1. Americans on the ground are clearly feeling the effects of illegal immigration. As an example: a an African American janitor in our kids' school voted republican in 2024 for the first time in his life, because the park in his Brooklyn neighborhood has become a shanty town and he can't work out there. In that election we've seen nearly every demographic move more republican than before, and I think this is the key issue for them.
2. In that context, when ICE does something, even when we don't like it, people can understand it in the context of a larger problem they/we want solved. When you perceive "passivity" - it's because you come in from a perspective of not wanting the underlying problem solved which is fine, but it's different for people who like "what" is happening even if not "how" it's happening.
3. There are plenty of people protesting and violently rioting if that's what they feel like.
ICE are terrorizing a city and its residents no matter what their immigration status is. Even someone who strongly wishes to curb illegal immigration should have a problem with that.
There's an interesting other angle that I heard about "terrorizing a city" type thing -- there are many million illegal immigrants in the US who entered in just the last few years, when the prior admin did not attempt to limit. The size of the problem basically leaves no "nice" solutions that are perfectly palatable to everyone. Maybe like "nobody wants to hear about an amputation" but unfortunately some situations are bad enough that you have to.
Why not? What is it about the presence of illegal immigrants in a place that makes terrorizing the entire population a good tradeoff? The people who live alongside these immigrants are the ones out on the street protesting so it seems to me they don't consider it a price worth paying.
Are you volunteering to be part of the bad solution, or is it only OK as long as it happens far enough away from you? I'm curious because when you talk about needing an amputation, you're referring to American citizens getting killed and having their rights taken away for the sake of some nebulous solution. Where have I heard that before?
Exactly. If people you hate are getting in a fight you're staying right there on the porch and that's how a lot of the country feels right now.
Okay, first off, I am just very confused by this sentence. How is the "shanty town" preventing him from working? Does he work from his home in Brooklyn? Is the school located in the park? Does he want to work in the park but is force to work at the school? I know this isn't the most important part, but I haven't been able to parse the story. Edit: others explained that this is "work out" there, and not related to being a janitor. Thanks. I feel the rest still stands.
Further, I don't understand how what is happening is supposed to solve the "underlying issue". How does 3000 federal agents breaking windows and shoving people in Minneapolis help a Brooklyn community poor enough to become a shanty town? It would be like if I, in my job, had an backend outage on our website, and I went to the design team and began berating them while I fixed a couple UI issues. Sure, I might solve some real problems, and it could feel good in some cathartic way (especially if I've had unanswered complaints for years). But I wouldn't call it "fixing the underlying issues".
I believe it is most likely that the people who still support this style of enforcement have been hurt much like you, some acutely but many just slowly over time, and have bought into the idea that some "other" is at fault. And they want to see that "other" dealt with in some way, any way. Even if it means people get hurt, because they themselves have been hurt. So why not the "other"?
But I don't believe a shanty town in the most populous city what is supposed to be the richest and most prosperous country on Earth is caused by the poorest few percent of people living here. I don't think an illegal immigrant in Minneapolis is at fault, even if they have a "criminal background" (insidious phrasing that inflates numbers by lumping in people who may have paid their debt to society). I don't want to see people hurt.
> Okay, first off, I am just very confused by this sentence. How is the "shanty town" preventing him from working? Does he work from his home in Brooklyn? Is the school located in the park? Does he want to work in the park but is force to work at the school? I know this isn't the most important part, but I haven't been able to parse the story.
So just to clarify, GP said he was being prevented from _working out_, i.e. exercising.
Not working; working out.
Where is this assumption coming from? Of course I don't want people to break the laws of the country or immigrate illegally, I never argued for that either.
What I don't understand, if Obama managed to throw out more illegals than Trump did for the same duration of time, yet with a lot less chaos and bloodshed, and you truly want less illegal immigrants, should you favor a more peaceful and efficient process? Instead of a more violent and less efficient process?
The flow of illegal aliens crossing the border has largely been eliminated. [1]
> should you favor a more peaceful and efficient process? Instead of a more violent and less efficient process?
I want a process that actually works. There has been no serious headway made in the number of illegal aliens for decades until now. [2]
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8wd8938e8o
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-1st-time-50-years-experienced-n...
The BBC piece is about recorded apprehensions/encounters being very low (still “<9,000/month”), not that the “flow” is “largely eliminated.” Encounters aren’t the same thing as total unlawful entries, and “very low” isn’t “eliminated.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8wd8938e8o
The ABC/Brookings story is about net migration turning negative in 2025, mostly due to fewer entries. Net migration is not a measure of the unauthorized population, and the article even notes removals in 2025 are only modestly higher than 2024. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-1st-time-50-years-experienced-n...
Also, the claim “no headway for decades until now” is inconsistent with standard estimates: Pew shows a decline from 2007 to 2019 in the unauthorized population. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...
On the first part, I hope the last few elections made it clear that polling is... unreliable at best. For example, asking the question like "in light of the recent shooting of Renee Good, do you feel ICE is making your city safer" vs asking "Do you feel like having removed X,XXX illegal immigrants with prior convictions has made your city safer" would yield a very different result.
For what it's worth, as an immigrant myself and a typical over-educated NY liberal (at least, formerly) I don't like the details of what's going on but I understand why it is.
I'm sure lots of people who voted for Hitler in Germany said the same thing in hindsight. Of course they did absolutely nothing to help stop Hitler after voting for him. They just want to pretend they had nothing to do with all the bad stuff despite the vote clearly being in support of "Bad Stuff". There's a meme floating around that goes something like:
2015: You're overreacting!
2016: You're overreacting!
2017: You're overreacting!
2018: You're overreacting!
2019: You're overreacting!
2020: You're overreacting!
2021: You're overreacting!
2022: You're overreacting!
2023: You're overreacting!
2024: You're overreacting!
2025: How could we possibly have known things would have gone this way?!
I wonder why.
You ever visited Brooklyn back when it was actually a tough place?
The black dude I am referring to was complaining about illegals permanently camping out in his neighborhood park.
The cultural gap is just too much. There are explosions 24/7 and the amount of trash on the street hurts my eyes. A party by my window at 2AM - check. It happens that you have a group of six guys walking down the middle of the road and the fuck are you going to do. There's only so much you can explain by poverty and lack of privilege - especially when they were born in one of the world's richest countries while the country I am from started poor but developed immensely.
When voting, immigration policies are for me #1 issue. I just don't want the entire Europe to look like this.
That's probably more to do with homelessness than immigration, so voting Republican is going to make that worse.
