What did they think would happen? Installing surveillance systems to monitor people is acceptable, as long as they're only used against the majority? I don't understand the logic here.
I think this is a case of, tools used to fight one type of crime are being used to fight another type of crime that disrupting the community. Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation.
This type of use and expansion of scope was totally foreseeable by anyone paying attention to history. It always starts as some targeted thing, then it becomes the path of least resistance for similar subsequent things as the barrier to entry is extremely low.
They had never picked up a history book so they didn't realize that the systems they envisioned being used to stop the jackboot upon people they don't like would eventually be used to stomp people they do.
Back in a day, you did not have cameras yet, so one had to hire snitches. Luckily this is not the case anymore, as demonstrated by Chinese leading by an example:
Flock is a bad actor and untrustworthy (misleading departments and officials about how data is shared/accessed, literally reinstalling cameras that cities have demanded to be taken down). Regardless of whether the local municipality wants surveillance or not, Flock is not a trustworthy company to buy it from.
Weird. There's an article right here showing them turning off the cameras when the line was crossed and now that data can't be used the way they don't want.
So clearly we're allowed more nuanced takes than you think.
"There's an article right here showing them turning off the cameras when the line was crossed and now that data can't be used the way they don't want."
Not exactly true. This happened after the arrests and won't affect those arrests. This also doesn't prevent ICE from installing and using Flock cameras on federal properties (like the post offices). I would also bet that they could still comb the existing data if they wanted to, hence the shutdown of the cameras on the fear that they can't keep the data safe.
Are you proposing everyone make the optimal decision in advance, when outcomes are all speculative, and just be sure to get it right so there’s no need to learn and adapt to circumstances?
In some cases, we can make optimal decisions in advance, generally referred to as planning, or foresight, or vision. This is a quality we would like in governments, to be fair.
"Those (the Penn family) who would give up essential Liberty (money & power), to purchase a little temporary Safety (a veto over a taxation dispute, trying to raise money from the Penn family), deserve neither Liberty (said money & power) nor Safety (the defense that said taxed money would've bought from the present French & Indian wars)"
It's kind of funny if you think about it. Franklin spent so many years arguing for liberty, low taxes and limited government that when he tried to argue in favor of taxation and federal power he unintentionally still argued in favor of the former.
You don't understand why they may want surveillance to curb or investigate violent crime, but not why they oppose surveillance used by the Gestapo to kidnap members of their community? Seriously?
It's like saying I'm hypocritical for loving to write with pencils but being offended when someone else stabs me with one.
> Bro, you said you liked pencils, make up your mind!
If stabbing people is so wrong, why don’t we lock up all the surgeons?
Of all the poor thinking and rhetorical skills out there, the one that drives me the craziest is this insistence that ignoring context is not just acceptable but essential.
What’s there to understand? Property crime has gone up over time in the Pacific Northwest region. A lot of it simply goes unreported because victims are tired of not seeing consequences for criminals, and deductibles make it not worth filing insurance claims. The issue is that investigating many types of crimes is expensive and takes a lot of people. Cities don’t have the budget or political will to spend more. These cameras make it far more efficient to solve and deter crime, which is a huge win for public safety and budgets.
This decision to turn off Flock cameras is simply bad for residents. It’s the result of a small set of activists pressuring an activist city council.
Seattle is in such a tough spot. I lived there from 2001 to 2010 and left and then went back in 2018 or so and it looked like the homeless population had doubled, or tripled in the time since. And then I went back again after COVID and it was just sad. The entire downtown area is just homeless camps. There used to be a big beautiful Macy's department store on 4th Ave that's just all boarded up now. You can't browse around outside Westlake Center without being bombarded and accosted by aggressive panhandlers. Even the iconic Pike Place Market was overrun with druggies.
The entire city is so poorly run they just have no answers, and nobody can do anything about it. Pick something. Build more housing, do a basic income. Something, anything. But they can't. And their politics just let it keep getting worse and worse.
"On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show."
This video by Tom Lehto talks more about that court case that illustrates citizens can legally do FOIA requests for traffic cameras (e.g. Flock): https://youtu.be/1vQn4MWBln0
The example of Seattle Police dashcam and body camera footage may be interesting. When those things were relatively new, ten years ago or so, someone started filing daily public records requests for footage from all 911 dispatches (among other things). They wanted to build their own database of the theoretically public footage. The SPD complained that the overhead of redacting all that footage would be impossible. Eventually the legislature clarified the status and tightened the request rules, so now you have to request footage for a specific incident, and you may have to pay a redaction fee. [0]
Someone should use AI to request such a large amount of data that it DDoSes the whole system. Unfortunately I feel like that would result in traffic camera data just being removed from FOIA rather than removed from use.
A little annoyed, this seems like is has nothing to do with the ICE arrests...
> The city suspended its Flock system because city officials could not guarantee they wouldn’t be forced to release data collected by those devices someday, she said.
Key part is "someday". Seems like the article is implying that flock may have shared this data with ICE which led to the arrests... but there is no proof supporting this...
> On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show.
This is the more likely reason. What do folks here think about this ruling?
IMO it seems obvious that this should be public records/data, but would love to hear alternative positions to this.
I can't stand this type of "journalism"/sensationalism.
> Redmond’s Police Department was not among those listed in the report, and has never allowed external agencies to access their Flock data without requesting and receiving permission from the police chief first, according to an Oct. 24 statement by Lowe.
So because the arrests were near a Flock Camera the "journalist" is connecting the two? Even with the statements an information to the contrary?
This wouldn't be the first time Flock was used by ICE and would not be the first time Flock allowed ICE backdoor access against the wishes of the local government or police department in Washington. https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-t...
So making the connection isn't a leap and seems like a pretty pragmatic action taken to reduce ICE's ability to surveil communities.
ICE is an emotionally charged word now, so it guarantees engagement. It’s irrelevance to the material is orthogonal to giving the people the rage-bait they love to hate.
Maybe I need to write a news filter/browser extension that rewrites rage-bait articles to have titles and content based only on the meaningful content/facts, and less the speculation/insinuations.
