Nobody is safe.
Even good, hard-working, law-abiding people doing important work are subject to arrest. If you are lucky, they send you home. If not so lucky, they send you to Libya or Uganda in shackles.
You'd better watch out.
Democrats are aghast. ICE agents just rounded up hundreds of South Korean workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia. Last week they rounded up people working at a farm in California. ICE has been routinely patrolling labor pickup sites at Home Depot parking lots. These aren't the bad guys, the criminals. What's the deal? Trump is picking up the wrong people!
There is cynical craft in what ICE is doing.
This weekend I watched video of men pulled out of a factory, stood in line with their hands out leaning against a bus as they were put into shackles. They were transformed in an instant from regular employees, going to work in the morning and home in the evening, into prisoners being treated like dangerous criminals. This was theater. It was done partly for the benefit of MAGA voters, a narrow majority of whom think they want nearly all non-citizens to leave the country. Those Hyundai jobs were good jobs and native-born Americans should be doing them, Trump said in explaining the raid.
It is also theater for the benefit of immigrants here without proper paperwork. It is a warning. There, but for the grace of God, go them. Worry. Calculate. It is better to get out on your own terms, with your American life buttoned up and money in your pocket, instead of suddenly at midday at work, being put into shackles.
Yesterday I drove 300 miles on Interstate 5. The speed limit is 65. Like other prudent drivers, I drove about 70, keeping up with traffic. Twice in 300 miles, I passed a police car with its radar on. I wasn't stopped. That is a message: If you are driving only five miles above the speed limit you are OK. The "real" speed limit is something above 70.
A far stronger message, if the police really cared about a 65-mile-per-hour speed limit, would be to pull over random cars, including ones being passed by cars going faster than them, and then giving a citation for driving 67 mph. It would seem arbitrary and unjust, especially if cars going faster are ignored, but think of the message this practice would send. There is no protection from being better than most. Illegal is illegal.
And imagine the message if people being pulled over were dragged from their cars, handcuffed, accused of reckless driving and resisting arrest, and sent to jail for a few days while the legalities were sorted out. People would drive slower than 65.
Law-abiding people are the most sensitive to the message of strict enforcement. They respond to cues, and they are getting them. Immigrants need to get out.
Republican voters are getting their way. A majority of them want to remove most or all people here illegally. They may later decide they didn't really like that outcome because of the way it will affect labor markets, but for now that is what they think. They like hearing Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem talking tough. America for Americans.
Trump thinks he has Democrats in a bad position, looking soft on crime. It undermines Democrats' complaints about Trump being a scofflaw on issues of tariffs, separation of power, and Epstein.
Trump is using fear and cruelty to get the America his MAGA base voted for. The least controversial way to get immigrants out of the country is for them to leave on their own.
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7 comments:
You need to look-up the definition of ILLEGAL ALIEN. If you're an illegal, then you shouldn't be in America. Get the fuck out of Dodge.
This is all disheartening.
How do we get back to recognizing what legal and illegal immigration is?
How do we get back to the rule of law, and recognize what is and is not legal.
The current administration is taking steps that previous administrations failed to do. Unfortunately some of the actions are uncomfortable to those who should have acted sooner.
This is what happens when the laws were ignored by past administrations.
Some say the U.S. is becoming an autocracy, but that’s not correct. With Trump’s private army of masked thugs running rampant and troops occupying U.S. cities, it’s obvious that we have become one.
Trump’s mass roundup of darker-skinned people is his clueless answer to the crackpot conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement. It gives his devotees an illusion of security. For those who can't tell the difference between brutality and strength: You asked for it, you got it.
I won't go into a long diatribe about why this will not end well, only to say the minute we stop spending tens of millions every single day with these actions, the very minute, they will return. Won't solve the problem...new status quo. MEANWHILE FOLLOW THE MONEY. JP MORGAN AND DEUTSCHE (TRUMP'S BANK) FINANCED JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND ALSO A "LIST" OF BILLIONAIRES. GOOGLE IT. ONE OF THEM WITH AN ALLEGED SEXUAL CRIME. THE NETWORK IS EMERGING. REPUBLICANS ALL.
Following the speed limit won’t help if you are less than lily white https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/08/us/trump-news?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Today, an appeals court upheld the $83 million judgment against Trump for sexually abusing and then defaming E. Jean Carroll “in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.” Now we have the extraordinary and egregious facts of his 10-year bromance with Epstein that he’s trying to suppress, although I don’t know why. I doubt if knowing them would cost him any more votes than his sex abuse or coup attempt. He’s always been cruel and unusual, and Republicans adore him – not in spite of it, but because of it. He is their anointed one.
Self deportation was Mitt Romney's plan, as I recall.
There are vast swathes of the US where young people have no hope of ever owning a home. If we can't figure out how to build housing, maybe a dramatic reduction in the population can help bring prices down.
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