13 ms·

The Mystery of ICE's Unidentifiable Arrests

57 points by mitchbob 2y ago

mitchbob 2y ago
https://archive.ph/Hi7l8 https://archive.ph/Hi7l8
pmags 2y ago
In early March, the agency announced that it had arrested forty-eight people in New Mexico—a month later, their identities and whereabouts remain unknown. ● ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES, Amnesty International -- https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/enforced-disappearances/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/enforced-disappearance... ● International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance -- https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-protection-all-persons-enforced https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/... ● Aguilar, P. & Kovras, I. (2018). Explaining disappearances as a tool of political terror. International Political Science Review, 40(3), pp. 437-452. doi: 10.1177/0192512118764410
panic 2y ago
I hope whatever post-Trump Democratic Party that forms in the next few years will take the idea of abolishing ICE seriously. The institution has been rotten since it was founded.
- quantified 2y ago
  That party is probably toast. Another party will take a generation to establish, during which time appropriate media needs to coalesce so as to organize and transmit its thinking. Democrats, well-meaning as they are, are too consumed with doing right and not with actually being in a position to do right. They even rally around total losers. As Paul Graham noted, it's the charisma, stupid, and since Obama (not a good choice), they've had no one.
  - crote 2y ago
    > Democrats, well-meaning as they are, are too consumed with doing right and not with actually being in a position to do right. I'd argue the opposite, actually. The Democratic party is obsessed with staying in power, but unwilling to have any halfway-interesting policies because they fear missing out on lobbyist bribes or losing any chance of getting the independent/undecided/centrist vote. Every time the Republicans move to the right, the Democratic party does a small step to the right as well to "compromise". The Democratic party isn't interested in doing the right thing, and as a result the left-wing voter base turns to complete apathy or wastes their vote on independent candidates. If the US had a functioning democracy, there would've been a new left-wing party ages ago.
    - readthenotes1 2y ago
      One of my friends said "that problem is too valuable to solve" It wasn't about immigration, but it's a pretty generally applicable principal
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      They're in precisely the same position the Republicans were in before Trump: they're the only viable and not completely-detestable party for about half the voters, but are doing a really bad job of working on what those voters want. Republican Party leadership in 2015-2016 wanted more of business as usual, and to keep power. Trump came in talking just like an actual Republican voter in a midwestern diner, with the credibility of being a party outsider, which cut the legs out from under them because they have sucked at representing their actual voters for decades. This struck such a grievous blow that he quickly took over the entire party. Then he either actually did things Republicans had been selling voters on for years but not delivering (Roe v Wade, gone, thanks to his Supreme Court), or at least kind-of ineptly tried to do things Republican voters have long wanted but Republican politicians never really even tried to do (the stupid wall, tariff China, destroy [well, uh, replace with a barely-different agreement, but whatever, names matter] NAFTA). It took him bumbling his way through a pandemic to lose, and not by that much, he'd almost certainly have gotten a second term if not for sheer chance despite all the blatant corruption and daily incredibly stupid bullshit, that is how effective this strategy was. Democrats won't improve and will struggle to win elections until something similar happens to their party. This will need to include abandoning strident neoliberal economic policy, as it did for the Republicans, because voters never liked that and it only worked because both parties stuck to it regardless. ... all of this is assuming we have free & fair Federal elections again.
- plasma_beam 2y ago
  This is a common sentiment..and was quite prevalent especially in the whole ‘abolish ICE’ movement. But I always fail to see in these arguments the explicit distinction between the two divisions of ICE - ERO (enforcement and removal operations) and HSI (homeland security investigations). It’s like grouping together the beat cops and the detectives - they work in the same precinct, but vastly different jobs. HSI also houses other programs like SEVIS, which admittedly has lots of its own issues, but manages all foreign students in the US and interfaces with universities for reporting purposes. Now HSI is undoubtedly informing some of the immigrant raids, and the leadership of ICE is now clearly oriented to the right, but there are some what I’d call non-partisan things the agency is doing that we don’t want abolished. Not picking on you at all, I just wish more of these arguments dove a little deeper into all that ICE does.
  - bananapub 2y ago
    because the structure is horrible. re-create it as the Immigration Office of Clerks and make them wear polo shirts with a little logo and chinos and work in cubes to process paperwork quickly. letting it have a whole department of sociopaths with guns is just a ticking time bomb.
spencerflem 2y ago
They just defied a unanimous supreme court ruling https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-doj-refuses-to-comply-with-judges-order-to-return-wrongly-deported-dad-kilmar-abrego-garcia/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-doj-refuses-to-comply-wi...
- belter 2y ago
  They just corrupt most of the big law firms and made them work for free: "Trump says 5 more law firms will provide $600 million total in free legal work for causes he supports" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/trump-law-firms-pro-bono-work.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/trump-law-firms-pro-bono-wor...
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    For those who haven't been keeping up, these are huge firms with resources and expertise to take on large federal cases, that have large and diverse workloads that may include things like cases involving classified information. He's extorting them by actually issuing, or implicitly threatening to issue, executive orders blanket revoking clearances for all their lawyers, banning them from federal property(!!!), and blocking any former employees of theirs from being hired by the federal government. These EOs amount to death sentences for these firms, obviously, and so far they're rolling over and submitting when EO'd against or they perceive they may be EO'd, halting legal work against the administration and providing free labor to Trump.
  - watwut 2y ago
    To be fair, the companies are victims there. It is not so much he corrupted them as he extorted them. Those are two different things. It does matter. There is long standing tradition of blaming what conservatives and their leadership do to everyone else. And euphemism away what they do by using softer words (corrupt when it was extortion) while using harsher words on those who fought him and lost (the company you call corrupt sued Trump and this is retaliation). That is part of the problem.

