The whole story of telling ICE agents to just go out and find people on their own seems like a setup to empower the executive branch to have their own group of thugs. Without guidance they do what want outside the judicial system and sensible oversight / rules.
This seems to be a pattern in most non democratic countries...
mlsu · 2h ago
Another thing that is troubling is that immigration law is sort of a parallel system to normal criminal law. The rights for the accused are lesser and obligations for officers are more lax. The burden of proof is lower. It's easier to get warrants and the rules of evidence are more relaxed.
There is a parallel authoritarian system being built up, starting with the creation of DHS in 2001 and ending god knows where. The massive expansion of ICE should ring alarm bells for everyone. This power grab does not end. It will expand and continue.
Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
duxup · 2h ago
Agreed, ICE seems like a natural org to begin extra legal actions with, fewer limits, you just claim you're doing immigration things and put the accused on a more oppressive track.
potato3732842 · 2h ago
>Another thing that is troubling is that immigration law is sort of a parallel system to normal criminal law. The rights for the accused are lesser and obligations for officers are more lax. The burden of proof is lower. It's easier to get warrants and the rules of evidence are more relaxed.
I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
>Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
mlsu · 2h ago
It's fantastic that right libertarians have the opportunity to own me, a lib. The silver lining to all of this is all of the epic lib-owning that can be done as a result of the destruction of the rule of law. But, by my reading, traffic court and HOA fees were not cause of all of this. Right libertarians rightfully complained in 2001 when the DHS was formed; they again rightfully complained in the 2010's when Snowden blew the lid open on global surveillance. I would like to see them resist in a meaningful way here and now. Unfortunately it seems they are busy going to cryptocurrency conferences at Mar-a-Lago.
> I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
I think we saw what giving power to the "right guy" in the executive branch lead us. The thing that will stop us going down this road is, at this point, active resistance from local and state governments, private businesses and government contractors, and large multi-national corporations.
You need a lot of ICE, an absolutely staggering number of cops and jails, to deport twenty million people. It should be crystal clear by now that they will attempt to follow through with this promise, by whatever means necessary.
mindslight · 2h ago
> Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
Can you point me to some examples of people a decade ago running afoul of traffic or code enforcement, and being sent to an extrajudicial concentration camp for it?
But seriously, stop trying to be edgy with needlessly contrarian points. Stop gloating because us libertarians were talking about the trend of unaccountable government processes before it was popular. The dam breaking is not something to be celebrated, you're just adding fuel to the fire.
It's time to circle the wagons and defend our country together. True libertarians are not "keeping our mouths shut", but rather speaking out against the rapidly increasing government power. One cause, which we have to be mature and acknowledge, is the destruction of bureaucracy (which we've always disliked, but at least it moderated) in favor of unrestrained autocracy.
jzebedee · 52m ago
Out of the hundreds initially deported to El Salvador, "only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations." [1]
I think you misread my sentence out of the context of the overall argument? I edited it to add "a decade ago" to be clearer.
If I'm correctly interpreting what you said - yes, I agree that presently some people end up running afoul of traffic enforcement, which causes them to run afoul of immigration, which causes them to end up in the concentration camp.
But the larger argument is contrasting the longer-existing authoritarian/autocratic dynamics of code/traffic enforcers versus the more recent development of autocratic immigration enforcers.
jzebedee · 36m ago
Thanks, I read it as saying that people weren't being deported to concentration camps over minor crimes or traffic offenses. I'm certainly not disagreeing with you about our descent into fascism.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 2h ago
> Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now?
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
NickC25 · 2h ago
That's the gameplan, it's written in detail in the Project 2025 outline...
krapp · 2h ago
But Trump pinky swore he wouldn't do a fascism!
No comments yet
drcongo · 2h ago
ICE are Trump's Sturmabteilung.
potato3732842 · 3h ago
The entire framing of this article fact that we don't even know the name of whoever he was trying to protect tells you a lot.
