From what research I've seen, the phrasing here should be that non-citizens were deported and chose to bring their US citizen children with them. The children themselves were not deported.

This in no way excuses any of the other issues like not allowing contact with legal advocates / attorneys.

• afavour

  today at 2:25 PM

  Difficult to describe them as choosing to do anything:

  > ICE held the families incommunicado, refusing or failing to respond to multiple attempts by attorneys and family members to contact them. In one instance, a mother was granted less than one minute on the phone before the call was abruptly terminated when her spouse tried to provide legal counsel’s phone number.

  What would they do, leave their child in an ICE facility and hope that somehow word gets back to family to go get them?

• nessbot

  today at 2:20 PM

  You got a source for that? I've hear otherwise about some of the parent's decisions for their US citizen children.

• miltonlost

  today at 2:28 PM

  Oh wow, what a choice! Imagine, having a gun to your head and saying "but i had a choice!" In no way can you say that these people, given no legal advocates, chose to bring their children, or at least freely chose.

• ajross

  today at 2:44 PM

  > From what research I've seen, the phrasing here should be that non-citizens were deported and chose to bring their US citizen children with them. The children themselves were not deported.

  That seems deliberately Orwellian. What's the "not deported" scenario you're imagining? Literally abandoning your child in a jail somewhere?!

  It's not like these folks are in hotels, or have access to phones or family.

  I mean, yikes. Is that really what we've come to in the discourse on this site? Putting scare quotes around "deported" to pretend that it's only "other issues" that are problems?

• sfasdfasd

  today at 2:38 PM

  Yes. Here is a more accurate and simple headline. No mental gymnastics needed.

  "Two Undocumented Families and Their U.S.-Born Children Deported by ICE"

  • pavlov

    today at 2:49 PM

    Next year it's going to be:

    "Two Undocumented Families and Their U.S.-Born Accomplices Deported by ICE"

    And the following year, you won't need to include the undocumented families anymore. (And they won't be telling anyone about the citizens who were disappeared, so this headline won't get printed anyway and its formulation doesn't matter.)

  • miltonlost

    today at 2:40 PM

    This is less accurate. It erases the US citizenship of the children by being born here with the 14th Amendment, and subtly implies that they AREN'T citizens and are just "U.S.-Born" as if the 14th Amendment didn't apply (like Trump wants).

    • sfasdfasd

      today at 2:50 PM

      "U.S Born" == "U.S Citizenship" would be the default assumption of any rational, thinking person.

      You can add more words to say the same thing but it only ends up being annoying.

      • today at 2:55 PM

      • nullstyle

        today at 2:55 PM

        > "U.S Born" == "U.S Citizenship" would be the default assumption of any rational, thinking person

        Not in trump’s america, not if they have their way, and this nonsense wordplay is part of it. Look at the statements around a third term; those arent jokes

While the 3 minors are US citizens, their parents are not and the parents can be deported because they are in the country illegally.

That means you have the following options:

a) deport nobody, i.e. you don't apply the law

b) deport just the parents. What do you do with the minor children? Separating them from their parents (different countries) would be cruel.

c) deport the entire family, including the US minors. Since they have US citizenship, they can always return to the US.

• otde

  today at 2:46 PM

  Why is a) bad? Have you considered d) pass a different law? Why are you pretending the law is some immutable thing that we always need to follow, regardless of the situations an unjust law might place someone in if followed?

• healsdata

  today at 2:51 PM

  d) Give them access to legal counsel and a judge who can all help make this decision on a case-by-case basis and in accordance with the law.

• miltonlost

  today at 2:34 PM

  DEPORTING US CITIZENS is the logical choice? Logical to deport children to someplace they have never been and they don't have citizenship to? It's still illogical, evil, unconstitutional, and cruel.

<<Insert Rage>>

But for interesting HN discussion... anyone got any juice on why this is happening. Is there orders going down the chain of command from the president to do this sort of thing. Was this behaviour always there but less reported before? Are they more emboldened by the current environment?

• pge

  today at 2:38 PM

  The current administration has set targets for numbers of people deported(which ICE is currently behind on). That creates an incentive to skip due process in order to get more people deported more quickly (and the awareness that there will no consequences for doing so probably contributes as well)

• somenameforme

  today at 1:50 PM

  Every day across the world thousands of people are removed from countries around the world for violating immigration laws. Except in cases of where it coincided with criminality, it's always going to be very ugly, because it means somebody had built up a life for themselves somewhere and that is now ended due to them having been born in a different place and then overstayed their permission, or never received such, to stay somewhere else.

  Like in this case, what do you propose as an alternative with a precedent that you think could be agreeable to most people? The parents were in the country illegally, and the children's citizenship was solely one of birthright. Any sort of "pleasant" outcome would effectively require turning birthright citizenship into defacto citizenship for the parents as well, at least if they can stay illegally for long enough. That's not only completely unrealistic, but also a complete slap in the face to the millions of people who try to migrate legally and are refused entry.

  • sswatson

    today at 2:01 PM

    The phrase "solely one of birthright" suggests the diminishment of the citizenship of certain people. That is not how citizenship works: no one is less of a citizen than anyone else.

    The most objectionable part here — by far — is not the deportation of the parents, but the deportation of citizens and the lack of due process.

    The alternative being proposed is that if ICE is going to deport the parents of US citizen children, the parents should be given the opportunity to seek legal counsel regarding how they're going to ensure care for their children.