I think we need to revise our understanding of expectation of privacy. The 'you have no expectation of privacy when you are outside' bit was formed before we had everything recording us and before face recognition could track us.
At the very least I think any kind of face recognition should require probable cause.
Its an interesting question indeed. You're saying there might be some expectation of privacy even in public?
The line here is a little different. I could point a camera out my window and record every license plate that drives by my house, and that would be allowed because its recording public activities, and the data I collect would be private—its mine from my camera.
The question here is if a public/government agency pays a private company to setup cameras in public, for the benefit of the public, then should that data collected by those cameras not also be public?
The courts seem to agree that it should be public, and I fail to see why it shouldn't be. Maybe I should read the opposition briefs on it.
> The question here is if a public/government agency pays a private company to setup cameras in public, for the benefit of the public, then should that data collected by those cameras not also be public?
This is how NASA operates with the data/images collected from the tax payer funded operations it runs. There is a period of exclusivity allowed for some projects to allow the people to work with the data, but anybody can go down load high res imagery once it has been released.
Awesome, thank you for the input. I suspected NASA was operating this way, but I had no idea there was a period of exclusivity. In the case of NASA, the private companies are those like JPL and the sorts I guess?
I assume it is/was similar with other data collected, like weather data/radar, oceanic current/buoy data, etc?
I read about this regarding Hubble imagery, but pretty sure it applies to all missions funded by tax payers. The teams requesting time from the platforms are granted exclusive time to work out what they need so they can publish their papers for credit and what not.
One of the great things here is that most of the teams are so focused on their specific criteria in the data, they sort of lose the forest in the tree. Once that data has been released to the public, more and more interesting things are being found in the existing data rather than requiring new observations. It's space, so most things only need to be imaged once per sensor. It's not like setting up a trap camera hoping to see big foot the one time he strolls past. The universe changes on a much slower scale so the data is still relevant for much longer.
> Once that data has been released to the public, more and more interesting things are being found in the existing data rather than requiring new observations.
Really highlights the value of the data being public, which I feel is often overlooked now a days. Hard to tie KPIs to value that comes like this.
If your neighbors were across the street and had their blinds open could you point your camera at their window and take pictures?
License plates were designed to be read and visible and they show that the vehicle is registered, but what about inside the vehicle? Do we have privacy in there?
What exactly does 'in public' mean? And why shouldn't someone have privacy from being recorded and their movements tracked even if they are in public?
None of these things are a given. The rights we have are because we decided they were important. There is no reason we can't revisit the question as situations change.
Might make sense to revisit the constitutionality of license plates, rather than try to attack public recording.
They're demanding you show your "papers" registration at all times without articulable suspicion you've committed a crime/infraction. The fourth amendment arguably protects us from the government requiring us to show us our papers at all times when we're travelling in the most common form of conveyance.
From what I read, the pressure from activist groups on Redmond’s city leadership began before the Skagit County ruling. So it is probably unrelated. But I think it’s still a bad outcome for Redmond. Why wouldn’t you want law enforcement to be able to observe public spaces (which these cameras are monitoring) and identify or track suspects? We want our city services (like policing) to be efficient, right? We want criminals to be arrested and face consequences, right? We all want safe cities and neighborhoods, right?
I think the Skagit county ruling is likely to be appealed. There is a lot of information that governments can redact for a variety of reasons, despite FOIA or state/local transparency laws. It seems obvious that there’s a case for law enforcement to be able to access footage but to avoid handing over that kind of intelligence to the general public, where criminals could also abuse the same data. And I just don’t buy the argument that surveillance through cameras is automatically dystopian - we can pass laws that make it so that data is only accessible with a warrant or in a situation with immediate public risk. There are all sorts of powers the government has that we bring under control with the right laws - why would this be any different?
As for Redmond turning off its cameras - this is just fear-mongering about ICE. In reality, it’s just sanctuary city/state resistance to enforcing immigration laws. Redmond’s police department confirmed they’ve never shared this camera data with federal agencies, but that doesn’t stop activist types from making unhinged claims or exerting pressure. In reality, it’s activists of the same ideological bias as the soft on crime types that have caused crimes to go up dramatically in the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years. They’re happy to see law enforcement hampered and the public put at risk - the ICE thing is just the new tactic to push it.
Immigration is similar to the housing crisis and Nimbyism. Voters don't want a streamlined and efficient immigration system that lawfully allows a lot of migrants in (NIMBY). it is also similar to the war on drugs and its failure, ICE won't solve anything just as the DEA only made things worse with drugs.
No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more. Same with europe's far right teasing.
If the "infrastructure" can't support more people, we can build more here in the US. Borders shouldn't be open, but more health and able-bodied or skilled people wanting to migrate, so long as their criminal history is clear, should be let in, infrastructure should be scaled. It's more economic activity and wealth for the rest of us. More jobs, more workers. We need to do that for the housing crisis anyways.
We need more cities, more development, less NIMBY-thinking and less "beat them until they comply" thinking. Too many people who don't know or are unwilling to solve real problems but are eager to see cruelty and violence cause these untenable and regrettable situations.
The lesson learned is that people going to their immigration hearings to stay legal are getting nabbed, and going the legal way is a convoluted recipe for failure.
As soon as enforcement lets up an iota the lesson will be it is wiser to stay off paper and off the visa pathway and go underground. People who aren't arrested and don't present to CBP for entry and don't get a visa, as far as the government knows, don't exist.
I don't think the drugs analog works. What this activity by ICE does though is put a chilling effect on "legal" immigration and tourism. Which will over time hurt supply chains, tourist destinations and jobs overall.
> will only result in more illegal migration in the long term
Why? Wouldn't it disincentivize illegal immigration by making it much more riskier?
Agreed that the legal immigration system needs an overhaul, these are a lot of people living in limbo, paying taxes and not causing crimes with very few rights.
The term no taxation without representation was the reason the USA got founded.
It's a temporary partisan solution, the other party will do the opposite, reducing enforcement and letting even more illegal migrants in, lest they be accused of being a xenophobe.
Not sure of that to be honest, I think that would be a loud minority.
Once democratic cities got a taste of the flood of people coming in that were sent by southern states, they realized how big the issue is and how much of a drag on resources it is.