Clearly we're not meant to be upset that fed-cops can behave this way generally, we're meant to be upset that they dared treat another agent of the state, a more equal animal, the way they'd treat a common peasant who got similarly uppity. Caring about these generalities is outside our lane.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 2h ago
> we're meant to be upset that they dared treat another agent of the state,
I'm upset because a US citizen was arrested for asking a reasonable question to some government officials before complying with the government officials.
moduspol · 1h ago
It may blow your mind to discover there is more to the story than that he was simply asking for a warrant.
> New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.
I am not seeing the "assaulting law enforcement" in this video -- am I missing something?
msgodel · 2h ago
Government employees have more responsibilities than normal US citizens. If he was hiding someone he was derelict in that responsibility and sending the law after him is completely reasonable.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 2h ago
He wasn't hiding anyone. He was out in a hallway, along with the person he had linked arms with. Watch the video.
He was refusing to unlink his arm from the person ICE wanted to detain until ICE presented documentation establishing the legality of what they were doing. It was a perfectly reasonable request.
ars · 2h ago
This title is editorialized by whoever posted it, the article does not support this interpretation. He was not arrested for asking a question, but rather for impeding what they were doing by refusing to let go.
Maybe he was right to do so, maybe not, but it had nothing to do with "asking a question".
jzebedee · 2h ago
Editorializing what, exactly? The rule of law?
"what they were doing" is attempting to illegally abduct someone. The comptroller's "impeding" was a demand to see the one thing that would make their request a legal arrest.
Instead, they arrested the comptroller without even a pretense of the law.
anthony_d · 1h ago
ICE agents are not generally required to present warrants. The agent has all sorts of conditions where they get to say no. If you think you’re above the law and can tell them what to do then you’re going to be arrested.
scienceman · 11m ago
Agents who are masked and don't have any obligations to present warrants before abducting someone... really are we saying this is reasonable?
woodruffw · 2h ago
I don't think that's the point of the article -- I suspect it's more that the average New Yorker reading this NYC news site already knows who Brad Lander is.
(You can also easily imagine why it wouldn't be ideal to publish the name of someone who is actively being harassed by masked thugs.)
potato3732842 · 2h ago
>(You can also easily imagine why it wouldn't be ideal to publish the name of someone who is actively being harassed by masked thugs.)
If I were being mistreated by enforcers I would want my name anywhere and everywhere. Public scrutiny is one's only hope when government seeks to mistreat you.
woodruffw · 2h ago
I think this qualifies as public scrutiny. But also: you're presumably a citizen/national, like me, so you're not coming at this from a "they're going to kidnap my family to punish me for being visible" angle. That's been the recent trend for non-citizens/nationals.
threatofrain · 2h ago
This is Trump attacking Democratic strongholds by arresting their leaders.
mindslight · 2h ago
News is written for lowest common denominator, appealing to emotional narratives. [More] news at 11. Stop trying to point to the media's hypocrisy as if it justifies rejecting the overall message. I don't like that elected officials are of a higher class either, but the plain fact is they are. We need to work with this to point out how out of control this administration is.
Sometimes, criticism is poised to cause reform. Currently, it's poised to support the fascist takeover in progress. Having to circle the wagons sucks as it further empowers the authoritarians on our side, but at this point it is what it is - traditional American governance (with all of its warts and flaws) versus autocratic fascism red in tooth and claw.
Simulacra · 2h ago
Do you feel better?
stingrae · 2h ago
It is insane that federal agents are allowed to roam around in masks, without ID and just arrest people.
Any agent of the state. If I were King(TM) it wouldn't even be possible to call in an anonymous tip to the most mundane of local government offices. Sure a few people would get some retribution initially but eventually it'd result in better alignment between the interests of the state and people. Anything not worth doing fully above the table isn't worth doing.
mindslight · 2h ago
It's also insane that state governors haven't deployed their national guards to keep the peace against these lawless masked kidnap gangs [0]. Arrest them with guns drawn like any other violent criminals in the act, and keep them in jail until state judges can review the details of their situation.
This applies more to other kidnappings and less here, because this happened in a fascist-controlled building. But the point is we need to start drawing these types of hard dividing lines based on state authority following the law in good faith, rather than deferring to an autocratic federal executive that increasingly interprets it in bad faith.
[0] sorry fascism-cheerleaders - without uniforms, legal documentation of their authority, accountability to bystanders, and duly-issued arrest warrants, this is what they are.
incomingpain · 2h ago
They arent.
