wasn't participating in their constant religion talk so it made it clear I wasn't part of "the group".
The story is pretty incredible on its face, so I don't see why some skepticism on the way it's being reported isn't justified, especially in the face of reflexive hysteria over a descent into fascism we're supposedly facing.
Again, if true, it is disgusting, and I'm negatively disposed towards ICE and the CPB in general. But I'd like to know whether this is a case of a really odd situation paired with bad judgement and/or bad advice, or something much worse.
In Italy, would it be in 1919 when Mussolini founded his party? Or 1922 when he marched on Rome? Maybe 1924 when opposition leader Matteotti was murdered? Or 1926 when all other parties were banned?
For Nazi Germany, was January 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor too early to worry? March 1933 when he got emergency powers? 1935 with the Nuremberg Laws? 1938 with Kristallnacht?
By the time it's obvious enough to satisfy skeptics like you, it's usually too late. What we're seeing now...invoking the Alien Enemies Act, mass detention, ideological purges of government workers, demonizing immigrants, these aren't random events. They're recognizable patterns. History doesn't announce itself with a banner saying "THIS IS FASCISM NOW." It creeps in while people like you call concerns "hysteria."
History didn't start in 1918, and if you think the political situation in the US right now is anything like interwar Europe, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
We know about the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in large part a) because of the survivors and their accounts of what they lived through and because b) the Nazis kept meticulous records of everything they were doing.
I find it in very bad taste to reduce this to "propaganda by the victors", apart from the fact that it just reduces to the (incorrect) trope of history being written by the victors: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5597/is-history-...
History provides frameworks for recognizing dangerous patterns. If you prefer earlier examples: Consider the Roman Republic's fall where Sulla targeted political enemies, Caesar dismantled institutional checks, or Augustus centralized power while maintaining democratic facades. Or Napoleon's transformation from revolutionary to emperor using emergency powers and populist appeals.
The point isn't perfect historical parallels, it's recognizing warning signs before it's too late. Dismissing valid concerns with sighs and bridge-selling metaphors adds nothing substantive.
They're currently transporting people to slave labor camps in El Salvador.. the analogy seems apt.
This is an important story of US decline. This woman was here to do business. To work with Americans.
If you're flagging this because you're a part of the tech right, who thinks these policies are somehow good for you, maybe hold off on that flag button and let the discussion play out here. Think about what happens if people from the rest of the world are terrified of working within this country.
Well, if it's all spam/off-topic, I guess flag it all. But unlikely it's all spam, this story certainly isn't, so not sure how it got flagged. Feels extremely relevant to various people who go to conferences, events and even just want to vacation.
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Edit: Since someone commented the "If they'd cover it on TV news it's offtopic" line from the rules but promptly deleted their comment, this is the section that might relevant too:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I'd personally consider lawful residents getting sent to detention-centers for no good reasons being "they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon", but we all think differently I suppose.
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There's a substantive article here, and a substantive discussion, and it's user shadow-banned off HN because someone didn't like the political tilt.
HN is going to start shedding exactly the sort of quality users that make it great if this isn't addressed at scale.
And it is very likely being condoned right from the top. Garry Tan is a big DOGE fan on Twitter, as is PG.
It's embarrassing that to get to the content that technofascists don't want you to see, you need to visit a secret URL.
First of all, it's about an entrepreneur traveling to the US for a startup, which is directly relevant to a significant proportion of YCombinator founders themselves.
Beyond its direct relevance to the core founding audience of HN, it is not clickbait or wantonly inflammatory, and is clearly of interest to many based on the comment activity and votes.
This is not true, at least according to dang if I recall correctly. There was a change in moderation strategy since the pg days. The way I remember dang's own explanation was that pg was more hands off in his moderation of political topics. Sure, you can say that it wasn't the same community back then, less flamewars etc, but the fact of the matter is the creator of this site moderated things slightly differently.
Maybe you won't find it ironic, but the creator of HN is often sharing posts on twitter that would be flagged to oblivion if someone other than him posted it on here. Regardless of all the reasonable explanations (this is a tech site, journalists/politicians are on twitter), it's still an interesting datapoint that the creator of this forum in this day and age thinks it's more important spending his own time talking politics on twitter more than talking tech on this forum. I'm going to go out on limb and bet that he does this not because he enjoys or prefers talking politics but because he feels compelled to do so more due to the unprecendented nature of certain events.
I think people who say "do it on twitter like pg, instead of HN" forget that pg's positive twitter experience is largely due to the fact that he has a million plus followers on twitter and people in other fields know who he is so he is able to get high value engagement that counteracts the trolls. Your average HN user is not going to have pg's twitter experience, and so they'd rather try their luck posting in the best forum that's hospitable to them, HN.
But that greatly predates the changes in moderation strategies or hiring dang and sctb.
