Live data from Hacker News

FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

apnews.com

561–570 of 1001 posts

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#561
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you organize one?

It is illegal in all 50 states to organize a militia.

It is legal in all 50 states to organize a militia, it is illegal in all 50 states to do certain things as a militia including (the exact rules vary by state) things like participating in civil disorder, planning to participate in civil disorder, training for sabotage or guerilla warfare, etc.

Of course, since the purpose being suggested here is literally the purported urgent need to engage in armed rebellion against federal authorities, the concern that organizing a militia for that purpose would be constrained by merely "organizing a militia" being illegal is a bit odd. Waging war against the federal government, or conspiring to do so, is--even if one argues that it is morally justified by the government violating its Constitutional constraints--both clearly illegal and likely to be subject to the absolute maximum sanction. The legality of organizing a militia in general hardly makes a difference, either to the legal or practical risk anyone undertaking such a venture would face.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#562

Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK callin…

There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability. Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another…

I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#563

Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK callin…

This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens. Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all c…

  > if you consider illegal immigrants as people
Actually, I disagree[0].

The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.

  Conditioned that you have not determined someone is an illegal immigrant: 
  _______What do you want to happen here? _________________
Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf

  if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
     deport(person, police)
  } else if (person.citizenStatus == illegal) {
     // What do you want to happen?
     // deport(person) returns error. There is no police to deport them
  } else if (person.citizenStatus == legal) {
     fullRights(person)
  } else if (person.citizenStatus == unknown {
    // Also a necessary question to answer
    // Do you want police randomly checking every person? That's expensive and a similar event helped create America as well as a very different Germany
  } else {
    // raise error, we shouldn't be here?
  }
Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money.

EDIT:

  > the bill of rights only applies to citizens
Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case....

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#564

Would it not be better to have a peaceful, civil, lawful, separation of the two different Americas than for us to rigidly cling to an idea of a "United" States that no longer represents reality? We're clearly living in two different realities already, brought about the partisan media (on both sides) willfully and deliberately misrepresenting reality to serve the interests of their shadowy trillion-dollar corporate co…

There aren't just two choices. My neighbor on one side voted for Trump, the one down the street voted for Harris, and I voted for Oliver.

The problem is the concentration of federal power generally and executive power specifically in this administration. Decrease the size and scope of government, particularly at the national level, and there's a lot less to argue about.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah my mistake, regardless calling people here illegally criminals is disingenuous given the potential offense committed.

Is your argument really "misdemeanors aren't crimes"? Imagine, "someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to you or with criminal negligence the person causes bodily injury to you by means of a deadly weapon". Would you not consider yourself the victim of a crime in that case? Because that's just third degree assault - a misdemeanor(at least, here in Colorado)

Smoking a joint can be misdemeanor. Many people don't think it should be criminal at all. It really depends on who passes and enforces said laws. Similar to smoking a joint, crossing a border illegally is a victimless infraction. Depending on who you ask, it's not a big deal and possibly even a positive for the US, or it's the end of America, when it's the POTUS posting on his social media account.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#566
post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11 million undocumented people in the United States, or about 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11 million people without documentation so they can be exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper health care and labor rights.

Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment on the people being taken advantage of, and not the employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure that the business owner who is exploiting any number of workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented person whose only crime was not having the proper paperwork?

I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor rights exist in this country, and this is simply impossible in an environment in which employers are free to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I think both political parties in the US are terrible, and all of this debate serves the interests of the employers that benefit from this situation.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange set of ideas presented in such a small sentence fragment. * Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns. * Guns are very easy to obtain, the "arms race" is a trip to the local sporting goods store. Sure, the weapon may not be super tacti-cool with a bunch of skulls and shit, but I'm pretty sure that even without all the virtue signalling decals…

> They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns. Criminals - you mean like illegal immigrants and those who aid and abet them?

I mean criminals: people convicted of a crime for which one of the punishments is revocation of gun ownership rights.

The important word here is convicted. As we were all taught in elementary school - there is a process required by the constitution in which a person goes to a special meeting (called a trial) where a whole bunch of people examine evidence and ask a lot of questions about that evidence to determine if a person is a criminal. If the decisions is they are a criminal, then they have been convicted. HTH!

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop a…

Sure, we should also reform immigration and make the legal pathways better and more accessible to attract citizens but cities have no ability to control that, while they can impact some things locally, so it's different groups of people doing both of these?

To be honest, for me personally having cities that have that much power is weird to me. It should be something at the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if this is not monkey patching, why not create a full sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me.

We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to...

Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#569

Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK callin…

There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability. Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another…

Undocumented immigrants who are charged with murder should not be deported without a trial first. If found guilty they would typically serve their sentence before facing deportation (though perhaps this is different now)

Though I personally don't see the point in making people who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence... taxpayers would then be paying the bill for both their incarceration and their deportation.

But I also think incarceration should primarily be focused on rehabilitation, which it's currently not designed for, so what do I know.

Re: FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

#570

Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK callin…

I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop a…

An aside: “monkey patch” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

More on topic… crimes aren’t all the same, and the willingness of a person to commit one kind of crime doesn’t necessarily mean they are willing to commit another kind of crime.

For example, a large proportion of drivers in the US break the law every time they drive, from speeding to rolling stops, etc. By your standard all of these people are criminals who we can expect to keep reaching for “criminal solutions”. Why shouldn’t we imprison or deport all such people? Or at least take away their driver’s licenses and cars?

Post reply on HN