    • kadushka

      today at 2:44 PM

      no one is less of a citizen than anyone else

      This is not true - a citizen by birth can become the president, a naturalized citizen cannot.

  • sanderjd

    today at 2:14 PM

    > the children's citizenship was solely one of birthright

    Under the US Constitution, this is not a distinction. What you're looking for is just "the children's citizenship" without this qualifier that signifies nothing under the law.

    The better alternative is to aggressively enforce employment laws against employers. Immigrants come here and stay here to work.

    • retzkek

      today at 2:59 PM

      And then, what? Are citizens beating down the doors to do these jobs but getting out-competed by migrants? Are these the same citizens who are lining up to do sweatshop labor when manufacturing “returns” to the US?

      If undocumented workers are finding productive work in an economy with low unemployment then the problem is that the government is not facilitating them gaining legal status.

    • firesteelrain

      today at 2:18 PM

      Agree and proper border control which the previous administration failed to enforce. Step 1 is stop the influx.

    • laurent_du

      today at 2:47 PM

      Not enough. Some immigrants come and stay to commit crimes.

  • yodsanklai

    today at 1:54 PM

    > it's always going to be very ugly,

    It doesn't have to be as ugly as what is described in the article.

  • DragonStrength

    today at 2:15 PM

    The issue is some ability to fight. For instance, I don’t think the child of a US citizen should be deported without consent of their citizen parent or a ruling against that parent. I’d like some assurance my own child won’t be disappeared to another country without my consent.

  • UncleMeat

    today at 2:19 PM

    > and the children's citizenship was solely one of birthright

    My citizenship is solely that way too, even though generations of my ancestors were also citizens.

    Unless you personally naturalized then your citizenship is solely by birthright. The vast majority of US citizens are this way. Insisting that this is somehow worth less in terms of legal protections is just frankly wrong.

    Imagine you said this for other circumstances. "Well, a parent going to prison is always going to be hard for the family - better imprison the whole family!"

    • today at 2:57 PM

  • today at 2:51 PM

  • nikanj

    today at 2:38 PM

    The previous time the big mad that Obama was (supposedly) not born on the US soil, now the problem is that someone was born in the US.

    Is there an acceptable way for POC to get citizenship anymore, if it's not by inheritance and it's not by being born in the US?

    • tuan

      today at 2:56 PM

      5mil for a gold card and expedited path to citizenship I’ve heard.

  • apical_dendrite

    today at 1:55 PM

    > Any sort of "pleasant" outcome would effectively require turning birthright citizenship into defacto citizenship for the parents as well, at least if they can stay illegally for long enough.

    No, there are lots of immigration statuses between "illegal" and "citizen". DAPA, which was the Obama administration's policy, gave parents of US citizens a status where they could get temporary renewable work permits and exemption for deportation. This was not citizenship, or even a status that could allow someone to eventually become a citizen.

    • pclmulqdq

      today at 2:06 PM

      Most of those statuses are called "visas" and they have been around for a while. Obama's innovation was giving a weird form of status ("we know you broke the law and we aren't enforcing it") to people who broke the law when crossing the border. Most people with a non-illegal and non-citizen status are supposed to apply for that status before crossing the border.

      • sanderjd

        today at 2:18 PM

        This gets at another portion of the answer to the "what's your alternative suggestion?" question: I'd suggest Congress pass laws, rather than presidents making stuff up, illegally. This is clearly not a partisan point! Every president in my voting lifetime - Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden - has made up immigration law while Congress sat on its thumbs.

        • roamerz

          today at 2:38 PM

          There have been many laws passed by Congress addressing immigration. It is against law to cross the border without authorization. This particular case exists as a result of not enforcing those laws. Pretty simple.

        • apical_dendrite

          today at 2:55 PM

          I agree with you.

          I think there has to be a reasonable solution that gives legal status to the guy who's been here for 20 years and is making a positive contribution to society, but doesn't allow someone to show up and exploit loopholes to stay forever.

          I think a reasonable compromise would look something like this:

          * Make it much easier for people to get temporary visas for the kinds of jobs where we need migrant workers.

          * Provide a pathway to citizenship for people who have been in this country for a very long time and are contributing to society.

          * Make it very difficult for people to come to the US without a visa - e.g. make people apply for asylum outside of the US. Stop issuing temporary protected status to huge blocks of migrants.

          Unfortunately, political polarization has basically made it impossible for Congress to solve real problems.

        • pclmulqdq

          today at 2:19 PM

          Exactly. People forget, but the first selective enforcement edict (on illegal immigration) came from HW Bush.

      • apical_dendrite

        today at 2:25 PM

        Sure, the point is that the poster I was responding to said that the only way to avoid putting US citizen minor children in a position where they have to either leave the country, or stay in the country without their parents, is to effectively grant citizenship to the parents. My point is that that's a false choice, it would be possible to grant the parents a temporary, conditional status that's based on having minor US-citizen children. It's not an ideal solution, but it protects the constitutional rights of US-citizen minor children without granting citizenship to the parents.

        • sashank_1509

          today at 3:00 PM

          How is that any different from granting parents citizenship. In some sense you presume birthright citizenship doesn’t make sense. Let us say an immigrant illegally comes into the country and becomes a robber. He in fact, just mugs people on the street. Clearly he’s a net negative, someone you want to deport. Now he has a child. Now by virtue of him having a child, we can no longer deport him, because then we make the child who’s a citizen less parent less. Also assume in this case the mother is some criminal too, to drive the point home.