57 points by mitchbob 2y ago

https://archive.ph/Hi7l8 https://archive.ph/Hi7l8

In early March, the agency announced that it had arrested forty-eight people in New Mexico—a month later, their identities and whereabouts remain unknown. ● ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES, Amnesty International -- https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/enforced-disappearances/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/enforced-disappearance... ● International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance -- https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-protection-all-persons-enforced https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/... ● Aguilar, P. & Kovras, I. (2018). Explaining disappearances as a tool of political terror. International Political Science Review, 40(3), pp. 437-452. doi: 10.1177/0192512118764410

panic 2y ago

I hope whatever post-Trump Democratic Party that forms in the next few years will take the idea of abolishing ICE seriously. The institution has been rotten since it was founded.

quantified 2y ago
That party is probably toast. Another party will take a generation to establish, during which time appropriate media needs to coalesce so as to organize and transmit its thinking. Democrats, well-meaning as they are, are too consumed with doing right and not with actually being in a position to do right. They even rally around total losers. As Paul Graham noted, it's the charisma, stupid, and since Obama (not a good choice), they've had no one.
- crote 2y ago
  > Democrats, well-meaning as they are, are too consumed with doing right and not with actually being in a position to do right. I'd argue the opposite, actually. The Democratic party is obsessed with staying in power, but unwilling to have any halfway-interesting policies because they fear missing out on lobbyist bribes or losing any chance of getting the independent/undecided/centrist vote. Every time the Republicans move to the right, the Democratic party does a small step to the right as well to "compromise". The Democratic party isn't interested in doing the right thing, and as a result the left-wing voter base turns to complete apathy or wastes their vote on independent candidates. If the US had a functioning democracy, there would've been a new left-wing party ages ago.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    One of my friends said "that problem is too valuable to solve" It wasn't about immigration, but it's a pretty generally applicable principal
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    They're in precisely the same position the Republicans were in before Trump: they're the only viable and not completely-detestable party for about half the voters, but are doing a really bad job of working on what those voters want. Republican Party leadership in 2015-2016 wanted more of business as usual, and to keep power. Trump came in talking just like an actual Republican voter in a midwestern diner, with the credibility of being a party outsider, which cut the legs out from under them because they have sucked at representing their actual voters for decades. This struck such a grievous blow that he quickly took over the entire party. Then he either actually did things Republicans had been selling voters on for years but not delivering (Roe v Wade, gone, thanks to his Supreme Court), or at least kind-of ineptly tried to do things Republican voters have long wanted but Republican politicians never really even tried to do (the stupid wall, tariff China, destroy [well, uh, replace with a barely-different agreement, but whatever, names matter] NAFTA). It took him bumbling his way through a pandemic to lose, and not by that much, he'd almost certainly have gotten a second term if not for sheer chance despite all the blatant corruption and daily incredibly stupid bullshit, that is how effective this strategy was. Democrats won't improve and will struggle to win elections until something similar happens to their party. This will need to include abandoning strident neoliberal economic policy, as it did for the Republicans, because voters never liked that and it only worked because both parties stuck to it regardless. ... all of this is assuming we have free & fair Federal elections again.
plasma_beam 2y ago
This is a common sentiment..and was quite prevalent especially in the whole ‘abolish ICE’ movement. But I always fail to see in these arguments the explicit distinction between the two divisions of ICE - ERO (enforcement and removal operations) and HSI (homeland security investigations). It’s like grouping together the beat cops and the detectives - they work in the same precinct, but vastly different jobs. HSI also houses other programs like SEVIS, which admittedly has lots of its own issues, but manages all foreign students in the US and interfaces with universities for reporting purposes. Now HSI is undoubtedly informing some of the immigrant raids, and the leadership of ICE is now clearly oriented to the right, but there are some what I’d call non-partisan things the agency is doing that we don’t want abolished. Not picking on you at all, I just wish more of these arguments dove a little deeper into all that ICE does.
- bananapub 2y ago
  because the structure is horrible. re-create it as the Immigration Office of Clerks and make them wear polo shirts with a little logo and chinos and work in cubes to process paperwork quickly. letting it have a whole department of sociopaths with guns is just a ticking time bomb.

spencerflem 2y ago

They just defied a unanimous supreme court ruling https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-doj-refuses-to-comply-with-judges-order-to-return-wrongly-deported-dad-kilmar-abrego-garcia/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-doj-refuses-to-comply-wi...

belter 2y ago
They just corrupt most of the big law firms and made them work for free: "Trump says 5 more law firms will provide $600 million total in free legal work for causes he supports" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/trump-law-firms-pro-bono-work.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/trump-law-firms-pro-bono-wor...
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  For those who haven't been keeping up, these are huge firms with resources and expertise to take on large federal cases, that have large and diverse workloads that may include things like cases involving classified information. He's extorting them by actually issuing, or implicitly threatening to issue, executive orders blanket revoking clearances for all their lawyers, banning them from federal property(!!!), and blocking any former employees of theirs from being hired by the federal government. These EOs amount to death sentences for these firms, obviously, and so far they're rolling over and submitting when EO'd against or they perceive they may be EO'd, halting legal work against the administration and providing free labor to Trump.
- watwut 2y ago
  To be fair, the companies are victims there. It is not so much he corrupted them as he extorted them. Those are two different things. It does matter. There is long standing tradition of blaming what conservatives and their leadership do to everyone else. And euphemism away what they do by using softer words (corrupt when it was extortion) while using harsher words on those who fought him and lost (the company you call corrupt sued Trump and this is retaliation). That is part of the problem.