> What I don't understand is why it's common for intelligent people (seemingly only in the US) to consider violations of visa/immigration conditions acceptable and ICE bad guys for enforcing the law?

I think you’re focused specifically on the parenthetical: “seemingly only in the US”, whereas I am commenting on the overall sentiment, especially with the context of the first sentence of the OP’s post. Take out the parenthetical entirely from the OP’s post, and possibly the reference to ICE specifically as well, and you get a closer version to what I interpreted as the argument.

This:

> Your point is that immigration laws don't sufficiently take into account an illegal migrant's economic status (i.e. make reasonable accommodations for those in poverty or desperate circumstances)

is a fair(ish) summary of my argument.

But, it’s not really that reasonable accommodations aren’t made, it’s that there’s a vicious feedback loop that the more violent and dehumanizing your immigration policy becomes, the higher the average level of desperation your median immigrant possesses, and the fewer the means they have to avoid the worst of the human suffering that migrants experience (murder, rape, sex trafficking, alligator moats, etc). If you let that vicious cycle go untouched or even reinforce it, you’re enabling human rights violations. Citizens of countries that enable (and perform) human rights violations shouldn’t sleep well at night.