          The simpler, logically consistent solution would be that the child’s citizenship is only granted if the parents are citizens. (Or at least if parents are not illegal immigrants). Then when you deport the parents, you can legally deport the child too. It still is not a pleasant situation, there is no ideal solution here, except he should have never been let in at all, but once he is, these seem the only choices

• potato3732842

  today at 12:10 PM

  Because it's always been happening. If they didn't already have this sort of abuse practiced they wouldn't be so good at it. The ACLU used to write basically the same exact pieces about the DEA

  Maybe it's 10% or 20% more prevalent or worse, I can't say from my vantage point, but it's a difference of degree, not a categorical one. You read these stories and they read exactly like all the other stories of how all sorts of "criminals" have been abused by the system for years, especially when they have a political blank check to do do. Making it hard for people to get a lawyer, moving too fast for people to appeal anything or get outside scrutiny is exactly how these systems have always behaved when they feel like it.

  Now it's ICE and not DEA or whatever but this is basically the level of abuse with which the authorities have always treated with.

  It's nice that the public is paying attention now, but I have very little hope that it will actually lead to systemic changes.

  • hartator

    today at 1:35 PM

    Yes, nothing much changed law-wise.

    No due process at the borders is a shame both now and before, but hopefully this time there is a willingness to change things. Probably not at the next swing of power.

    • today at 2:41 PM

    • ty6853

      today at 1:36 PM

      My guy will do better with the power they never destroy.

  • hn_throwaway_99

    today at 2:00 PM

    > Because it's always been happening.

    I don't like this kind of response because it's basically kind of an assumption, and you don't really give any evidence for it.

    On one hand, sure, abuses by people in positions of power have always happened, so if you're just making a general argument that enforcement authorities abuse power, I mean yeah, human nature.

    But this article is making some specific points:

    1. Those who were deported were given basically zero access to even talk to a lawyer, and that in at least one case a habeas corpus petition was deliberately avoided by deporting the family at 6 AM before courts opened.

    2. Multiple US minor citizen children were deported.

    So, no, without more evidence, I'm not willing to believe that it's just some minor increase of degree. While yes, I'm sure there have been abuses in the past, the current policy seems hellbent on deporting as many people as possible, due process be damned, and that was not the policy in previous years. I'd also highlight that the current President has said, explicitly, that deporting people without due process is explicitly his goal: https://truthout.org/articles/we-cannot-give-everyone-a-tria...

    In other words, I don't believe this is just an aberrant, abusive exception to the policy. It very much seems like this is the policy now.

    • southernplaces7

      today at 2:45 PM

      >I don't like this kind of response because it's basically kind of an assumption, and you don't really give any evidence for it.

      Whether you like it or not, it has indeed been happening for a long time, and under multiple administrations from either party. If you're interested in the tragedy of it all enough to care, then go look these cases up instead of first accusing someone of lying because they might be smearing a politician that you preferred, and who isn't the current orangutan in the White House.

      Trump's administration is notably and vocally hostile to illegal immigrants, to migrants and I suspect to immigrants in general, but it's mainly still using the tools and practices that have long since been refined by multiple federal agencies whenever opportunities for heavy-handedness presented themselves.

      Because it's Trump's administration, and enough of the major media system is unsupportive of him (still, for now), the matter is gaining more attention. This attention is a good thing, but it shouldn't cloud one from considering the possibility that the bureaucratic defects and authoritarian inertia of federal policing exist beyond the confines of a single type of administration.

      • yuliyp

        today at 2:55 PM

        I guess the question is how frequent it's been. A big part of Trumpism is taking sketchy practices that used to be exceptional and turning them into standard operating procedure, and then claiming "oh look others did this before"

        I mean, look at Hillary Clinton's emails, extorting of lawfirms, big tech, etc, his ignoring of court orders, etc. All are things that you can look at and say "he's not the first to do this" and be completely correct, but completely missing the point that he's doing it waay more aggressively.

    • pclmulqdq

      today at 2:12 PM

      No, this kind of deportation and treatment of prisoners/detainees has been happening forever. This exact behavior has been happening forever, not just a general idea of malfeasance. The current attention on it smacks of politics in a way that is also very inhuman. Remember the "kids in cages" saga?

      • hn_throwaway_99

        today at 2:32 PM

        > No, this kind of deportation and treatment of prisoners/detainees has been happening forever.

        Another assertion without any justification or data.

        > Remember the "kids in cages" saga?

        Yes, of course, and that's the point. There was huge outcry then, and that cruel policy was implemented by the same person responsible for this policy. It doesn't make sense to say "this has been happening forever" and then bring up an example from 2017-2020. We are all well aware of Trump's view on immigration and the rule of law. The whole point is that Trump's policies are a huge aberration from what any other administration, Republican or Democrat, has put forth in the past 50 years.

        • reseasonable

          today at 2:51 PM

          The treatment part has happened for decades, Las Hieleras is one of many examples. But the deporting citizens part hasn’t happened for about 70 years since Operation Wetback which was nearly an identical playbook of today.

