▲ 91 points
back
93 comments
Seems like a big own-goal for the administration to inject an agency which (according to polls[1]) is quite broadly hated into the daily lives of millions.
Politically they're just going from failure (immigration policy broadly considered a failure) to failure (starting a new forever war in the middle east is universally hated) to failure (this).
It's no wonder they're trying to burn the election system to the ground to prevent a fair election from occurring this year. It's the only way they're staying out of jail, especially Tom "cash bribes only" Homan.
[1] https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/the-actions-of-ice-febru...
If they ever need a group to enforce their election ~~laws~~ executive orders, I wonder what group they might choose?
Why, Imperial Command Enforcement of course. They're a a bit like Hitler's SA (in fact one of them even dressed the part), the Great Leader sends them wherever he wants something stamped on.
How did they get elected?
Centrist voters didn't understand that that inflation and monetary policy are subject to momentum.
Misinformation, low voter turnout, and an electoral system that massively over-represents people living in areas of low population density and underrepresents those living in areas of high population density.
That’s ignoring any possibility of interference with insecure voting or tallying computers.
You could blame the backing of the richest oligarchs in the world, you could blame a morally bankrupt culture amongst a large chunk of the electorate, but at the end of the day it was a very tight race and there was a global wave of incumbent losses[1], regardless of the incumbent party's position.
Between 2021 and 2024 the world went on a rollercoaster ride. Pandemic economic stimulus made everyone feel rich in 2021, and then harsh monetary tightening led to everyone feeling like their world was collapsing in 2024. They punished whoever was in charge at the time.
[1] https://www.visionofhumanity.org/2024-the-year-incumbent-gov...
Because the Democrats tried to run Biden again, despite the obvious-to-everybody signs of decline and unfitness. Then, when that became impossible to ignore, they anointed Harris. (Thereby overturning the results of the primaries, which created bad memories from the previous two campaigns.) Then Harris said that she wouldn't do anything different from Biden, despite people being tired of Biden.
And because the electorate had kind of forgotten what Trump was like, because they'd just spent four years seeing what Biden was like. There was a bunch of stuff that Biden (or at least his people) did that didn't really resonate with voters, and a bunch of them voted for "not that".
The other thing they did wrong was, they were a year late in prosecuting Trump. Trump managed to delay things out to the point that the campaign (and then the office) protected him. I don't know if Democrats delayed deliberately, so that the prosecutions would be damaging Trump as the campaign season started, but if so, they were well-paid for that bit of attempted chicanery.
Democrats funded, armed and protected a live-streamed genocide so horrific that roughly a third of their own hard-core base (Biden 2020 voters) couldn't bring themselves to vote for Harris, even in a close race against Trump [0].
There are other reasons Dems lost, also important. Still, genocide remains the blazing neon-red 12-ton elephant in the room. And there seems to be absolutely no sign of owning that fact, which means that no lessons will be learned or policies changed.
How do they justify Immigration and Customs enforcement working domestic flights and departures in general? Isn't ICE's scope supposed to be limited to what/who is coming into the country from foreign countries?
Of course, that's a rhetorical question. When you're an autocrat, you do not need to justify your actions.
ICE’s scope isn’t who is coming into the country — that’s CBP’s scope. ICE’s scope is supposed to be those committing immigration offences who have already entered the country (either because the CBP failed to catch them, or because they were admitted but never left).
The only difficulty justifying this is ICE’s power to stop and question people, and an airport is no different to a random street from that point of view. Do they have probable cause? What suffices as probable cause?
And once you have probable cause, you run into the problem 8 USC 1304(e) creates: someone who doesn’t have documentation proving their legal immigration status falls into one of two categories, they’re either a citizen, or they’re an immigrant violating that section.
(And this is looking at it from a simple legalistic point of view, ignoring any questions about ICE’s behaviour or powers!)
> And once you have probable cause, you run into the problem 8 USC 1304(e) creates: someone who doesn’t have documentation proving their legal immigration status falls into one of two categories, they’re either a citizen, or they’re an immigrant violating that section.
So hopefully if you are tourist from abroad, CBP will give you stamp into your passport, otherwise you have entered "illegally". They are not always stamping passports.
Isn’t the stamp necessary?
Under what circumstances would they not?
ICE has a lot of funding, more than some branches of the military.
This demonstrates they see ICE as their fix all police force, and that they are willing to deploy ICE to do whatever they think needs to be done.