That's not how it is in reality, southern states (not just them though) have been doing that with homeless people too, not just immigrants.
Republicans did jim crow in the 50s and 60s, we still talk about it today, and the positive blowback from that needs no explanation. Keep in mind that ICE is doing a lot more than cops did to protesters in the 60s, and it is targeting not just one group but several minority groups. not only that, it is all being live streamed, and it is affecting a lot of majority-group americans more directly. If ICE can avoid being disbanded it would be a great victory for them.
If I were exaggerating, I would be talking about tribunals and mass incarcerations of ICE agents, but I'm not.
> Voters don't want a streamlined and efficient immigration system that lawfully allows a lot of migrants
There was a really interesting open ended survey some years ago, in the leadup to the trump/clinton election but I can't find it now sorry.
When republicans voters were asked to describe their preferred immigration policies, they outline a stance significantly more permissive and flexible, and less burdensome, than the one we currently have. More liberal than the reality, in other words.
People don't know what the immigration policies are and so they can't know what they should be either. The anti-immigration sentiment is a stunning propaganda victory decades in the making, no more.
> When republicans voters were asked to describe their preferred immigration policies, they outline a stance significantly more permissive and flexible, and less burdensome, than the one we currently have. More liberal than the reality, in other words.
> No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more.
How so? What mechanism do you see that goes from "ICE acting like the SS" to "a lot more illegal migration in the long term"? What's the cause and effect here?
Not saying you're wrong, necessarily, just... I don't see the causality at all.
What was the reaction to SS? or to stick to my DEA example, what was the result of the war on drugs? millions and millions dead because of drug related causes right? how do you think the nation will react to ICE's brutal and cruel, even illegal operations? many would consider them heroes, but the other side will consider them no different than the SS or gestapo, the only correction is to wind down immigration enforcement dramatically, increasing immigration.
Imagine a democrat administration simply reverting ICE to its pre-2025 state. the implication alone and the perception it gives will drive up illegal immigration. "america is open again".
My guess is he sees ICE hauling people out of even the courts when they were attempting to abide by the legal processes and will say f-it, why bother, its safer to not adhere. just my assumption of OP's intent.
Statistics are showing that the total immigrant population is down by over a million since the start of the year. If you have the ability to leave, why put up with this nonsense?
A large number of people, myself included, are now radicalized against the concept of immigration enforcement. I think everyone has a duty to make sure that ICE is as ineffective as possible and ICE agents are as miserable as possible. There's a lot of talk, for example, about how the asylum system is easily abusable; that's true, but now we will not be able to fix it because no immigration reform compromise that doesn't destroy ICE is acceptable.
People want immigrants. It is just that they want them to be second class citizens that are not allowed to earn more than them because of their skin color.
I was resistant to this argument for a long time, but the ICE thing makes it clear that really the core of all of this is racism.
The US is a nation and a home for its people, it's not an economic zone for anyone in the world to come and get rich. Everyone like you can go live somewhere else as rootless cosmopolitans surrounded by people who have no common ancestry or heritage.
Yeah, it's a nation. A nation of immigrants. Where did your great-great-great grandfather come from? Did he spontaneously erupt from this common ancestry and heritage that you speak of?
> Blood and soil (German: Blut und Boden, pronounced [ˈbluːt ʊnt ˈboːdn̩] ⓘ) is a nationalist phrase and concept of a racially defined national body ("Blood") united with a settlement area ("Soil"). Originating in the German völkisch movement, it was used extensively by Nazi Germany
Hence my antipathy, 20+ years ago, to the creation to a department of "Homeland" Security. Not that function of that entity itself was necessarily a bad idea, but that the concept of a "homeland" is fundamentally at odds with the USA's credal concept of civic belonging. Smuggling the blood and soil metaphor (further and officially) into the national consciousness has born disastrous fruits.
Ironically, there would be little need for surveillance state technology if the on-the-books immigration law had been enforced for the past few decades.
I can think of many uses for "surveillance state technology" that have nothing to do with immigration: It can be used against citizens and legal residents too.
But the sorts of ICE actions that are causing this controversy only have political support because the US immigration laws have been flouted for 30+ years. Regardless of what you or I think of it it’s the reality that lots of the electorate wants deportations and lots of them and that likely isn’t true in a world where the laws on the books were more strictly enforced in the past.
What political support? Is there evidence to back that claim? The most recent polls I've seen about this are Gallup's polls from July and they suggest that 62% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration. This includes a majority of Dems and Independents. The trend is more and more people disapprove of Trump on this topic as time moves forward.
They want deportations because... because someone told them that immigration is the cause of all of their personal problems, which is a lie.
It doesn't matter about the "support" for it when that support is predicated on a complete lie, that immigration is bad for America when it demonstrably is good for America.
They don't have majority political support. Even many Trump voters are against it. Also Trump has repeatedly violated immigration law, hell Trump tower wouldn't exist without the work of unauthorized Polish workers
Red herring. Political support is due to mass media narrative campaigns, in this day and age groundswell politics is simply infeasible with the power that narrative has in today's culture.
Hence the importance of controlling the narrative by spinning unchecked stories about immigrants eating cats, disproportionate rates of murder and crime, ignoring revenue from immigrants paying taxes, etc.
The fact that sufficient people will vote on immigration as an issue is orthogonal to the realities of laws and enforcement rates and entirely predicated upon perception of such issues.
on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
Hundreds of thousands to millions of people have come to the US legally each year for the last thirty years.[0] How is that impractical? In fact the share of immigrants in the US has increased significantly (by 3 times) in the last 50 years, and is above the level of the EU, and is at the highest level in the last 100 years in the US.[1][2] Even if legal immigration was set to zero, that shouldn't give people the right to come here illegally.
To be clear I am not making an argument that mass surveillance is needed to solve any problem.
US vs EU vs OECD: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec... - I'm pretty sure the values here include illegal immigration as well, so if you factor that in the US may be lower than the EU, but again still at historically very high levels.
The biggest illegal immigration source is the southern border. Yes, lots of people have immigrated, but they're a tiny fraction of those who wanted to immigrate. H-1B is a good example, it counts as immigration but it is really not, it is residency contingent on specific employment contracts. Those people with H-1B have no way to gain permanent residency without their employer sponsoring them, which would let them leave the company so employers don't tend to do that a lot.