Surely the understanding of the site's social dynamics has evolved over time, though, and so the reasons for the same guideline are different now.
dang explicitly states they do it differently than pg it:
when a thread turns into a political flamewar, we moderate it more than pg used to. There were many past submissions that neither users nor moderators would allow today [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
See my connect from a few comments ago where I mention how interesting it is we can discuss authoritarian slides everywhere else except when it happens in America. It’s almost a conspiracy, IMO.
Also, I can understand demonizing the current admin, they’re flaunting the most important laws that protect us, and for some here the USA is poised to upend their lives or worse.
In any case, this discussion isn’t interesting, and constant complaints of bad behavior are stifling the actual discussion more than those flagged, dead comments that started shit.
Have you read this discussion? It was already heated, although the comments posted recently have been better.
Before greggyb asked why it was flagged, the top comments were about "the dumbest bully from their grade school" and "team grade school bullies". Does that not sound like flag-worthy discussion to you?
Name calling like that buries legitimate discussion, like the claim that she was not in fact eligible for a TN visa because she "worked for" a startup she co-founded (Holy! Water).
"NAFTA specifically prohibits self-employment for TN visa holders. This restriction poses challenges for entrepreneurs who wish to start a business in the United States."
https://www.visapro.com/resources/article/tn-visa-to-green-c...
Another commenter (now deleted) made the claim that, saying an issue shouldn't be partisan is “just saying ‘everyone should believe what I do’ but in the lexicon of people who look down their nose at the general public.” They added, “The only nonpartisan issues are the most basic of things that all societies have like ‘don't murder people’ (but even then the minutia become debatable).” Although the comment has been deleted, I think this merits a little further exploration, because it's a widely held viewpoint, and there is some truth to it, though I disagree more than I agree.
There are definitely people who mean, "Shouldn't be a partisan issue," that way, but what I mean when I say it is that from the clash of opposing opinions comes the spark of insight, and partisan struggles in which arguments are soldiers do not permit that process to happen: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-c...
I have frequently observed variants of the following exchange in mathematics classrooms:
Professor [writing on blackboard]: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student sitting in the third row of the audience: No, it's x³ + a.
Professor: Hmm. [pauses]
Student: Because the x from substituting f doesn't cancel.
Professor: Yes, you're right. So you see that this just reduces down to x³ + a.
Sometimes it goes the other way, and the student is the mistaken one. Neither participant goes into the discussion on the premise that "everyone should believe what they do"; rather, they believe that by discussing the issue they can arrive at an agreement, which may involve changing their own mind. Converting the discussion into partisan struggle prevents that from happening. Imagine what would have happened in my example if the discussion had instead gone as follows:
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: No, it's x³ + a.
Professor: I don't remember paying tuition to come and see you lecture.
Or, alternatively:
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: You didn't even do a modicum of research. It's x³ + a.
Or, how about this?
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: No, it's x³ + a.
Professor: You're being manipulated into thinking that this factor is being canceled incorrectly by the horrible evil professor.
Or, how about this?
Professor: So you see that this just reduces down to x² + a.
Student: "x²" ? Êtes-vous fou ? Restez avec x³ !
This difference comes out in its purest form in mathematics, but it's also possible for discussion and consultation to reach agreement on empirical and even moral issues. But partisanship is an obstacle in that process.
For example, that time when English people in England didn't count: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englishry
Sure, but you have to draw a line somewhere. Even on HN, there are opinions that you can't express (repeatedly) without being banned, even though there are clearly people with such opinions. Otherwise it's the Nazi bar problem - everyone who's not a Nazi will eventually leave.
Where exactly to draw the line is left as an exercise to the reader, but I suspect that some people just don't like where the line is currently being drawn.
Your comment begins by signaling partial disagreement ("Sure, but") but then makes no argument tending to show that the issue is not highly polarized or that HN is a good place to discuss highly polarized issues. Instead, it discusses other topics relating to social group dynamics, but not in a way that is relevant to the comment you were replying to.
That's what I mean by the Nazi bar problem[0]: you can't solve it by just not allowing certain topics to be discussed, because eventually in some completely tangential situation, a nasty flamewar is going to erupt and people who are not Nazis will be appalled that there are Nazis here.
[0]: I'm explicitly not saying that certain opinions expressed on HN are literal Nazi opinions, the Nazi bar problem is just a convenient analogy for the situation when one group of people holds opinions that are utterly appalling to many other people that frequent the same space.
It sounds like you think the problem is the wrong sort of people. But almost everybody retreats into ego defense and partisan struggle under sufficiently threatening circumstances, even though some people are habitually more prone to that kind of thing than others. It's more about minimizing the frequency of the wrong sort of circumstances.
Additionally, though I think everyone is happy that I'm not the one running the site, I have observed elsewhere that your favored "ruthless silencing" approach has some side effects you may not be anticipating.