          Mass visa revocations happened about 50 years ago since the Iran Hostage Crisis. And a few other events over the 20th century reflect well with today like Japanese internment camps. CECOT out does Gitmo and Angel Island, but damn, we just do a lot of fascist and unjust stuff as a nation.

          The 1880’s resulted in us switching our attention from Native Americans to immigrants and we never really let off the gas on that front.

        • margalabargala

          today at 2:48 PM

          Much as I detest the current administration, the parent comment is correct. While things under both Trump administrations did get mildly worse than they were under his Democrat predecessors, they were plenty bad under Obama and Biden as well.

          You're talking about bringing up examples from 2017-2020; it turns out, plenty of the examples that were brought up back then, were in fact from the Obama years. Example: https://apnews.com/article/a98f26f7c9424b44b7fa927ea1acd4d4

        • giraffe_lady

          today at 2:39 PM

          I almost completely agree with you here. But it is striking that they didn't need to create any new agencies to do this. All the parts of it were in place. They were in place already for trump to use the first time, and they were still in place when he got back into power.

          Due process and transparency on border & immigration interactions has been alarmingly bad for a long time now. Has this never happened before, hidden inside this apparatus? I'm not confident of that. This is certainly different in its scale and ferocity. But I see where they are coming from too.

• Larrikin

  today at 2:34 PM

  >anyone got any juice on why this is happening.

  Their skin color and national origin is offensive to the president and the percentage of the country that voted for him.

• eviks

  today at 11:48 AM

  All of the above?

• HDThoreaun

  today at 1:43 PM

  The suffering is the point. The current administration thinks that by publicly treating anyone vaguely foreign horribly they will be able to end the allure illegal immigration. I guess the dirty secret is that this sort of stuff has been happening, the difference is that now the government wants everyone to know about it

• ohgr

  today at 9:35 AM

  As my wise but now throughly dead German grandmother said:

  ”Do you think the nazis appeared out of thin air? No they were everywhere just waiting for someone to enable them with a label and an ideology.”

  I suspect something analogous is happening here and it’s similarly not pretty. Hopefully it’ll get nipped in the bud quickly.

  My fellow citizens scare me more than the government does.

  • surgical_fire

    today at 9:41 AM

    The interesting thing about this parallel, is that the "final solution" in Germany was final because it was not the original solution.

    Originally they wanted to, well, deport the undesirables to some far off country, initially to Madagascar if memory serves.

    Managing mass incarceration and deportation is a difficult task however, and these people (both then and now) are not exactly competent at anything beyond bravado.

    Watching this unfolding from afar is interesting, because I can do so with some healthy detachment. If I lived across the pond I would be pretty desperate right now.

    • southernplaces7

      today at 2:58 PM

      >Managing mass incarceration and deportation is a difficult task however, and these people (both then and now) are not exactly competent at anything beyond bravado.

      The holocaust also required mass incarceration and deportation, except that the huge undertaking of deportation was towards death camps in occupied territories instead of some foreign land. On the first point above, I caution against thinking that it would be much easier; it wasn't really, they just decided that they wanted to kill the people they considered undesirable after all.

      On the second point, it's worth noting that the efforts at expulsion partly failed because many other countries, despite knowing of the brutal repression being suffered by the jews (and others but the jews in particular) decided to stonewall most avenues of exit from Nazi domains. Deportation would have still been terrible, but at least it would have put millions of eventual victims outside the reach of gas chambers and death squads. Such as it was, a sort of tacit complicity of indifference didn't allow that to happen, by others who weren't even necessarily supporters of the Nazis.

      In either case, be careful about calling evil people practicing evil ends incompetent. In so many ways they were very competent at far more than simple bravado, and underestimating the capabilities of barbaric monsters is always dangerous for future lessons.

    • afpx

      today at 2:06 PM

      Unfortunately, if this follows history, the safest thing to do is to not do anything, blend in, and wait for external help. Afaik, only a handful of Germans who resisted survived. But, I don’t see any help for us coming anytime soon.

      • giraffe_lady

        today at 2:29 PM

        Then honor demands that we die. I think there are still other outcomes possible but if that's how it is that's how it is.

        • afpx

          today at 2:40 PM

          Yeah, there are some possibilities. For example, if a strong resistance leader emerged. But, are there any good candidates for that role? I can't think of any.

          My irrational hope is that we live in a teleological universe where WW2 happened only to prevent WW3.

          But if I put aside my cognitive dissonance, near-term wide-spread conflict is statistically inevitable.

          • giraffe_lady

            today at 2:46 PM

            Things like this are stopped by movements, not individual heroes. There are almost certainly organizations in your area already working against this. No one is coming to save us. But if anyone does it is the people who were already trying to, bolstered by people like you who see it now. Get in there.

            • afpx

              today at 2:54 PM

              I appreciate the wishful thinking, but it's not going to work without a strong leader. Humans just don't work like that. Without a leader, we'll get 'Occupy Wall Street' level effectiveness with worse consequences.

      • ohgr

        today at 2:10 PM

        I suspect it won’t come. The US embedded itself in everyone else’s business and is now withdrawing so we all have our own problems to deal with.

    • xedrac

      today at 1:37 PM

      [flagged]

      • codewench

        today at 1:43 PM

        Seeing as how this article is talking about the deportation of US citizens, I'm going to question what exactly you mean by "here illegally".

        Expanding the argument: I've just decided that you are illegally, and will thus be deported. As there is no due process, my word is law, have fun wherever you end up I literally do not care.