The comparison with EU is not meaningful, especially since it isn't even a country. The population growth of the US and the world as a hole has also risen by more than that factor, even in the past two decades or so it has more than doubled.
The entire point is that they legally in fact may not do so, and have only been doing so because of the lack of enforcement GP cites.
> When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
We don't have nearly the same scale of problem in Canada. That probably has much more to do with only sharing an unsecured land border with a rich country.
It isn't. 2/3rds of illegal immigrants come to the US legally (and then overstay). Unless you make it illegal for non-citizens to visit the US, you can't stop most illegal immigration.
We can start with that 1/3rd. Then we remove as many economic incentives as possible to make overstaying visas that much less attractive to tackle the other 2/3rds.
It's weird to see people (perhaps not you specifically) who often support dramatic gun control measures to address a tiny percentage of crime among the first to trot out the old saw that only a relative fraction of illegal migrants got that way by an illegal border crossing. 1/3rd is a lot. 1/3rd is a great start.
Addressing that 1/3rd also would address the real edge cases (as in there are only a few of them) like terrorists and serial criminals.
employers hiring illegal migrants is also an option for them. those employers are not being targeted by ICE. It's the DEA arresting drug users but being buddies with drug lords all over again.
> on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
No, I don't expect that at all. However the problem with your scenario isn't that they need to wait their turn, it's that they can "just cross the border". That fact that that has been allowed was an intentional policy decision.
> do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
Well yes, that's what following the law means. They can't complain about it, it's not their country, and they don't have a say on the rules.
In a similar vein by your logic, if you are in a hurry, why should you obey traffic laws when you can just run a red light or a stop sign right?
Hierarchy of needs. People want to follow the law, they need food,shelter, medicine,etc.. You can punish law breakers, but if you don't provide a way to lawfully do the thing, you're only breeding law breakers and nothing more.
A missing perspective here might be that even long term imprisonment isn't a deterrent for many migrants. The disparity in living conditions is just that steep.
How? As a migrant to the US I have generally found the rules quite reasonable, the UX of the websites is poorer than say the UK but the rules seem fine.
as opposed to the big gate across the border being closed? you people are insane, do you realize that even democrats have been deporting people, separating families, locking up illegal immigrants,etc...?
Yes "democrats" in general absolutely have done those things. The Biden admin specifically did not do those things at anything near the scale that they let people in illegally or as "refugees".
"Data Show Trump Would’ve Released as Many Border Crossers as Biden" from the right-wing Cato Institute
> As I previously demonstrated, President Biden removed a higher percentage of border crossers in his first two years than Trump did during his last two years (51 percent versus 47 percent), despite Trump having to deal with many fewer total crossings (Table 1). Congress right now is in a bipartisan state of denial about these three central facts:
> 1) The reason people are being released is because of operational capacity to detain and deport them, not policy.
> 2) Biden has deported vastly greater numbers and a higher share of crossers, but it has not deterred people from crossing.
> 3) The logistics are such that once arrivals exceed the deportation machine’s capacity, people will find out and even more will come.
Ah, the paper tiger crisis. Clearly the misdemeanor of being in the country illegally requires new technology to be developed for state surveillance to enforce those laws, police cannot possibly be expected to do their job without it /s.
The expectation of privacy and personal freedoms of 350M people seems to be an inconvenience for the state wanting deporting a few more people per year.
They are not being enforced now. In fact the current administration is actively trying to circumvent the law. Which should not be surprising considering how much Trump has violated immigration law in his personal life
Not strictly enforcing the speed limit wouldn't justify the use of secret police to crack down on that either. But there's no xenophobia for speeders, so we don't see this action for them and we don't have to see specious takes like this defending it.
Excessive speeders in the absence of speed-limit enforcement just creates neighbors that don't mind their neighborhood being consumed by speed bumps/dips, I think there's an analogy here in residential areas. And if you have a lot of children in your neighborhood, there IS a 'xx-phobia' for speeders. But speed bumps and dips are an absolute nuisance and sometimes dangerous, so just having cameras identify and a system willing to punish speeders would absolutely be the preference.
What did they think would happen? Installing surveillance systems to monitor people is acceptable, as long as they're only used against the majority? I don't understand the logic here.
I think this is a case of, tools used to fight one type of crime are being used to fight another type of crime that disrupting the community. Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation.
"Kind of an unforeseen consequences situation."
This type of use and expansion of scope was totally foreseeable by anyone paying attention to history. It always starts as some targeted thing, then it becomes the path of least resistance for similar subsequent things as the barrier to entry is extremely low.
They had never picked up a history book so they didn't realize that the systems they envisioned being used to stop the jackboot upon people they don't like would eventually be used to stomp people they do.
If you don't want to read a book, here is a Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Back in a day, you did not have cameras yet, so one had to hire snitches. Luckily this is not the case anymore, as demonstrated by Chinese leading by an example:
https://t.co/Q1xOiQMmZT
Flock is a bad actor and untrustworthy (misleading departments and officials about how data is shared/accessed, literally reinstalling cameras that cities have demanded to be taken down). Regardless of whether the local municipality wants surveillance or not, Flock is not a trustworthy company to buy it from.
You don't understand the logic of "there are some crime problems we're willing to accept more intrusions to solve than other crime problems?"
Seems like something virtually everyone believes, and all that changes is where they draw the line of balance between intrusion and safety.
The point is that there is no actual line. There's the premise which then collects the data.
Then the data can be used for other purposes--no line prevents this.
Weird. There's an article right here showing them turning off the cameras when the line was crossed and now that data can't be used the way they don't want.
So clearly we're allowed more nuanced takes than you think.
"There's an article right here showing them turning off the cameras when the line was crossed and now that data can't be used the way they don't want."
Not exactly true. This happened after the arrests and won't affect those arrests. This also doesn't prevent ICE from installing and using Flock cameras on federal properties (like the post offices). I would also bet that they could still comb the existing data if they wanted to, hence the shutdown of the cameras on the fear that they can't keep the data safe.