```
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you—it's been a crazy last few days!
Users flagged that one. We can only guess why users flag things, but there have been so many posts about the current political goings-on that I think there's a lot of fatigue about it. In this case the article was more of an opinion piece than a factual report, so it's probably not one that we'd override the flags on.
Daniel (dang)
```
So the system is setup to allow this abuse. It's weaponizing the flag system. I'm sure this type of flagging is already automated by how fast some posts disappear on /new.
What's to stop someone from buying enough old accounts and mass flagging other topics to chill discussion / dissent? This could easily be done for a few grand. Rotate accounts doing the flagging and make sure they engage in some "high quality" discussion from time to time to avoid detection. Make sure the same groups of accounts aren't flagging the same posts, etc.
E.g. "I never want to see a freaking post about Rust again"...
Note: I had to wait hours to post this comment because my account was rate limited. I'm assuming because I'm involved in this discussion at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524 Now by the time I can actually post, this thread is well off the front page. This site is really good at effectively silencing people.
Dang, I'd like to know the specific comments where I am going over the line, or are too "low-quality". I have been called out once or twice over the last decade by you, and have agreed that I could have conducted myself better in those instances and tried not to fall back into those patterns.
receipts:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413634
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413955
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43411269
There is if you want to do this systematically rather than adhoc.
> there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs
Totally understood, and know they are here and will flag things they disagree with while still being a real human.
I wasn't saying that is specifically what's happening with this post. I assume that's more what's happening when posts in /newest are flagged within a few min.
That part was just saying "this really wouldn't be hard to do if anyone put in just a little bit of effort, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening".
I find this line particularly weak:
> We can only guess why users flag things
It’s not that hard to do some clustering analysis to see if bad-faith actors are repeatedly flagging posts in a coordinated manner. Maybe he’s trying to avoid giving away anti-spam secret sauce, but that doesn’t seem likely given the language of the copypasta. Speaking for myself, I would like any sort of assurance that anything other than a 100% laissez-faire approach to flag abuse is happening.
https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus
Until that's reality, the system mostly works. Let us know if you ever figure out the perfect flagging system where someone can't "buy old accounts en masse" or something
Despite that there has been a general interest in "tech" and clever things and intelligent discussion here that appeals to a reasonably broad community so the place works.
The massive wealth concentration and power amongst a very few, the Paypal mafia, Andreeson etc has led them down a path that puts them at odds with the rest of us. Regardless of our diverse politics regular engineers aren't going to have more individual or economic freedom in a world controlled by a small group of oligarchs. They care about us about as much as we care about ants.
I wouldn't say the tech world has blessed the regime but many unquestionably revere the financiers of the tech world. We (techies) for all our talk of individual liberties have a problem with cult like thinking. Most of us aren't stupid and we can justify our positions, any position. And while some flagging of discussions might be sock puppets or bots, the truth is a lot of people still thoroughly believe the hype.
>always promoted crypto and AI scams
is very accurate. In my experience it is pretty cynical about those
I guess you can conclude that a few percent here likes Trump etc, but far from a majority
https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk...
Given this, we can reasonably expect hostile bots here, flagging according to agenda.
The best part of it all is that you can post like the above with no clear side chosen and the people whom it applies to will react to it negatively as well.
Humans are humans. Some humans are dumb and emotion-prone. Some humans who are dumb and emotion-prone think their bad behavior is justified because they're on the side of justice/righteousness.
It's not enough, in our current climate, to look the other way because someone is on a similar team...
Reinvigorating honest, fair discussion requires everyone interact more positively.
I think what's happening is that a lot of his constituents like him due to his personality, but they don't necessarily believe he is honest. So, they're betting on his dishonesty and using that as a justification for their support. Meaning, supporting Trump is really not so bad if you assume Trump isn't going to do half the things he says he is. Then, it's like you're supporting an almost normal candidate.
Could we at least elect someone likeable like Bill Nye if we're voting based on "personality"?
They want someone a bit stupid, who says stupid things. They want someone who’s an asshole because asshole is basically synonymous with badass protagonist.
(I'm not one of them, but I believe many are. I appreciate where they are coming from.)
2) It's too political in nature, and violates the HN guideline that political topics are likely off-topic.
3) It violates the HN guideline that the content should be things that good hackers would find intellectually satisfying. Raging partisan hate at each other about the latest political/social snafu is not intellectually satisfying. It has nothing to do with engineering, science, technology, etc., it's purely a social/political issue.
4) Such a submission only draws a mass amount of hate and partisan flamebait which, once again, does not belong on HN. You have every other site on the internet available to discuss political issues.
5) Your appeal to popularity, saying it has lots of engagement and therefore belongs here, has zero connection to the HN guidelines for what belongs here. I don't care if 1 person or 1 billion people engage with it. It doesn't change the fact that it's off-topic and decreases the quality of the site.