They need probable cause to arrest just like any other law enforcement. If they just arrest you because you're annoying or fake charges. You can sue them for deprivation of rights.
stingrae · 2h ago
They are, it could be that the vast majority are acting in good faith, but the videos show a very different story. There is also no statement from ICE renouncing bad behavior from their agents.
Also, you are going to have a hard time suing if you are an El Salvadorian prison.
potholereseller · 2h ago
The actual title of the acticle is "Brad Lander Detained by Masked Federal Agents Inside Immigration Court".
Contrary to the current title here on HN, Lander was not arrested for asking to see a warrant; TFA states the opposite, "It wasn’t immediately clear what charges, if any, the mayoral candidate will face. A spokesperson for ICE didn’t immediately return a request for comment."
If an event is so important to know about, why fabricate such an important aspect of the event in this way?
Simulacra · 2h ago
A couple of reasons:
Clickbait,
Incitement,
Selling something, or
Bad Journalism
It happens all the time, but your point is absolutely correct. Media fabrication undermines confidence in the reporting.
potholereseller · 1h ago
The other commenter mentioned "narrative", which is very relevant, because that is an important part of simulation (and your username)
Baudrilliard was careful to point out that simulation isn't a matter of fabrication; to simulate is to obscure the absence of facts, not to create false facts. A simulacrum is a symbol that obscures the fact that it refers to nothing; whereas a symbol, in centuries past, invariably referred to something, real or imagined. The resulting reality (or maybe "mindspace"?) is a construct on top of the real world -- a hyper-reality -- in which every symbol is a simulacrum; the only thing real in hyper-reality is that the symbols hide the absence of facts. This is why, again as the other commenter mentions, we appear to live in a post-truth society; we are fully living in hyper-reality.
>Bad Journalism
The guy who created the Pullitzer prize also co-invented Yellow Journalism.[0][1] There is neither good journalism or bad journalism; it's all simulation.
It serves the narrative, which is more important than facts. That's why people often say we are living in a "post-truth society."
sjsdaiuasgdia · 3h ago
Call your elected representatives. Attend a protest. Make noise. Above all else, protect your family, friends, and neighbors.
We do not have to sit back and let this happen.
nemomarx · 3h ago
they did just shoot two elected representatives so I think we're a little beyond protests working
haswell · 2h ago
The scale of the protests means the protests are already working. They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.
I don’t see a connection between their efficacy and what happened in Minnesota, which was an event that is arguably all the more reason to protest.
nemomarx · 2h ago
Good strategy if voting is still allowed in 2028, not super useful if political violence bubbles over into a coup or such.
The scale of the protests is encouraging, but I remember the mass protests under Bush were about as large, and the war continued and he stayed in power. Organization needs to do something with the mass of people who are out in the streets to direct them.
abeppu · 2h ago
Working to accomplish what goal for whom?
I think largely they have not yet been effective at protecting immigrants.
> They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.
Right, so to some degree they "work" as tools for existing political groups in attracting attention, resources and possibly votes. But does it better enable those groups to actually help immigrants? Or does it just give political organizations a powerful talking point in the midterms?
jkestner · 2h ago
Sustained protests are merely a part of what's necessary.
Sure would help if the media would cover them to the extent that they did for George Floyd/Women's March/etc.
Simulacra · 2h ago
They?
potato3732842 · 2h ago
Publicly they'll wring their hands and tell us a bunch of BS about how violence outside of the state is bad and whatnot but behind the scenes they'll go back to their research people and their focus groups and try and get to the bottom of whether it was just one crazy or an outlier who's of an existing trend in opinion they ought to care about. Same as they did when that CEO got shot.
garciasn · 2h ago
When someone attempted to assassinate Trump would you have lumped all of those against Trump into "they"?
I don't support what the current administration is doing; not by a long shot. But to say, "they did just shoot two elected representatives," is disingenuous at best.
sculper · 2h ago
The current administration explicitly condones violence against political rivals. "They" seems fair.
orwin · 2h ago
I have lumped every people with roughly the same ideology as the Trump shooter in a 'they'.
