sundin13 said:
Disagree. Laken Riley Act always felt to me like bad policy wrapped in a fairly reasonable package. Classic propaganda stuff, so you can point to all the people who voted against it and say "They voted against a bill that would do this reasonable thing" while completely ignoring the rest of the stuff packaged with it. Having ICE automatically detain someone who is convicted of manslaughter is pretty reasonable. I think there could potentially be some issues with it in execution, as deportation doesn't always result in imprisonment in the destination country basically allowing some people to escape punishment and potentially just come back to America, but overall, I'm not too concerned about that. But handling all theft related crimes this way seems like a bridge too far. Sending someone who steals a candy bar to ICE detainment isn't something I can support as I don't feel like it is imperative for public safety to protect the poor Americans from crimes regularly committed by babies. And sending them to ICE for just for being accused of a crime? I mean, I feel like we don't need to look too far past what is happening literally right now to see that due process is on shaky footing, making that a pretty dangerous road. Just look at the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Accusing someone of a crime is easy, but convicting them of a crime is hard (and for good reason). In a country where an accusation can be on the basis of the clothes someone is wearing and incredibly dubious tattoo interpretations, we shouldn't enable further assaults on due process. And the part that allows states to sue DHS? Woof. All that is doing is allowing the Republican Judiciary to hijack control of America's immigration system whenever Democrats are in power... |
). That certainly includes me. Mocking and excoriating this administration's general policy direction and attitude is something I find easy and often fun and cathartic too. Thought I'd do something different for a change of pace here though because no, I don't actually disapprove of just everything that's being done in Washington right now, believe it or not. I supported the Laken Riley Act, for example, and was glad that it passed and that not every Democrat voted against it.Frankly, I have noticed a longstanding pattern with you of opposing just about everything that involves enforcing laws and of demeaning the victims of crimes (especially when they're female). The Laken Riley Act is so-named because doing what you propose to do differently from what was done in the past (nothing) resulted in unnecessary bloodshed. I feel like that fact is getting lost to your want of conflating more or less the entire concept of border security with Trumpism. There are reasons why Trump won last year's election and some of them have roots in very real problems. One ingredient of that was that the nation was simply unwilling to just tolerate limitless volumes of illegal mass migration while suffering a partially consequent housing shortage and a drug overdose epidemic of unprecedented scale. Word of violent crimes being committed by people with records who weren't supposed to be here anyway served as the icing on the cake for many. Something different had to be done!
None of that is to say that I'm in favor of deporting American citizens anywhere, let alone to foreign prisons notorious for deprivation and even torture, and least of all if they have clean records. But you will also recognize that that xenophobic shit is being done not as a result of the Laken Riley Act, but rather because we have a fascist in the Oval Office (or wherever he's spending his time, I dunno) who rules by decree and just does whatever he wants that way and Congress is too timid to stop him, so it falls to the courts and to whether the administration is willing to abide by their verdicts and...well you know all this by now. You keep up with events. Anyway, the fact that this "law-and-order" administration in fact has no respect for the rule of law (to the point that the president actually claimed recently that he's not sure it's his job to uphold the Constitution!) isn't a good reason to just let what really did happen to Laken Riley and others continue to happen when there are simple things we could do to reduce their prevalence of such crimes that aren't fascism.
Or in short: 1) fascism is bad, so don't vote for fascists, and 2) border security is not fascism, it's just an issue that aspiring tyrants exploit. If you don't let them have the issue, they'll have a tougher time winning elections.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 04 May 2025