Reactivity isn’t proactively protecting what you belief. It’s reacting to public outcry for the original premise.
Are you proposing everyone make the optimal decision in advance, when outcomes are all speculative, and just be sure to get it right so there’s no need to learn and adapt to circumstances?
In some cases, we can make optimal decisions in advance, generally referred to as planning, or foresight, or vision. This is a quality we would like in governments, to be fair.
I propose we stop letting government do things that are revenue based and pretend they are “in our best interests”.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
"Those (the Penn family) who would give up essential Liberty (money & power), to purchase a little temporary Safety (a veto over a taxation dispute, trying to raise money from the Penn family), deserve neither Liberty (said money & power) nor Safety (the defense that said taxed money would've bought from the present French & Indian wars)"
The context of the original quote doesn't prevent others from finding it more generally applicable or well-put.
It's kind of funny if you think about it. Franklin spent so many years arguing for liberty, low taxes and limited government that when he tried to argue in favor of taxation and federal power he unintentionally still argued in favor of the former.
You don't understand why they may want surveillance to curb or investigate violent crime, but not why they oppose surveillance used by the Gestapo to kidnap members of their community? Seriously?
It's like saying I'm hypocritical for loving to write with pencils but being offended when someone else stabs me with one.
> Bro, you said you liked pencils, make up your mind!
If stabbing people is so wrong, why don’t we lock up all the surgeons?
Of all the poor thinking and rhetorical skills out there, the one that drives me the craziest is this insistence that ignoring context is not just acceptable but essential.
you don't understand it or you don't agree with it?
What’s there to understand? Property crime has gone up over time in the Pacific Northwest region. A lot of it simply goes unreported because victims are tired of not seeing consequences for criminals, and deductibles make it not worth filing insurance claims. The issue is that investigating many types of crimes is expensive and takes a lot of people. Cities don’t have the budget or political will to spend more. These cameras make it far more efficient to solve and deter crime, which is a huge win for public safety and budgets.
This decision to turn off Flock cameras is simply bad for residents. It’s the result of a small set of activists pressuring an activist city council.
Seattle is in such a tough spot. I lived there from 2001 to 2010 and left and then went back in 2018 or so and it looked like the homeless population had doubled, or tripled in the time since. And then I went back again after COVID and it was just sad. The entire downtown area is just homeless camps. There used to be a big beautiful Macy's department store on 4th Ave that's just all boarded up now. You can't browse around outside Westlake Center without being bombarded and accosted by aggressive panhandlers. Even the iconic Pike Place Market was overrun with druggies.
The entire city is so poorly run they just have no answers, and nobody can do anything about it. Pick something. Build more housing, do a basic income. Something, anything. But they can't. And their politics just let it keep getting worse and worse.
"On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show."
This video by Tom Lehto talks more about that court case that illustrates citizens can legally do FOIA requests for traffic cameras (e.g. Flock): https://youtu.be/1vQn4MWBln0
The example of Seattle Police dashcam and body camera footage may be interesting. When those things were relatively new, ten years ago or so, someone started filing daily public records requests for footage from all 911 dispatches (among other things). They wanted to build their own database of the theoretically public footage. The SPD complained that the overhead of redacting all that footage would be impossible. Eventually the legislature clarified the status and tightened the request rules, so now you have to request footage for a specific incident, and you may have to pay a redaction fee. [0]
[0] https://mrsc.org/explore-topics/public-records/law-enforceme...
Someone should use AI to request such a large amount of data that it DDoSes the whole system. Unfortunately I feel like that would result in traffic camera data just being removed from FOIA rather than removed from use.
A little annoyed, this seems like is has nothing to do with the ICE arrests...
> The city suspended its Flock system because city officials could not guarantee they wouldn’t be forced to release data collected by those devices someday, she said.
Key part is "someday". Seems like the article is implying that flock may have shared this data with ICE which led to the arrests... but there is no proof supporting this...
> On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state’s Public Records Act, court records show.
This is the more likely reason. What do folks here think about this ruling?
IMO it seems obvious that this should be public records/data, but would love to hear alternative positions to this.
I can't stand this type of "journalism"/sensationalism.
> Redmond’s Police Department was not among those listed in the report, and has never allowed external agencies to access their Flock data without requesting and receiving permission from the police chief first, according to an Oct. 24 statement by Lowe.
So because the arrests were near a Flock Camera the "journalist" is connecting the two? Even with the statements an information to the contrary?
:(
This wouldn't be the first time Flock was used by ICE and would not be the first time Flock allowed ICE backdoor access against the wishes of the local government or police department in Washington. https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-t...
So making the connection isn't a leap and seems like a pretty pragmatic action taken to reduce ICE's ability to surveil communities.
ICE is an emotionally charged word now, so it guarantees engagement. It’s irrelevance to the material is orthogonal to giving the people the rage-bait they love to hate.
sigh I hope LLMs can save us from ourselves. :)
Maybe I need to write a news filter/browser extension that rewrites rage-bait articles to have titles and content based only on the meaningful content/facts, and less the speculation/insinuations.
I think we need to revise our understanding of expectation of privacy. The 'you have no expectation of privacy when you are outside' bit was formed before we had everything recording us and before face recognition could track us.
At the very least I think any kind of face recognition should require probable cause.
Its an interesting question indeed. You're saying there might be some expectation of privacy even in public?
The line here is a little different. I could point a camera out my window and record every license plate that drives by my house, and that would be allowed because its recording public activities, and the data I collect would be private—its mine from my camera.
The question here is if a public/government agency pays a private company to setup cameras in public, for the benefit of the public, then should that data collected by those cameras not also be public?
The courts seem to agree that it should be public, and I fail to see why it shouldn't be. Maybe I should read the opposition briefs on it.
> The question here is if a public/government agency pays a private company to setup cameras in public, for the benefit of the public, then should that data collected by those cameras not also be public?
This is how NASA operates with the data/images collected from the tax payer funded operations it runs. There is a period of exclusivity allowed for some projects to allow the people to work with the data, but anybody can go down load high res imagery once it has been released.