        Does that seem fair? And before arguing "well this wouldn't happen, I'm not here illegally", again, this is an article about the deportation of US citizens. Children no less.

        • rdtsc

          today at 2:00 PM

          > US citizens. Children no less.

          But their parents aren’t. Parents can be deported. So let’s imagine they did that. We’d have an article how cruel they stole / kidnapped a child from their parents. Would that be better?

          Having a child doesn’t automatically provide a legal cover for staying and not getting deported. Maybe that’s a risk the parents didn’t know about?

          • rsfern

            today at 2:43 PM

            No, that is a false dilemma. the right (and constitutional) thing to do is give all these people the due process and access to legal representation that they are entitled to, and work out a legal solution to all these conflicting concerns.

            read the habeas petition for VMS (the two year old). The child has a US citizen relative and the father seems to have transferred provisional rights of custody to them.

            PDF: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...

          • shakna

            today at 2:28 PM

            That sounds like something where due process is supposed to come into play. The best of a series of bad alternatives are worked out in a steady manner by a court system, rather than a hopped up racist at the border bragging about the president being in their corner.

          • NemoNobody

            today at 2:14 PM

            I'm all right with changing that rule - anchor babies means we get two people and one them is brand new. Considering people are the most valuable resource, I think we should take all the potential anchors possible - let's give both parents citizenship automatically if they are parents of a citizen.

            Let's fast track Aunts and Uncles too - maybe we can get the whole family.

            • rdtsc

              today at 2:43 PM

              > let's give both parents citizenship automatically if they are parents of a citizen.

              Yeah that might work. Wonder if there is any legislative effort on that front. I guess with the current congress it won't happen, so perhaps nobody is trying.

          • firesteelrain

            today at 2:22 PM

            Parents are not stupid. The parents knew and chose to take their chances.

          • heromal

            today at 2:16 PM

            What's the point in arguing about what-ifs? The children were deported. In real life. There's no need for hypothetical scenarios, focus on the actual point of the article and thread.

            • rdtsc

              today at 2:41 PM

              > The children were deported. In real life.

              I am not sure what you're arguing for? Take the children away in real life and hand off to a random foster family. Sometimes they can stay with aunts or uncles. Sometimes there are no aunts or uncles.

              > There's no need for hypothetical scenarios, focus on the actual point of the article and thread.

              Ok, so what should we discuss about the article? To help the conversation move along it's easier to say "here is what I think" as opposed to tell someone "don't think or say that!" and leave it a that.

            • miltonlost

              today at 2:33 PM

              > What's the point in arguing about what-ifs? The children were deported.

              Anyone arguing in what-ifs agrees with the deportation but can't be that blatantly racist on here. Ignoring this specific case allows them to muddy the waters. Anyone playing Devil's Advocate consistently are usually part of the devil's party.

        • today at 1:52 PM

      • sriram_malhar

        today at 2:04 PM

        How do you know they are "illegally" shielding people? Was there any kind of process to figure this out?

        Also, a few days back, you made the same point and someone furnished you links where legal migrants are being caught in a net. This is not an argument in good faith.

      • kashunstva

        today at 1:50 PM

        > When Hillary called half the nation "deplorables", that was closer to Hitler rhetoric than anything I've heard out of this administration.

        Technically Secretary Clinton called half of her opponent’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” So 0.25 of the voting population at most.

        But if that sounds worse than anything uttered by this administration, you’re not listening closely. I’m Canadian and we’ve been called “one of the nastiest countries.”

      • surgical_fire

        today at 2:08 PM

        > We're not deporting "undesirables", just those who flooded in here illegally.

        Ironically you say that in the comments section of a US citizen being held prior to deportation. Maybe those pesky children are flooding in there illegally?

        > if we didn't have people trying to illegally shield them from ICE.

        If only those annoying people weren't trying to hide Jews from the SS back in the day eh?

        > Equating that to Nazi Germany is disingenuous and completely off the mark.

        By all means, proceed. I am watching from afar with amusement as the US descends into banana Republic status with a sprinkle of old school European fascism now that the ICE is basically acting like Stasi or Gestapo from years past.

        I wonder what you would consider to be enough for the comparison to not be disingenuous anymore. Perhaps when the ovens are burning in some Central American death camp.

      • UncleMeat

        today at 2:23 PM

        Why then are people with legal visas being detained or having their visas revoked if it is just those who "flooded here illegally" under threat?

        Clinton said that many Trump voters were deplorables. Trump said that many immigrants are not human. Now I know which sounds more like the Nazis to me.

        • AnimalMuppet

          today at 2:34 PM

          > Trump said that many immigrants are not human.

          I am very much not a Trump fan, but I need to see a source for that claim.

      • macintux

        today at 1:47 PM

        Really? Immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” is straight from Hitler’s playbook, and it definitely wasn’t a Clinton who said that.

        • today at 2:01 PM

      • acdha

        today at 2:16 PM

        > When Hillary called half the nation "deplorables", that was closer to Hitler rhetoric than anything I've heard out of this administration.

        Here’s Trump straight-up uding white nationalist rhetoric:

        > Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.

        (https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis-post/watch-the-nationa...)

        Now, it’s telling that you’re pretending not to have heard your guy say things like that while his administration is sending people to concentration camps without due process but are still upset about something from a decade ago which you are misrepresenting.

