Item — HN Reader

A few questions, please.

Was Obama’s use of ICE also kidnapping, in your eyes? For reference material, please read the ACLUs papers on their site.

No ICE agent has been indicted for kidnapping. Can you explain why? ( Remember, they have been doing this for many years, under presidents of both parties ).

3 comments

They haven't been indicted for kidnapping because it's the government itself doing it with federally deputized agents. What, is Trump's DOJ going to prosecute its own law enforcement agents for executing Trump's policy? No, that's utterly laughable.

Additionally, Obama's use of ICE was far different from what's going on today in that Obama used targeted enforcement prioritizing criminals. ICE today in Minneapolis is just driving around grabbing anyone they think could, possibly, maybe be illegal. US citizens are being swept up by anonymous, violent and poorly trained agents with virtually no accountability. It's causing terror in the community in a way Obama never even came close to. To suggest these are similar is extremely disingenuous.

I think you are missing how ICE was used by Obama.

The ACLU calls it ‘monstrous’ and discusses Trump And Obama in the same paper. They cite Obama for lack of due process and write horrific stories about Obamas usage.

Read this paper and try to tell me Obama should not be condemned but Trump should. You really can’t do it.

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/border-patrol-wa...

The thesis of the article says "If it was bad under Obama, imagine how much worse it is now". It's literally in the headline. This is not the dunk you think it is.

Nobody disputes ICE was bad then. The difference is that Obama wasn't cheering them on, saying anybody who was abused or even murdered by ICE deserved it. Trump isn't just allowing this, he's given them a mandate to act this way.

You are asking why the fascist administration isn't holding its own secret police accountable

Are the secret police any different than when Obama used them?

The ACLU has a series of papers written when Obama was in office. They claim violence, lack of due process, illegal grabs, etc.

Why be upset now but not then?

If you condemn Obama as well as Trump, I applaud your integrity. If you condemn only one, I question your motives.

They are absolutely different. They flagrantly deny the courts and are going door to door and harassing and detaining a higher percentage of people without criminal background. The scale and brazenness(and also the end game, this is 1 year into trump) of this administration is in no way comparable to Obamas and to claim otherwise is ridiculous

Read this.

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/border-patrol-wa...

Then google ‘Obama ICE ACLU’.

The search results alone will show you that Obama did indeed act very much like Trump. The cited paper alone tells you this.

If you are sincere about this, I urge you to look at it and give it fair consideration. You simply cannot excuse Obama while condemning Trump.

At no point did I excuse Obama. I said the scale and horror are not the same. Trump scaled up the budget and number of employees, lowered the requirements to enter and actively encouraged(and supported at the supreme court) to bring back racial profiling. These 2 administrations are in now way comparable

I don't necessarily agree with calling it "kidnapping" but the current administration is different in their use of profiling (racial and otherwise). That is new, previous court rulings had blocked that kind of behavior.

So your moral outrage begins somewhere in between Obamas use of ICE, but before Trumps. You are ok with the violations described by the ACLU by Obama, but cannot tolerate the ones committed by Trump?

Putting a lot of words I did not say in my mouth.

My apologies.

Let me ask directly: do you condemn Obamas use of ICE, as the ACLU does?

Do you condemn Trump's use of ICE, that is 10 times worse than Obama's? Yes or No.

No, I condemn neither.

I find that consistent. The ACLU calls both monstrous. Obama set the precedent for using ICE in the current way, Trump continued Obamas policies. The two are similar.

If someone says they condemn both, I respect that. The person has integrity.

If someone says they condemn neither ( as I do ), I also respect that. They are acknowledging what the ACLU and others say — the presidents have used ICE in similar ways.

If someone condemns only one and is silent about the other, to me that signals a lack of integrity. I don’t see a logical way to excuse only one. It doesn’t seem possible to tolerate the behavior of one while condemning the other. Read the ACLU articles if you need evidence of the similarities.

You say Trump is 10 times worse than Obama, I see nothing that even remotely suggests this is true. If you have any articles to show that back this up, please show them.

> You say Trump is 10 times worse than Obama, I see nothing that even remotely suggests this is true. If you have any articles to show that back this up, please show them.

This is hopeless. I don't think there's anything I could say or show that would change your opinion. If the Epstein affair, his $TRUMP coin, the Qatari plane, the failed Jan 6 coup, the multiple recent ICE shootings didn't make you think that Trump is a worse president than Obama, then I don't think anything will. Not to forget, the many people he sent to CECOT without any due process, his rampant warmongering that threatens even Europe, the complete erosion of America's goodwill on the international scene, his destruction of all public research, the trillions he added to the national debt just so he could give some tax cuts to his friends, and on and on and on it goes.

I'm sure you're aware of all these events. I'm sure you have rationalizations for all of them, even the pedophilia. Know that I am no fan of Obama, at all, but anyone still claiming that Trump is no worse than him has a serious issue. I hope you can work through it, in time.