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And while it's a non story it's framed as a scandal because it resonate with the current political climate and the character is sympathetic to the narrative (productive and upstanding character compared to the ones dominating the previous news cycle on the topic)
I would advise readers to read the article.
She is one of many, many people who have had a success visa after prior failed attempts.
>“I believe God brought you here for a reason,” she said. “I know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be OK. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.”
You've got to be fucked in the head to think this is an appropriate thing to do as an agent that's part of a federal process. Keep your god out of work!
In the end, we don't know the motivation of the nurse. Could be that the nurse isn't even religious herself, which is why she asked if Mooney believed in god first, and since Mooney said she does, the nurse tried to help her mentally in a way that spoke to her. If Mooney said she didn't believe in god, the nurse might have said something else.
I say this because as an atheist who used to work in elder-care, I've had many conversations with very religious old people, where I "play their game" because they respond better to it, and seemed happy about it. Even if I don't believe in god, talking with people as if I did, just makes sense in situations where people seemed to have lost all hope.
Christianity is a popular religion in Mexico, and most of the people that nurse has dealt with recently are probably facing potential deportation back to Mexico. There isn't much you can say to comfort a person in that situation. Appeals to faith could reasonably be one of the few methods the nurse has to offer comfort. That's certainly better than the nurse being cold and uncaring.
Or maybe I'm just "fucked in the head".
Missing context from Mooney's account:
> I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything.
> At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept. I felt like I had been sent an angel.
There were already 190+ comments when I wrote mine. I don't write comments if there's already one that expressed the same thought
That person was apparently trying to be humane, in her own personal way. Possibly ingenuous, probably in good faith and intention.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I got confused on some words in my memory during the rush, sorry.
Did you understand any different reference?
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That is very easy to type from the comfort of your home on your mobile phone.
After several days of deprivations and hardships, including sleeping in a fully-lighted cold cell without even a blanket, you will get any help and support that you can get.
I am an atheist. I do think that what the nurse did is wrong and unprofessional.
My point is: I would still have absolutely clinged to it, if I was in the same situation as this woman. I would have talked with this nurse, and would have told her that yes, maybe God had something to do with it. And you would have too, probably.
If you are drowning in the ocean, you don't discard a piece of floating wood because it has growing fungi. Claiming virtue is very easy ... until you experience real hardship.
See also, good cop vs bad cop.
The so-called "logical" thing to tell them in this hypothetical scenario is not the optimal thing, so maybe it's not the most logical thing to say/do.
This is the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense if you have an imaginary friend but sounds a little deranged if you don't.
If it's the latter, I think I'd prefer to have more people like her involved with immigration in the United States - not less.
Describes every govt out there.
Edit: Hah, I just realized that congressional sessions open with prayer as well. Not sure what other countries does this?
Likewise, the US prayer is non-denominational (it typically is monotheistic though). Ireland, Canada, South Africa, and the UK also have parliamentary prayers.
UK currency often features the letters "D.G.", which are the initials to a latin phrase meaning "by the grace of God", but other European currency references to God have ended with the switch to the Euro.
The US certainly has above average entanglement of religiosity and governance, but hardly in a sense that makes it a theocracy. Politicians talking about faith and God is a very different thing from, eg, the country being run by the pope.
That term you used is very slippery (actually, you used it as the opposite of a "superstition" - you gave it only the interpretation typical of later uses).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/26/in-america-d...
There are also other reasons why you see different behaviours in doctors and nurses: already linguistically, the "nurse" "nourishes", the "doctor" remains the "learned" - one has a direct rapport, the other detached, out of the basic role construed. It just follows that the nurse more probably consoles and the doctor more probably communicates flatly.
Here you have 124 sources (and counting), from all sides of the political spectrum: https://ground.news/article/canadian-woman-says-she-was-wrap...
Which makes me wonder of the "124 sources", most from repetition: https://bradonomics.com/trust-me-im-lying-summary/
Cross-border trips to the U.S. reach COVID lows with nearly 500,000 fewer travellers in February https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cross-border-trips-decline-...
Is her incompetent attorney committing some violation here?
Or is it just a trash PR to grab some likes and subscribers?
Yet they chose to feature this white person from a white country.
This article reminds of beginning of ukraine war when US press was showing white ppl and saying "we need to stand with them because they are like us".
The ones who are still being tortured aren’t available to be interviewed.
I believe a lot of resentment Canadians currently feel towards Americans boils down to being treated the way they treat any other undesirable country.
I’d be worried about that in your place. I’m worried about that as a Norwegian.
why are you worried about someone who doesn't give a fuck about norway.
Why can't Norwegians mind their own business why is this so offensive to them that americans don't want to be friends with norway. totally entitled . " how dare you don't want to be friends, we are white too"
yeah you nailed it perfectly. "how dare you deny us white status"