        Here’s the full quote, which is notable because she identified the specific behaviors she considered deplorable AND explicitly called for sympathy for the large group of people who are motivated by problems in their lives rather than bigotry. Also note that she’s talking about half of the third of the country which votes for him.

        > You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

        > But the "other" basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and – as well as, you know, New York and California – but that "other" basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but – he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCHJVE9trSM

        That makes quite the contrast where he looks worse the more of his speech you read while her speech looks better in context and makes it clear that while he hates people based on who they are, she reserved judgement based on what they do.

      • krapp

        today at 2:01 PM

        >When Hillary called half the nation "deplorables", that was closer to Hitler rhetoric than anything I've heard out of this administration.

        Lol. That was three campaigns ago, and she was correct, and you guys are still whining about it like a bunch of snowflakes. Let it go. Hillary Clinton can't hurt you anymore.

    • watwut

      today at 11:02 AM

      The end goal was world domination, as in owning whole world. So, they would eventually come to Madagascar too.

      Majority of Jews killed in Hocaust were not Germans. They were from conquered countries.

      So, while there was some Madagascar plans floating and while they tried to deport as many German Jews (majority of who were atheists, considered themselves Germans etc) in first stages, they were aware there is going to be showdown later on anyway.

• miltonlost

  today at 2:30 PM

  > anyone got any juice on why this is happening.

  Because Trump is an abject racist with a white nationalist policy who ran on deporting what he finds to be undesirable. It's not hard.

• elmerfud

  today at 9:46 AM

  Your last statement is correct. They are just emboldened by the current political environment. Any law enforcement has a problem where all they see is criminals all day everyday, now we know they aren't always criminals, but that's their view point. There should be sufficient checks and balances to ensure that due process is still upheld. What we're seeing now is the lack of checks because law enforcement feels they will never be held accountable for violating due process. This, while likely not a direct order of the president, it is an environment that his rhetoric has fostered. Even in the cases where the supreme court has said, unanimously, that people have been deported improperly this environment causes those in positions to correct it to ignore the courts.

  I support the general idea of expedited deportation of those here illegally, those without valid documents to be here, I don't automatically have a problem if there is greater restrictions on entering or issuing new visas, but I have a major problem with violating due process and these kind of mistakes that's are a result of lack of due diligence.

  The courts need to get more heavily involved here. It's easy to blame the president but short of some directive telling people to violate the law the blame is misdirected (until it's election time). The blame needs to be on those individuals doing this thing or seeing it and ignoring it. This is where the courts need to totally strip away default qualified immunity, especially for immigration officers. Because qualified immunity allows them to just say they were following orders without them having to evaluate if what they are doing is legal or not.

  I believe if qualified immunity was gone a lot of this nonsense would stop. They would make sure that anyone who was deported was meant to be deported.

  I have a friend who is here legally awaiting an asylum hearing, been waiting for 5 years. They were stopped by police for a valid reason and, from what was described the police had probable cause, but the charge itself is very minor. Because she's documented waiting asylum they contacted immigration, for no reason. There was no probable cause to think she was in violation of her immigration status, but they still contacted them and they requested she be held. So now she detained and there's probable cause to do so but it's immigration so they can.

  This is where no qualified immunity would make these officers think twice. They know they have no probable cause to continue to hold her beyond the initial charge. Without qualified immunity they would understand that continuing to hold someone after a judge has allowed their release means that they would lose their house their life their future. So I really think we need to end to qualified immunity across the board. Have the people who are supposed to protect us and be responsible for their actions.

The purpose of this evil is to spread fear, provoke a response and get publicity, push and prod the system for weakness/loyalty, condition their supporters to accept these atrocities as normal and necessary, and to communicate the blueprint by example, as it gets repeatedly acted out in public. The message is this is how we're operating, so if anything looks weird to you, trust the plan because we're on the same team (wink wink). I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing domestic terrorism and public lawlessness go unpunished if it's directed towards immigrants, journalists, judges, and other 'enemies'.

• sophacles

  today at 2:10 PM

  It's already started. Remember all those pardons for the Jan 6 terrorists?

• today at 2:18 PM

"Deports" is wrong word for removing a citizen. "Expels" would be more appropriate.

• bryant

  today at 1:28 PM

  > "Deports" is wrong word for removing a citizen. "Expels" would be more appropriate.

  While this is true, the use of what's technically the wrong word highlights that the wrong action is being applied.

  The action is a deportation. The targets are people who must/shall not ever be deported. Therefore the headline immediately gets attention for concisely describing a violation.

  • OutOfHere

    today at 1:45 PM

    I think what happened here is that the parents were here illegally. The children just had to accompany the parents. I find it quite possible that the children will be allowed back in once they no longer have to depend on their parents.

    • davorak

      today at 2:09 PM

      The reports of no due process or little to no due process for citizens[1], that is the main point to my understanding. Due process for [1] would at least include making sure the proper documentation was in order so they could easily return in the future, making sure any health care needs could be meet in Honduras or any other critical needs, (not all the details are in but) the father in [1] wanted the child to stay in the US, but they were deported anyway.

      I am not seeing all the details I want, but given the reports of 4 year olds having to defend themselves without representation it is easy to believe these reports of no or little due process for child citizens.

      [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/us-citizen-deportat...