ICE is $11B.
Coast Guard is $14B.
Virtually all commercial passenger flights are to international airports.
At least in the large airports, the international flights come in to a separate terminal. Will ICE limit their involvement to that terminal only, and only inbound flights? Immigration and Customs have no business on the outbound side or with domestic passengers.
Some international flights arrive in to domestic US terminals. These are from a limited set of countries where passengers have cleared US immigration in the departure country.
Canada, Ireland and the UAE are the major three, plus Aruba, Barbados and Bermuda.
Since they will support tsa operations, I’m going to assume they will be at the outbound security checkpoints. Both domestic and international.
Keep in mind that the Democrats have proposed five bills to fund the TSA, and the Republicans have shot them all down.
This reichstag fire is manufactured.
Democrats are explicitly opposed to a clean DHS funding bill with no changes.
As they should be. I don’t want to fund DHS and I’m happy my reps are doing their job to keep it shut down. Funding TSA specifically is acceptable and has in fact been voted down in the senate by republicans several times now.
Why do you oppose FEMA funding?
This is straight up untrue. There are clean bill proposals to fund TSA that Republicans have rejected. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/are-the-proposed-tsa-fundin...
Their bills are the clean bills. Yesterday's vote was a simple yea or nay for TSA funding. The Republicans voted against it.
The GOP refuses to fund the TSA without tying a whole bunch of other fascist shit to it. This crisis is manufactured.
> They aren't clean bills, so this is absolutely irrelevant.
I mean its not really irrelevant, its a calculated move from both sides.
For all its flaws, TSA (at least under previous administrations) did a lot of design thinking work around how to streamline flows through airports, minimize travel stress and conflict, and optimize to minimize traveler complaints while continuing to maintain security.
Bringing in shock theater optimized staff is a particularly poor fit for a scenario that will impact a disproportionately voting and bipartisan pool of citizens.
There's a reason advertising in airports is generally targeted at corporate leaders and decision makers.
> while continuing to maintain security.
They continued to maintain the illusion of security. The underwear bomber and shoe bomber had no problem smuggling explosives onto an aircraft directly under their noses.
Their idea of "security" is to get you into a scanner so they can stare at and save images of your naked body. Or to buy really expensive "sniffer" robots that don't work in one of the most corrupt government contracts recently known about.
Meanwhile, cockpit doors still have several functional deficiencies that make pilots vulnerable to the original attack that led to the creation of this derelict agency.
If your goal is to intimidate and frighten people into submitting to you, then sending armed, masked "shock theater" thugs in should accomplish that goal.
The US tourism industry must be just lapping this up ...
"Visit the USA ... starting your holiday off wiv your papers, and a bang! Schnell !!! "
At the time I avoid traveling to the US and just watching eating popcorn. This summer football Mundial is going to be held and in 2028 the summer Olympics. It will the first time that a country that hosts these goes a foreigners' hostile way.
Welp, good thing there's absolutely no way this could go horribly wrong.
As long as no planes drive in the direction of the terminal.
I wonder how this will impact the economy. People deciding not to travel won’t help anything. You would think this is the last thing the administration would want to do at this point.
Straight white US citizen male here. This scares the shit out of me. I travel for work all the time, but understanding that we will now have barely trained, and in many cases completely lawless, consequence-free federal officers in direct, high stress, public areas where lots of people are constantly passing through seems like an absolute recipe for tragedy.
This will 100% make me reconsider travel and avoid airports with ICE agents. I think the writing on the wall is clear, nobody is safe.
Seems ICE is basically just a slush fund to use wherever they see fit.
Trump's private army, selected for loyalty.
This country is a shithole
Step 2 in a nazi takeover of the United States. More is coming.
I don't know if I'd phrase it like that. It does show they see ICE as a fix all police they can deploy for a wide variety of purposes though. ICE is better funded than some branches of the military, and they are demonstrating they are willing to use ICE for whatever they think needs to be done.
It is clear that a more centralised system is being established which is progression towards authoritarianism.
How is creation of a Gestapo analogue NOT a step towards Nazi-style authoritarianism?
Dunno, you'd think the administration would prefer they be out on the streets rather than menacing business travelers. This may be pure legislative/executive incompetence rather than a grand scheme.
The Nazis were also actually extremely incompetent. Thankfully the current admin is more incompetent, but truly one of the main downsides of strongman governments is that they tend to be operated by dummies.