logoalt Hacker News

adjejmxbdjdn • today at 1:44 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

It has always been obvious since ICE’s budget was raised over 10x what it used to be, even though ICE was already struggling to find enough people with criminal records to deport, that ICE was intended to be far more than an immigration enforcement agency.


Replies

ChrisGreenHeur • today at 1:47 PM

Could they not deport the ones without a criminal record as well?

➕ show 9 replies
iovrthoughtthis • today at 2:24 PM

Ice is a part of a parallel state, a strategy to facilitate a smooth transition of power when replacing the existing state infrastructure

paimapi • today at 2:05 PM

To be fair, this was obvious to many people who study domestic civil rights as early as the bill that originally created the DHS and ICE. For eg, this review from 2002:

https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...

>Americans’ liberties have been trammeled in a variety of different ways. Under the guise of stopping terrorism, law enforcement officials and government leaders have now been given the right to conduct searches of homes and offices without prior notice, use roving wiretaps to listen in on telephone conversations, and monitor computers and e-mail messages, even to the degree of eavesdropping on attorney/client conversations.

>Conceivably, these extensions of the definition of “terrorist” could bring within their sweep diverse domestic political groups, which have been accused of acts of intimidation or property damage such as Act Up, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Operation Rescue, and the Vieques demonstrators.

It should have been stopped before it grew into the leviathan it is now but the general consensus by the politicos of the time was that this was just histrionic left/libertarian worry, and that something like that could never happen in the USA, we were too just, too democracy-loving.

kpirate • today at 3:13 PM

You do understand that ICE also does customs enforcement like stopping drugs and trafficking as well, right? Not everything in ICE is immigration.

➕ show 4 replies