    • sanderjd

      today at 2:24 PM

      What does this "had to" mean? Was it "forced to" or was it "chose to"? Seems like the former.

    • macinjosh

      today at 2:14 PM

      You are correct. People watch too much TV and think this is out of the ordinary. If the children were kept here we'd be weeping about kids being separated from their parents.

      • acdha

        today at 2:25 PM

        This just dishonest. In the past, the rule of law applied. The law is not perfect or kind, but there was a process where people could defend themselves and egregious violations of U.S. law like this would be avoided. It wouldn’t be the child being “separated from their parents”, it would be the family choosing to go together OR the family choosing to have their child live with relatives.

        The case we heard about yesterday illustrates the difference. A judge Trump appointed raised the alarm not just because due process is being violated but because a two year old’s father was pleading with the court to let his daughter live with him. Prior to this administration, nobody would have blinked an eye at a U.S. citizen switching custody to a U.S. citizen parent, and it’d save the government a lot of money to let that happen.

        https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/us-citizen-deportat...

  • sanderjd

    today at 2:23 PM

    No, deporting means sending someone back to their country of origin. You can't "deport" someone from their country of origin to some other country.

• estebarb

  today at 1:26 PM

  There are already words for that: banished, disappeared, forced exiled, concentration camp victim... just reuse terms already used to describe crimes done by nazis and other fascist goverments.

• AStonesThrow

  today at 1:53 PM

  > "Deports" is wrong word for removing a citizen.

  In fact I looked this up recently, and “deportation” has historically been used in the sense of “dispossession”, i.e. expelling citizens. For example the notorious deportation of defeated Jews to Babylon.

  But nowadays that “deportation” so often connotes “repatriation” we’ll need to make those distinctions. And people seem to be completely unaware: we’re in a Year of Ordinary Jubilee!

theyve started arresting judges too, rip.

• llm_nerd

  today at 1:56 PM

  Bondi -- an outrageously partisan hack who is destroying the DOJ -- reached peak irony when she stated that "no one is above the law" in talking about that case.

  Donald Trump and his administration are on an absolute crime spree. Insider trading, launching shit-coins and engaging in self-dealing, completely disregarding both the constitution and the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court.

  The US is currently a lawless banana republic with the dumbest autocrat in history. That's the one saving grace: This herd of absolute imbeciles are so catastrophically stupid -- a cluster of plastic-faced Fox news clowns -- that they are bound to destroy everything so completely that they are overthrown out of necessity. Will the US survive this? Given that it voted for this rapist, charity-stealing moron twice, hopefully not. The fractured nations that come out of this hopefully have a better path.

  • enlightenedfool

    today at 2:55 PM

    Including crypto scams it looks no different from previous administration with a disabled president

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/3081/

The value of citizenship is being eroded each year, with governments increasingly keen to strip people of citizenship [0].

First they came for the terrorists, then they came for the dual citizenship lesser criminals.

We're getting a glimpse of who's next. The Dutch government wanted to strip citizenship from people convicted of a crime with an "antisemitic element"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/26/how-idea-of-st...

Of course the administration was lying when it said they would only target “criminals”.

Of course it’s impossible to know who “really” is a critical mastermind. (Comic book lives) /s

Everyone should pay attention and amplify these stories of targeted non-criminal families, because the “radical left” is next. Joking/not-Joking

Here’s another family in Washington state,

“A high schooler stays back as his family, separated by deportation, returns to Guatemala”

APRIL 26, 2025 WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/26/nx-s1-5330896/a-high-schooler...

Why the deliberate atrocities?

I read an article that starts with this proposition [1]

> The real question, however, is not how America lost its way. We know the mechanics of it. It lost its way in large measure because Donald Trump, a Pied Piper of malice, led it astray, though one can’t lay all of that or even most of it on Trump. The American people, nearly half of those who voted, in their infinite wisdom empowered Trump to do so. They were looking for a Trump, yearning for a Trump, to do so.

> They wanted a Trump to destroy the nation. They hoped he would destroy the nation both by sowing chaos and discord and by supervising a demolition of our institutions and values. So the real question we should be asking is why so many of our fellow Americans desired this, and what deep proclivities Trump drew upon to prompt the nation, at least a good part of it, to self-immolate. What does Trump give them?

Having read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as a young person, this is reminiscent of a fascist playbook.

Except that it seems that social media are in effect creating a culture of resentment, projection of weakness and failure onto others and driving it for profit with unfiltered echo chambers.

The cause and effect seems to be playing to a vengeful base in order to keep legislators in line until their branch and the judicial branch are rendered impotent.

Exploring the parallels with Nazi Germany, the amassing of data was paramount.

> DOGE is building a master database for immigration enforcement, sources say [2]

Further,

> TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TEXTED COLLEGE PROFESSORS’ PERSONAL PHONES TO ASK IF THEY’RE JEWISH [3]

> The school later told staff it had provided the Trump administration with personal contact information for faculty members.

> The messages, sent to most Barnard professors’ personal cellphones, asked them to complete a voluntary survey about their employment.

> “Please select all that apply,” said the second question in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, survey.

> The choices followed: (including) “I am Jewish”; “I am Israeli”; “I have shared Jewish/Israeli ancestry”; “I practice Judaism”; and “Other.”

Data?

IBM provided Germany with tabulating equipment to manage "undesirables" [4] [5]

The notion of cultural supremacy resonates with some in Silicon Valley, land of big and targeted data.