I don't remember the exact sentence but it was something like that: "That's the issue with pandering to violent conspiracy theorists, if they feel betrayed they will aim that violence at you".
Do you disagree with this characterization?
jbm · 3h ago
> Call your elected representatives
I have never seen this work for something this politicized.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 2h ago
Doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying.
bigyabai · 3h ago
My elected representative gets (credible) death threats if they resist executive monarchy.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 2h ago
TBH, I want such reps to be loud about that. We need to stop pretending that the right is not leveraging stochastic terrorism. The problem doesn't go away by ignoring it.
Yes, that's risky. Some people might get hurt. A lot of people are being hurt, and will continue to be hurt, by the current situation. We all have to make our own choices about when principles and long-term outcomes outweigh our instinct for self preservation.
deadbabe · 3h ago
I think we are well past the ability to do anything legally about these ICE arrests. A radicalized population will eventually move toward inflicting violence upon ICE agents directly, and possibly their homes and families.
RHSeeger · 2h ago
It seems like it would be possible for state and local forces (police) to arrest and imprison ICE agents that are acting illegally. Specifically, arrest them for kidnapping when the nab people off the streets. Sure, they'll get out because they can lie and pretend they have cause; but they could be locked up for a while at least. And do it enough, and maybe they'll start thinking twice before acting stupid.
dttze · 53m ago
I have bad news about the police. They are exactly the same as ICE. If they fight it would be more like gang warfare over turf and money, since that is all they really are.
distortionfield · 2h ago
This is the natural end result of giving the president qualified immunity for acts in office. There is now no reason for them to follow the law.
lesuorac · 2h ago
How?
None of these individuals are the president.
It's the effect of qualified immunity for non-presidents.
blooalien · 2h ago
Mostly because they're acting as agents of the president's agenda, and as such, even if one were to prosecute them for their crimes, the president would just blanket-pardon them all and executive-order that they're immune to any legal enforcement against them, and the toadies in D.C. would roll over and allow it all to happen.
lesuorac · 1h ago
But none of that has to do with a president's own qualified immunity.
ICE isn't inheriting the president's qualified immunity; they have it because they're government employees. It doesn't matter if they're acting in the presidents interests or not and for state employees if they're acting in the governors interests or not.
Pardon is a very clearly enumerated power of the president so any usage of it is very clearly legal (although typically undesirable).
28304283409234 · 2h ago
I do not understand why this is flagged.
haunter · 2h ago
Because it's HN not /r/politics
A lot of us doesn't come here to read about US internal politics
Simulacra · 2h ago
Flagged because it has nothing to do with technology, and actually goes against the rules.
"New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained inside a Lower Manhattan immigration court building Tuesday morning by masked federal agents as he attempted to escort a man from his court appearance there. "
This is actually what happened, not the headline. He tried to forcibly remove someone there for court. It's all a a show, to make the Trump administration look bad.
peteyPete · 2h ago
Go forth and arrest 3000 people a day, says Trump.. I assume performance is tied to that 40k bonus they're supposed to be getting under the big beautiful bullshit bill? Are they being paid a performance bonus? An incentive to put anyone in cuffs if they don't care about how its done. History will not be kind to those amoebas.
ars · 2h ago
The article does not support the current HN title, not to mention that changing the title is against HN rules. Stick with the article title which is: "Brad Lander Detained by Masked Federal Agents Inside Immigration Court".
kjkjadksj · 2h ago
Won’t be the last. Wasn’t it last week we saw Sen. Padilla held to the floor by federal agents for asking questions?
NickC25 · 3h ago
Just dumb. ICE are out of control. I wonder why...
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
Nah, they are completely in the control of Stephen Miller. This is the way he wants it.
Juliate · 2h ago
There's a thing I don't get, as a non-USAmerican.
If someone unidentified, masked, showing no warrant, no legal justification of anything, kidnaps/attempts to kidnap someone, how are (organised) citizens not in their legitimate right to retaliate, according to what their local state allows them to?
Similarly, why/how are the law enforcement units not taking side against those kidnapping?