Awesome, thank you for the input. I suspected NASA was operating this way, but I had no idea there was a period of exclusivity. In the case of NASA, the private companies are those like JPL and the sorts I guess?
I assume it is/was similar with other data collected, like weather data/radar, oceanic current/buoy data, etc?
I read about this regarding Hubble imagery, but pretty sure it applies to all missions funded by tax payers. The teams requesting time from the platforms are granted exclusive time to work out what they need so they can publish their papers for credit and what not.
One of the great things here is that most of the teams are so focused on their specific criteria in the data, they sort of lose the forest in the tree. Once that data has been released to the public, more and more interesting things are being found in the existing data rather than requiring new observations. It's space, so most things only need to be imaged once per sensor. It's not like setting up a trap camera hoping to see big foot the one time he strolls past. The universe changes on a much slower scale so the data is still relevant for much longer.
Fascinating thank you.
> Once that data has been released to the public, more and more interesting things are being found in the existing data rather than requiring new observations.
Really highlights the value of the data being public, which I feel is often overlooked now a days. Hard to tie KPIs to value that comes like this.
There is certainly some expectation of privacy in public. California at least has anti-paparazzi laws covering some of this.
If your neighbors were across the street and had their blinds open could you point your camera at their window and take pictures?
License plates were designed to be read and visible and they show that the vehicle is registered, but what about inside the vehicle? Do we have privacy in there?
What exactly does 'in public' mean? And why shouldn't someone have privacy from being recorded and their movements tracked even if they are in public?
None of these things are a given. The rights we have are because we decided they were important. There is no reason we can't revisit the question as situations change.
Might make sense to revisit the constitutionality of license plates, rather than try to attack public recording.
They're demanding you show your "papers" registration at all times without articulable suspicion you've committed a crime/infraction. The fourth amendment arguably protects us from the government requiring us to show us our papers at all times when we're travelling in the most common form of conveyance.
From what I read, the pressure from activist groups on Redmond’s city leadership began before the Skagit County ruling. So it is probably unrelated. But I think it’s still a bad outcome for Redmond. Why wouldn’t you want law enforcement to be able to observe public spaces (which these cameras are monitoring) and identify or track suspects? We want our city services (like policing) to be efficient, right? We want criminals to be arrested and face consequences, right? We all want safe cities and neighborhoods, right?
I think the Skagit county ruling is likely to be appealed. There is a lot of information that governments can redact for a variety of reasons, despite FOIA or state/local transparency laws. It seems obvious that there’s a case for law enforcement to be able to access footage but to avoid handing over that kind of intelligence to the general public, where criminals could also abuse the same data. And I just don’t buy the argument that surveillance through cameras is automatically dystopian - we can pass laws that make it so that data is only accessible with a warrant or in a situation with immediate public risk. There are all sorts of powers the government has that we bring under control with the right laws - why would this be any different?
As for Redmond turning off its cameras - this is just fear-mongering about ICE. In reality, it’s just sanctuary city/state resistance to enforcing immigration laws. Redmond’s police department confirmed they’ve never shared this camera data with federal agencies, but that doesn’t stop activist types from making unhinged claims or exerting pressure. In reality, it’s activists of the same ideological bias as the soft on crime types that have caused crimes to go up dramatically in the Pacific Northwest in the last 20 years. They’re happy to see law enforcement hampered and the public put at risk - the ICE thing is just the new tactic to push it.
No they turned them off because it turns out those cameras are public records and all their citizens can make requests for ALL THAT DATA.
Immigration is similar to the housing crisis and Nimbyism. Voters don't want a streamlined and efficient immigration system that lawfully allows a lot of migrants in (NIMBY). it is also similar to the war on drugs and its failure, ICE won't solve anything just as the DEA only made things worse with drugs.
No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more. Same with europe's far right teasing.
If the "infrastructure" can't support more people, we can build more here in the US. Borders shouldn't be open, but more health and able-bodied or skilled people wanting to migrate, so long as their criminal history is clear, should be let in, infrastructure should be scaled. It's more economic activity and wealth for the rest of us. More jobs, more workers. We need to do that for the housing crisis anyways.
We need more cities, more development, less NIMBY-thinking and less "beat them until they comply" thinking. Too many people who don't know or are unwilling to solve real problems but are eager to see cruelty and violence cause these untenable and regrettable situations.
> No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more.
I don't follow. Illegal immigration into the US is down right now. So, how did you arrive at that conclusion?
The lesson learned is that people going to their immigration hearings to stay legal are getting nabbed, and going the legal way is a convoluted recipe for failure.
As soon as enforcement lets up an iota the lesson will be it is wiser to stay off paper and off the visa pathway and go underground. People who aren't arrested and don't present to CBP for entry and don't get a visa, as far as the government knows, don't exist.
I don't think the drugs analog works. What this activity by ICE does though is put a chilling effect on "legal" immigration and tourism. Which will over time hurt supply chains, tourist destinations and jobs overall.
It's a pendulum, the next administration will react in the other direction, possibly very dramatically.
Because the blowback on ICE's current 'posture' is going to gut that agency.
> will only result in more illegal migration in the long term
Why? Wouldn't it disincentivize illegal immigration by making it much more riskier?
Agreed that the legal immigration system needs an overhaul, these are a lot of people living in limbo, paying taxes and not causing crimes with very few rights. The term no taxation without representation was the reason the USA got founded.
It's a temporary partisan solution, the other party will do the opposite, reducing enforcement and letting even more illegal migrants in, lest they be accused of being a xenophobe.
Not sure of that to be honest, I think that would be a loud minority.
Once democratic cities got a taste of the flood of people coming in that were sent by southern states, they realized how big the issue is and how much of a drag on resources it is.
That's not how it is in reality, southern states (not just them though) have been doing that with homeless people too, not just immigrants.
Republicans did jim crow in the 50s and 60s, we still talk about it today, and the positive blowback from that needs no explanation. Keep in mind that ICE is doing a lot more than cops did to protesters in the 60s, and it is targeting not just one group but several minority groups. not only that, it is all being live streamed, and it is affecting a lot of majority-group americans more directly. If ICE can avoid being disbanded it would be a great victory for them.
If I were exaggerating, I would be talking about tribunals and mass incarcerations of ICE agents, but I'm not.
