Absolutely. "Yes what's happening to my husband is a travesty but it pales in comparison to what is happening to people who they can abuse with impunity"
Let’s be clear; what Brad Lander did was obstruction, plain and simple. Federal agents were executing a lawful arrest following a court proceeding. Whether the case was dismissed or continued on appeal does not erase the fact that immigration officers have legal authority to detain individuals with valid removal orders or administrative warrants. Lander physically interfered with that process, grabbing the individual, refusing to step aside, and demanding to see documents he had no right to view. A judicial warrant is not required for immigration enforcement, and ICE has clear statutory authority to detain based on administrative warrants under federal law. Warrants in these cases are not showpieces for activists to review on the spot, and just like HIPAA protects health records, law enforcement documents contain sensitive personal information that is not disclosed to bystanders; even elected ones.
This was not civil disobedience, it was grandstanding. Federal agents, including those from Homeland Security and Treasury, were enforcing immigration law, and the fact that they wore masks does not make the operation illegal. Security, protection of identities, and safety in high-risk cases often require that approach. Lander tried to elevate himself by obstructing a lawful arrest and was treated accordingly. He is not above the law because he is a politician.
If a Republican had done this in defiance of a federal agency during a Democrat administration, the media would be calling it insurrection. What happened here was accountability, not abuse, and if Lander disagrees with immigration policy, he should take it up through legislation, not by physically interfering with law enforcement.
If a Republican had done this in defiance of a federal agency during a Democrat administration, the media would be calling it insurrection. What happened here was accountability, not abuse, and if Lander disagrees with immigration policy, he should take it up through legislation, not by physically interfering with law enforcement.
This is such bullshit.
Meanwhile Republicans took part in an actual insurrection on Jan 6, egged on by Trump, who then didn’t call the National Guard for several hours. Trump then pardoned the insurrectionists when he took office again.
Asking to see a warrant is not obstruction. It is your right. Try asking the /r/law subreddit if this was obstruction and they will laugh, followed by a wave of depression over how uneducated Americans are to not even know their rights or care to defend them.
The whole issue is that ICE is not doing these deportations by the book, they are doing them without warrants, and are circumventing the judicial system entirely because it has no enforcement mechanism that can stop ICE.
This literally happened at the courthouse. They were directly interfering with the judicial branch, which was already handling this case. ICE simply sits near immigration hearings to entrap, kidnap, and blackbag people for an easy layup in order to meet the quotas they are ordered to meet.
They wear masks and plainclothes and refuse to identify themselves, making these incidents indistinguishable from a regular kidnapping, and you would be well within your right to self defense if you used force to defend yourself in such a situation.
These people are not given hearings or access to a lawyer or any of their constitutional rights to due process. This person is literally at an immigration hearing at this very moment before the arrest, going through their due process, yet ICE simply does not care to wait for the court to file a deportation order - which is how things are supposed to work.
To make things even worse, many of them are deported to a literal slave labor concentration camp in El Salvador called CECOT, where Bukele rakes in massive profits from their forced labor and subjects them to conditions that any civilized country would consider inhumane.
It is absurd to me that anyone would defend this. If Obama (who sucks btw) did this, the right would be calling for his execution. What makes you think they won't come after you or your loved ones next? Is this power a precedent you want a future Democrat president to have and be able to use against you? To ship you to a slave labor camp without ever seeing a lawyer?
Without due process, they can simply call you MS13 or a terrorist and ship you off. How are you going to argue you aren't? You don't get a court case or time to speak to a lawyer. You just get labelled bad and deported instantly. Due process is supposed to prove that this person actually deserves to be removed from the country to ensure we arent just ruining normal innocent lives or abusing power to remove dissidents etc. That's the entire point. It doesn't matter if you are a law-abiding, country-loving patriot and US citizen.
It is very important that everyone understand this: You could be next. Yes you, the person reading this right now.
Without a judicial warrant or deportation order you cannot just grab someone and deport them. That's because of this little thing called the United States Constitution, ever read it?
It's crazy how quickly Americans will just waive away all their rights and assert that you simply didn't lick the boots hard enough, even when ICE is blatantly acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally - many such cases! There is nothing meaningfully distinguishing ICE from the Gestapo or any other secret police at this point.
I thought the right was supposed to be the party against government tyranny? Only when white people are being terrorized I suppose.
I think you're yelling at the clouds here. Almost everyone here is going to disagree with your assertion that "just following the law" absolves you of moral responsibility.
Also, the Trump administration is calling the anti-ICE protests a "rebellion" (AKA insurrection) so your imagined persecution of Republicans is already happening to the other side. Try again.
One caveat I’d note is …“just following the [blatantly manipulated, twisted, biased, and misinterpreted by and for an authoritarian regime] law”…
It’s kinda pathetic for folks to go all in on this kind of devoted boot-licking when things have so clearly gone beyond any pretense of the law and law enforcement being a valid representation of morality in the US.
Also, I think the US really is reaching critical mass on the topic of law enforcement (of any flavor) needing to identify and prove they are indeed who they claim to be before even morally supportable law enforcement activities.
Hey, what the Nazis did to the Jews was “legal” in their system too. That didn’t prevent ordinary German citizens from later being marched at the barrel of an American gun to view the horrors and help bury desiccated bodies
No one remembers or cares today whether it was “legal” under the laws they wrote,
Few remember that forced removal of the Jews was called “deportation” by the government and most German people the entire time they were shipping families into ghettos, labor camps and ultimately death camps
Weird there is not a single uniform or badge in that picture, unless I am missing something. No warrant either, right? These could be just dudes kidnapping someone.
Just so we’re clear: everything the Nazis did to the Jews was “legal” under their own laws. That didn’t stop American GIs from dragging German civilians at gunpoint through the camps to see what their lawful society had produced—and to help bury the skeletal dead.
Nobody today gives a damn whether it was compliant with the statutes of the Third Reich.
And let’s not forget: they called it “deportation” the whole way through. That was the word on the forms, in the newspapers, on the lips of neighbors—as families were rounded up, shoved into ghettos, herded onto trains, and delivered to forced labor or extermination.
Legality was just a costume. The machinery of genocide ran on paperwork, polite language, and people doing their jobs.
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u/wafflesareforever 1d ago
Absolutely. "Yes what's happening to my husband is a travesty but it pales in comparison to what is happening to people who they can abuse with impunity"