I mean, in my country, this would obviously call for immediate intervention of the police, but maybe that's because I'm still in a country where administrative enforcement is still ultimately under the control of the judiciary branch.
nemomarx · 1h ago
The cops personally agree with them, and so wouldn't intervene in any case.
I do think there's precedent that it's self defense to fire on an unidentified stranger who knocks on your door or tries to arrest you without showing ID, but you need to make it to court to press that defense and I can't say it's a great strategy for that reason
This seems to be a pattern in most non democratic countries...
There is a parallel authoritarian system being built up, starting with the creation of DHS in 2001 and ending god knows where. The massive expansion of ICE should ring alarm bells for everyone. This power grab does not end. It will expand and continue.
Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
>Why are the right libertarians and 2A folks not speaking up right now? We have masked feds rolling up and barging in without warrants...?
Right now you're making the same complaints about immigration process that hardcore libertarians made decades ago about traffic court and code enforcement and were brushed off for various reasons. They're keeping their mouths shut so as to not interfere with the learning process.
> I would be absolutely elated if the end result of all this crap is a judicial president that eviscerates the many parallel systems that the feds/state/local governments run in all sorts of specialty areas of law.
I think we saw what giving power to the "right guy" in the executive branch lead us. The thing that will stop us going down this road is, at this point, active resistance from local and state governments, private businesses and government contractors, and large multi-national corporations.
You need a lot of ICE, an absolutely staggering number of cops and jails, to deport twenty million people. It should be crystal clear by now that they will attempt to follow through with this promise, by whatever means necessary.
Can you point me to some examples of people a decade ago running afoul of traffic or code enforcement, and being sent to an extrajudicial concentration camp for it?
But seriously, stop trying to be edgy with needlessly contrarian points. Stop gloating because us libertarians were talking about the trend of unaccountable government processes before it was popular. The dam breaking is not something to be celebrated, you're just adding fuel to the fire.
It's time to circle the wagons and defend our country together. True libertarians are not "keeping our mouths shut", but rather speaking out against the rapidly increasing government power. One cause, which we have to be mature and acknowledge, is the destruction of bureaucracy (which we've always disliked, but at least it moderated) in favor of unrestrained autocracy.
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-el-salvador-deporte...
If I'm correctly interpreting what you said - yes, I agree that presently some people end up running afoul of traffic enforcement, which causes them to run afoul of immigration, which causes them to end up in the concentration camp.
But the larger argument is contrasting the longer-existing authoritarian/autocratic dynamics of code/traffic enforcers versus the more recent development of autocratic immigration enforcers.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
No comments yet
Clearly we're not meant to be upset that fed-cops can behave this way generally, we're meant to be upset that they dared treat another agent of the state, a more equal animal, the way they'd treat a common peasant who got similarly uppity. Caring about these generalities is outside our lane.
I'm upset because a US citizen was arrested for asking a reasonable question to some government officials before complying with the government officials.
> New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.
[1] https://x.com/dhsgov/status/1935040871717916825?s=61
EDIT: Video here: https://x.com/courtneycgross/status/1935010369077915990?s=61
A little more than asking for a warrant.
He was refusing to unlink his arm from the person ICE wanted to detain until ICE presented documentation establishing the legality of what they were doing. It was a perfectly reasonable request.
Maybe he was right to do so, maybe not, but it had nothing to do with "asking a question".
"what they were doing" is attempting to illegally abduct someone. The comptroller's "impeding" was a demand to see the one thing that would make their request a legal arrest.
Instead, they arrested the comptroller without even a pretense of the law.
(You can also easily imagine why it wouldn't be ideal to publish the name of someone who is actively being harassed by masked thugs.)
If I were being mistreated by enforcers I would want my name anywhere and everywhere. Public scrutiny is one's only hope when government seeks to mistreat you.
Sometimes, criticism is poised to cause reform. Currently, it's poised to support the fascist takeover in progress. Having to circle the wagons sucks as it further empowers the authoritarians on our side, but at this point it is what it is - traditional American governance (with all of its warts and flaws) versus autocratic fascism red in tooth and claw.
This applies more to other kidnappings and less here, because this happened in a fascist-controlled building. But the point is we need to start drawing these types of hard dividing lines based on state authority following the law in good faith, rather than deferring to an autocratic federal executive that increasingly interprets it in bad faith.