'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook [6]

Silicon Valley Whistleblowers Warn Elon Musk 'Hijacking' Republicans to Control Entire US Government [7]

PDF of their letter. [8] 630K

[1] https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/the-agonizing-work-of-art-tha...

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-building-master-database-imm...

[3] https://theintercept.com/2025/04/23/trump-eeoc-barnard-colum...

[4] https://allthatsinteresting.com/ibm-nazis-ww2/3

[5] https://allthatsinteresting.com/ibm-nazis-ww2

[6] https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-d...

[7] https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/07/silicon-valley-whistleblo...

[8] https://america2.news/content/files/2025/02/Musk-NRx-Memo-Fe...

• stevenwoo

  today at 2:28 PM

  When they separate undocumented children from their families in the first Trump term and did not bother to leave a paper trail so that these families could be reunited so it would take years if ever for these children to be returned to their parents, not one person in the entire chain of command was punished for it. When there are zero consequences for doing wrong, we should not be surprised the wrong doing continues. Same with Bush Jr using private servers to hide his administration's emails - now every GOP administration is going to use this tactic with whatever technology permits it like Signal is being used to bypass laws for record keeping today because no one holds them to account and no one will.

  • k310

    today at 2:36 PM

    Crimes and atrocities will continue to be committed as long as there are no consequences for them. Period.

[flagged]

• viraptor

  today at 1:30 PM

  Downvoted/flagged trolling. Of course people can think of a better right thing to do in this case.

  • ty6853

    today at 1:35 PM

    I honestly cannot. There is almost nothing worse than losing your kids. It might be worse than death. The humane solution is to allow a deported parent to keep them.

    • viraptor

      today at 1:51 PM

      Ok, let's try some empathy and humane thinking: you don't throw out either of them in that case.

      • ty6853

        today at 2:48 PM

        So basically create a huge incentive to drag very sick kids through the darien gap and cartel land with no real plan for foid and housing of their kids? If i did 1% of that someone would call cps to take my kids.

• today at 1:24 PM

[flagged]

• padjo

  today at 2:20 PM

  Kinda mind boggling to me that you would ask chatgpt and then post the answer as if that adds something to the discussion.

  • krosaen

    today at 2:25 PM

    I think it's important to know exactly what happens in these cases to not be vulnerable to counterarguments. It seems in addition to the cruelty of selectively enforcing laws, it is clearly illegal - so we can fight these actions in court.

    • padjo

      today at 2:30 PM

      AI is not a reliable source for legal matters. There are so many examples of it making up precedent it’s basically a meme at this point. Posting its response is not helpful. I’d have thought hacker news contributors would understand that.

      • krosaen

        today at 2:33 PM

        If what chatgpt said is incorrect, I would love to know. Are you not interested in the legal details of these cases so we know what can be fought under current law and not? The cruelty of the actions should be judged harshly, and in the longer run we need to reform immigration law so they are not possible, but knowing what can currently be fought legally matters to me.

        • padjo

          today at 2:39 PM

          Aside from whether it is correct in this particular case or not, it’s just bizarre to me that you would post what AI told you. It’s like you’re a booster for dead internet theory. So in addition to half the internet consisting of AIs arguing with each other, we now have to deal with people telling us what AI said.

        • today at 2:48 PM

        • jsheard

          today at 2:42 PM

          > If what chatgpt said is incorrect, I would love to know.

          Fact checking LLM copypasta takes orders of magnitude more effort than producing it. How about you do the homework rather than making it everyone else's problem.

• pclmulqdq

  today at 2:02 PM

  From the article, we don't really know what happened to the children in terms of process. All we know is that the parents were not allowed to communicate.

• gyudin

  today at 2:07 PM

  Usually at least one of parents is allowed to legally stay to take care of a kid.

  • neilk

    today at 2:28 PM

    I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know this is completely wrong.

    There is a conspiracy theory that “anchor babies” will help undocumented parents avoid deportation from the US.

    As far as I can tell, the usual thing that happens when undocumented parents of a US citizen are deported is that they have to give the child to a citizen relative to raise, or they take the child with them.

    It seems to be extremely rare, though “prosecutorial discretion” can allow for a parent to remain in the US. There is no guarantee; an undocumented parent can and is often deported later, sometimes for minor crimes. I couldn’t find any stats about how often this happens but immigration consultants stress to their clients that they can’t rely on it.

    If the undocumented parents have been in the country for 10 years they can apply for relief for deportation but that is capped at 4,000 cases annually. If the child remains in the US until they become an adult, and can plausibly sponsor a relative, then they can also apply to reunify with their parent. The deported parent may have to spend a minimum of a decade outside the US.

• cagenut

  today at 1:54 PM

  it is cruel. the cruelty is the point.

What's the problem? They came here illegally in the first place, why should they be spared the consequences just because they have kids? Nemo auditur propriam turpitudinem allegans.

If you allow people to break the law as long as they have children, you create an incentive for felons and criminals to have kids. Not a good thing.

• anikan_vader

  today at 2:52 PM

  Due Process is being denied to US citizens, who are being removed from the country without the opportunity for them or their parents to consult an attorney.

• healsdata

  today at 2:50 PM

  You just advocated for deporting U.S. Citizens without trial simply because they're related to someone who committed a misdemeanor.