> Voters don't want a streamlined and efficient immigration system that lawfully allows a lot of migrants
There was a really interesting open ended survey some years ago, in the leadup to the trump/clinton election but I can't find it now sorry.
When republicans voters were asked to describe their preferred immigration policies, they outline a stance significantly more permissive and flexible, and less burdensome, than the one we currently have. More liberal than the reality, in other words.
People don't know what the immigration policies are and so they can't know what they should be either. The anti-immigration sentiment is a stunning propaganda victory decades in the making, no more.
> When republicans voters were asked to describe their preferred immigration policies, they outline a stance significantly more permissive and flexible, and less burdensome, than the one we currently have. More liberal than the reality, in other words.
Yes.
For legal immigration.
Yes, that's my experience when having to explain what getting a greencard entails, most people have no idea how the whole thing works.
> No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more.
How so? What mechanism do you see that goes from "ICE acting like the SS" to "a lot more illegal migration in the long term"? What's the cause and effect here?
Not saying you're wrong, necessarily, just... I don't see the causality at all.
What was the reaction to SS? or to stick to my DEA example, what was the result of the war on drugs? millions and millions dead because of drug related causes right? how do you think the nation will react to ICE's brutal and cruel, even illegal operations? many would consider them heroes, but the other side will consider them no different than the SS or gestapo, the only correction is to wind down immigration enforcement dramatically, increasing immigration.
Imagine a democrat administration simply reverting ICE to its pre-2025 state. the implication alone and the perception it gives will drive up illegal immigration. "america is open again".
My guess is he sees ICE hauling people out of even the courts when they were attempting to abide by the legal processes and will say f-it, why bother, its safer to not adhere. just my assumption of OP's intent.
Statistics are showing that the total immigrant population is down by over a million since the start of the year. If you have the ability to leave, why put up with this nonsense?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi...
A large number of people, myself included, are now radicalized against the concept of immigration enforcement. I think everyone has a duty to make sure that ICE is as ineffective as possible and ICE agents are as miserable as possible. There's a lot of talk, for example, about how the asylum system is easily abusable; that's true, but now we will not be able to fix it because no immigration reform compromise that doesn't destroy ICE is acceptable.
People want immigrants. It is just that they want them to be second class citizens that are not allowed to earn more than them because of their skin color.
I was resistant to this argument for a long time, but the ICE thing makes it clear that really the core of all of this is racism.
> economic activity, wealth, jobs, workers
The US is a nation and a home for its people, it's not an economic zone for anyone in the world to come and get rich. Everyone like you can go live somewhere else as rootless cosmopolitans surrounded by people who have no common ancestry or heritage.
Yeah, it's a nation. A nation of immigrants. Where did your great-great-great grandfather come from? Did he spontaneously erupt from this common ancestry and heritage that you speak of?
common ancestry and heritage? that's what you're going for as the defining american feature? really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootless_cosmopolitan
> The term is considered to be an antisemitic trope
> common ancestry or heritage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil
> Blood and soil (German: Blut und Boden, pronounced [ˈbluːt ʊnt ˈboːdn̩] ⓘ) is a nationalist phrase and concept of a racially defined national body ("Blood") united with a settlement area ("Soil"). Originating in the German völkisch movement, it was used extensively by Nazi Germany
Hence my antipathy, 20+ years ago, to the creation to a department of "Homeland" Security. Not that function of that entity itself was necessarily a bad idea, but that the concept of a "homeland" is fundamentally at odds with the USA's credal concept of civic belonging. Smuggling the blood and soil metaphor (further and officially) into the national consciousness has born disastrous fruits.
NB: Title edited to add "WA" for clarity. I.e., this is the city of, not a toponym for another entity.
We are all speed running our learning on how all of these systems can be used against us.
Ironically, there would be little need for surveillance state technology if the on-the-books immigration law had been enforced for the past few decades.
I can think of many uses for "surveillance state technology" that have nothing to do with immigration: It can be used against citizens and legal residents too.
I don’t buy that for a second. Governments always want more control, and this is just another way for them to get it.
But the sorts of ICE actions that are causing this controversy only have political support because the US immigration laws have been flouted for 30+ years. Regardless of what you or I think of it it’s the reality that lots of the electorate wants deportations and lots of them and that likely isn’t true in a world where the laws on the books were more strictly enforced in the past.
What political support? Is there evidence to back that claim? The most recent polls I've seen about this are Gallup's polls from July and they suggest that 62% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration. This includes a majority of Dems and Independents. The trend is more and more people disapprove of Trump on this topic as time moves forward.
They want deportations because... because someone told them that immigration is the cause of all of their personal problems, which is a lie.
It doesn't matter about the "support" for it when that support is predicated on a complete lie, that immigration is bad for America when it demonstrably is good for America.
You're conflating illegal immigration with immigration.
In no way is illegal immigration "good for America".
They don't have majority political support. Even many Trump voters are against it. Also Trump has repeatedly violated immigration law, hell Trump tower wouldn't exist without the work of unauthorized Polish workers
Red herring. Political support is due to mass media narrative campaigns, in this day and age groundswell politics is simply infeasible with the power that narrative has in today's culture.
Political support is due to people voting for it, and in the US system that is the arbiter of who will get to enact their policies.
This is true.
Hence the importance of controlling the narrative by spinning unchecked stories about immigrants eating cats, disproportionate rates of murder and crime, ignoring revenue from immigrants paying taxes, etc.
The fact that sufficient people will vote on immigration as an issue is orthogonal to the realities of laws and enforcement rates and entirely predicated upon perception of such issues.
But if they hadn't been flouted, the US would be a dirt farm specializing in the farming and production of dirt. Hacker news wouldn't even exist.
Justifying illegal immigration for cheap labor?
That's a very old Democrat talking point.
Whether it's slaves or illegals, it's still wrong.
They'd find a need (or excuse) for it regardless of the state of our immigration system.
This is actually true, since there’s no need for it now and there would be no need for it in your silly hypothetical too.
> your silly hypothetical too.