[0] sorry fascism-cheerleaders - without uniforms, legal documentation of their authority, accountability to bystanders, and duly-issued arrest warrants, this is what they are.
They need probable cause to arrest just like any other law enforcement. If they just arrest you because you're annoying or fake charges. You can sue them for deprivation of rights.
Also, you are going to have a hard time suing if you are an El Salvadorian prison.
Contrary to the current title here on HN, Lander was not arrested for asking to see a warrant; TFA states the opposite, "It wasn’t immediately clear what charges, if any, the mayoral candidate will face. A spokesperson for ICE didn’t immediately return a request for comment."
If an event is so important to know about, why fabricate such an important aspect of the event in this way?
Clickbait, Incitement, Selling something, or Bad Journalism
It happens all the time, but your point is absolutely correct. Media fabrication undermines confidence in the reporting.
Baudrilliard was careful to point out that simulation isn't a matter of fabrication; to simulate is to obscure the absence of facts, not to create false facts. A simulacrum is a symbol that obscures the fact that it refers to nothing; whereas a symbol, in centuries past, invariably referred to something, real or imagined. The resulting reality (or maybe "mindspace"?) is a construct on top of the real world -- a hyper-reality -- in which every symbol is a simulacrum; the only thing real in hyper-reality is that the symbols hide the absence of facts. This is why, again as the other commenter mentions, we appear to live in a post-truth society; we are fully living in hyper-reality.
>Bad Journalism
The guy who created the Pullitzer prize also co-invented Yellow Journalism.[0][1] There is neither good journalism or bad journalism; it's all simulation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer#Pulitzer_Prize
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Origins:_Pul...
We do not have to sit back and let this happen.
I don’t see a connection between their efficacy and what happened in Minnesota, which was an event that is arguably all the more reason to protest.
The scale of the protests is encouraging, but I remember the mass protests under Bush were about as large, and the war continued and he stayed in power. Organization needs to do something with the mass of people who are out in the streets to direct them.
I think largely they have not yet been effective at protecting immigrants.
> They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.
Right, so to some degree they "work" as tools for existing political groups in attracting attention, resources and possibly votes. But does it better enable those groups to actually help immigrants? Or does it just give political organizations a powerful talking point in the midterms?
Sure would help if the media would cover them to the extent that they did for George Floyd/Women's March/etc.
I don't support what the current administration is doing; not by a long shot. But to say, "they did just shoot two elected representatives," is disingenuous at best.
I don't remember the exact sentence but it was something like that: "That's the issue with pandering to violent conspiracy theorists, if they feel betrayed they will aim that violence at you".
Do you disagree with this characterization?
I have never seen this work for something this politicized.
Yes, that's risky. Some people might get hurt. A lot of people are being hurt, and will continue to be hurt, by the current situation. We all have to make our own choices about when principles and long-term outcomes outweigh our instinct for self preservation.
None of these individuals are the president.
It's the effect of qualified immunity for non-presidents.
ICE isn't inheriting the president's qualified immunity; they have it because they're government employees. It doesn't matter if they're acting in the presidents interests or not and for state employees if they're acting in the governors interests or not.
Pardon is a very clearly enumerated power of the president so any usage of it is very clearly legal (although typically undesirable).
A lot of us doesn't come here to read about US internal politics
https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/17/brad-lander-arrest-ice-im...
This is actually what happened, not the headline. He tried to forcibly remove someone there for court. It's all a a show, to make the Trump administration look bad.
If someone unidentified, masked, showing no warrant, no legal justification of anything, kidnaps/attempts to kidnap someone, how are (organised) citizens not in their legitimate right to retaliate, according to what their local state allows them to?
Similarly, why/how are the law enforcement units not taking side against those kidnapping?
I mean, in my country, this would obviously call for immediate intervention of the police, but maybe that's because I'm still in a country where administrative enforcement is still ultimately under the control of the judiciary branch.
I do think there's precedent that it's self defense to fire on an unidentified stranger who knocks on your door or tries to arrest you without showing ID, but you need to make it to court to press that defense and I can't say it's a great strategy for that reason