alt Hacker News> More like 13 years ago, when Snowden revelations made the reach of this public. Nothing was done, and this kept expanding till today state of things. No one should be surprised.
Yeah, obama was president at the time.
A lot of fanfare and then nothing happened.
People were also being deported by ICE, in larger quantities, but that didn’t even make the news.
It’s always “weird” when the same action get different a connotation depending on who’s president…
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It's an explicit policy of the Trump admin to not just increase the volume of deportations (regardless of if they've hit their goals yet), but also increase the speed and disruptiveness of them (picking people up when they're at their regularly scheduled "trying to do it the right way" appointments, for instance), and reduce judicial process and oversight.
It's very intentionally NOT the same action, because they're looking for more red meat for the base to distract from any number of other failed promises on affordability, jobs, etc. They've really been unable to do much there other than, at best, "stay on or close to the trend line from 2023-onward as the covid-induced supply chain bullwhips and demand whiplash effects started to recede."
Have you considered that one can protest against those changes independently of doing math on how many happened in 2013? Or that they might also take into account certain notable other actions on immigration taken by the Obama administration as a balancing factor?
If anything, doesn't that suggest that the Trump admin's moves to bypass legal safeguards are unnecessary and are just increasing the militarization of the federal government for nothing?
Ever think that maybe it’s not the deportations that are the problem, but the murders and other human rights abuses?
And the fact that there was a lot of fanfare over Snowden rather undermines your point. People did make a big deal about it. It didn’t go anywhere because at the end of the day, the establishment on both sides is in favor of that stuff. It didn’t get any more action after Obama left office.
A couple things you're ignoring or underplaying for some stupid political-score-keeping reason:
1) Many were upset, especially here and in the general tech media, with the Snowden information. Is "a lot of fanfare and then nothing happened" worse to you than "no fanfare and nothing happened"? The fanfare regardless of who was in office on that info is telling, there, no?
2) Many of those policies went back well before Obama
Not sure why you're trying to deflect "we should be fighting this" into "Obama bad, actually!" when the evidence is very clear that it crosses parties, has crossed parties for decades, and will almost certainly continue to if the status quo is maintained.
Possibly because you don't want to fight it?