The stats for Southwest Land Border Encounters are available at https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc... and the HN guidelines are available at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
Hundreds of thousands to millions of people have come to the US legally each year for the last thirty years.[0] How is that impractical? In fact the share of immigrants in the US has increased significantly (by 3 times) in the last 50 years, and is above the level of the EU, and is at the highest level in the last 100 years in the US.[1][2] Even if legal immigration was set to zero, that shouldn't give people the right to come here illegally.
To be clear I am not making an argument that mass surveillance is needed to solve any problem.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/green-card-holders-a...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024... via https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immig...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec...
US vs EU vs OECD: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec... - I'm pretty sure the values here include illegal immigration as well, so if you factor that in the US may be lower than the EU, but again still at historically very high levels.
The biggest illegal immigration source is the southern border. Yes, lots of people have immigrated, but they're a tiny fraction of those who wanted to immigrate. H-1B is a good example, it counts as immigration but it is really not, it is residency contingent on specific employment contracts. Those people with H-1B have no way to gain permanent residency without their employer sponsoring them, which would let them leave the company so employers don't tend to do that a lot.
The comparison with EU is not meaningful, especially since it isn't even a country. The population growth of the US and the world as a hole has also risen by more than that factor, even in the past two decades or so it has more than doubled.
> do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down
The backlog isn't a consequence of the law.
Is there a country that doesn't expect people to go through some kind of qualification process in order to immigrate legally? Here's what it looks like in Canada (where I live), for example: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se... It's actually quite complex, and depends on additional provincial legislation. And then there's citizenship on top of that: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
> when they can just cross the border?
The entire point is that they legally in fact may not do so, and have only been doing so because of the lack of enforcement GP cites.
> When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
We don't have nearly the same scale of problem in Canada. That probably has much more to do with only sharing an unsecured land border with a rich country.
>when they can just cross the border
This is also a choice for the people in charge of the border. Enforcing a border is a solved problem for a rich, large-population nation.
It isn't. 2/3rds of illegal immigrants come to the US legally (and then overstay). Unless you make it illegal for non-citizens to visit the US, you can't stop most illegal immigration.
We can start with that 1/3rd. Then we remove as many economic incentives as possible to make overstaying visas that much less attractive to tackle the other 2/3rds.
It's weird to see people (perhaps not you specifically) who often support dramatic gun control measures to address a tiny percentage of crime among the first to trot out the old saw that only a relative fraction of illegal migrants got that way by an illegal border crossing. 1/3rd is a lot. 1/3rd is a great start.
Addressing that 1/3rd also would address the real edge cases (as in there are only a few of them) like terrorists and serial criminals.
employers hiring illegal migrants is also an option for them. those employers are not being targeted by ICE. It's the DEA arresting drug users but being buddies with drug lords all over again.
> on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
No, I don't expect that at all. However the problem with your scenario isn't that they need to wait their turn, it's that they can "just cross the border". That fact that that has been allowed was an intentional policy decision.
> do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
Well yes, that's what following the law means. They can't complain about it, it's not their country, and they don't have a say on the rules.
In a similar vein by your logic, if you are in a hurry, why should you obey traffic laws when you can just run a red light or a stop sign right?
Hierarchy of needs. People want to follow the law, they need food,shelter, medicine,etc.. You can punish law breakers, but if you don't provide a way to lawfully do the thing, you're only breeding law breakers and nothing more.
A missing perspective here might be that even long term imprisonment isn't a deterrent for many migrants. The disparity in living conditions is just that steep.
How? As a migrant to the US I have generally found the rules quite reasonable, the UX of the websites is poorer than say the UK but the rules seem fine.
Yes!
And it wasn't just on-the-books immigration laws that weren't enforced, it was the actual, physical border that was left fully open.
1. No it wasn't
2. It's not any less open now
as opposed to the big gate across the border being closed? you people are insane, do you realize that even democrats have been deporting people, separating families, locking up illegal immigrants,etc...?
Yes "democrats" in general absolutely have done those things. The Biden admin specifically did not do those things at anything near the scale that they let people in illegally or as "refugees".
"Data Show Trump Would’ve Released as Many Border Crossers as Biden" from the right-wing Cato Institute
> As I previously demonstrated, President Biden removed a higher percentage of border crossers in his first two years than Trump did during his last two years (51 percent versus 47 percent), despite Trump having to deal with many fewer total crossings (Table 1). Congress right now is in a bipartisan state of denial about these three central facts:
> 1) The reason people are being released is because of operational capacity to detain and deport them, not policy.
> 2) Biden has deported vastly greater numbers and a higher share of crossers, but it has not deterred people from crossing.
> 3) The logistics are such that once arrivals exceed the deportation machine’s capacity, people will find out and even more will come.
Feel free to click through for data!
https://www.cato.org/blog/data-show-trump-wouldve-released-m...
> Biden has deported vastly greater numbers and a higher share of crossers, but it has not deterred people from crossing.
ICE and Trump seem to be enough deterrent now, considering how the land encounters have reduced.
> The logistics are such that once arrivals exceed the deportation machine’s capacity, people will find out and even more will come.
This explains the huge ice funding increase.
Ah, the paper tiger crisis. Clearly the misdemeanor of being in the country illegally requires new technology to be developed for state surveillance to enforce those laws, police cannot possibly be expected to do their job without it /s.
The expectation of privacy and personal freedoms of 350M people seems to be an inconvenience for the state wanting deporting a few more people per year.
They are not being enforced now. In fact the current administration is actively trying to circumvent the law. Which should not be surprising considering how much Trump has violated immigration law in his personal life
Not strictly enforcing the speed limit wouldn't justify the use of secret police to crack down on that either. But there's no xenophobia for speeders, so we don't see this action for them and we don't have to see specious takes like this defending it.
Excessive speeders in the absence of speed-limit enforcement just creates neighbors that don't mind their neighborhood being consumed by speed bumps/dips, I think there's an analogy here in residential areas. And if you have a lot of children in your neighborhood, there IS a 'xx-phobia' for speeders. But speed bumps and dips are an absolute nuisance and sometimes dangerous, so just having cameras identify and a system willing to punish speeders would absolutely be the preference.
Because American citizens and documented immigrants never commit crimes? Nonsense.