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Trunkage

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Sure, I can imagine reasons. Like, maybe partisan Democrat deep state agents used the CIA mind control satellites to make thousands of migrants head to the USA in Trump's last year to discredit him in the lead up to election.

This is of course facetious, it's to illustrate a certain emptiness about such an exercise. As an intellectual process, it's arse about face. We form a hypothesis based on evidence. Why are we picking out ideas (like the Democrats send out a "vibe" that increases immigration) to explain data without evidence, whether in this specific case or to explain immigration generally. What is the evidence this "vibe" theory even exists? To what extent it might, why give it priority over established, practical reasons that are well identified?

For any event we can speculate far more reasons why something could have happened than they actual reasons that they did. The obvious danger is not just that this is a deeply flawed intellectual process, it's that this is abused by people as a vehicle to project their biases onto reality. Even worse they then elevate that speculation into assumed fact, and it becomes extraordinarily hard to shift. Of course, in extreme cases, this is what conspiracy theory is.



Whether it plays out badly for the country depends on a wide range of factors, many of which are more likely to be subjective preferences than objective measures. But you're in a democracy: what the people as a whole like or believe in is supposed to be significant. What is good for a party (i.e. that people continue to vote for it) should be an indirect representation of what the people like and believe in. Obviously, plenty of caveats are involved here.



Rate of immigration is not independent of administration: that's a very different claim. I am arguing immigration is affected by practical considerations not vibes, and government policy is definitely a practical consideration which can vary from one administration to the next. I am also assuming here you mean illegal immigration. Although as we can see from Trump's anti-immigration crusade, they may be rather more interlinked than you might think, and illegal immigration has been reduced in part by attacking legal immigration. No-one would argue Trump has not been very strict on immigration. The accusation many would make is too strict.

So, for instance, Trump deleted asylum. I don't doubt that this has had a substantial effect on immigration, both legal and illegal. Obvious questions about deleting asylum are a) is this legal and b) is this humane? I'm sure a lot of economic refugees abuse asylum in the hope they can sneak in, but the reality is that if you delete asylum then you make victims of genuine asylum seekers. I'd note that a major formative event behind the UN convention on refugees from the 50s is all the Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930s that were denied entry when they tried to flee. I should need say no more. A blanket denial of asylum should weigh on the collective national conscience.
All Trump has done is moved a whole bunch of legal immigration into illegal so he can win a race
 

Trunkage

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There are multiple peaks and troughs on that chart, it is not hard to imagine the counterfactual situation where going into 2021 was a temporary peak, at which point it wouldn't look terribly different than previous peaks in 2019, 2016, 2014, and many more if you look back further. If you look at one of the other graphs they posted, one with a broader data set but not the country of origin breakdown, that repeated pattern of peaks at or slightly above 50k in a month goes on for years:
View attachment 14533

The end of 2020 is slightly higher than the average in previous years, but the spring of that year was dramatically lower, so the cyclical pattern was quite disrupted. That increase seemed to be levelled off before the Biden administration, in a way that one predicting based on precedent would expect to be a maximum before a decline. And then, it was not a maximum, because the next 4 years were totally unprecedented.

Lax being a relative measure, I don't think you can dispute that Biden was lax in a sense. Relative to saying "the borders are open, everyone in", he was not lax, that is true. Relative to previous US administrations, I think he was arguably the most lax in about a century. Who would you compare him to and say he was strincter on the border? Certainly no Trump or Obama or Clinton or either Bush. Reagan did amnesty, but that was meant to offset stricter border security measures. Like, Biden was assuredly a divergence in the lax direction, even if not close to the desires of internet lefties.

But I would agree, that laxness is not the cause of that up there ^. It's the perception of laxness that's the issue. Like, the actual laxness didn't kick in until a year or two after his inauguration, he kept many of Trump's harshest policies in place for years, by which point we were already near the peak. And even if he was more lax in policy than his predecessors, it was like 10% more lax, not a enormous amount to justify an enormous growth. The bigger change was the rhetoric and the perception. Consider the Democratic party platform's section on immigration in 2020 (minus some of the repudiation of Trump at the beginning, focusing on what they were promising):
We will start by righting the wrongs of the Trump Administration.

Democrats will rescind President Trump's fabricated "National Emergency," which siphons funding away from our men and women in uniform to construct an unnecessary, wasteful, and ineffective wall on the southern border.

We will immediately terminate the Trump Administration's discriminatory travel and immigration bans that disproportionately impact Muslim, Arab, and African people, and invite those whose visas have been denied under these xenophobic and un-American policies to re-apply to come to the United States. We will support legislation to ensure that no president can enact discriminatory bans ever again.

We will reinstate, expand, and streamline protections for Dreamers and the parents of American citizen children to keep families together in the communities they have long called home.

Democrats believe the United States should be a beacon of hope for those who are suffering violence and injustice, which is why we will protect and expand the existing asylum system and other humanitarian protections. We will reverse Trump Administration policies that prevent victims of gang and domestic violence, as well as LGBTQ+ people who are unsafe in their home countries, from being eligible to apply for asylum. Democrats will end Trump Administration policies that deny protected entry to asylum seekers, put them at great risk, and destabilize our neighbors and the broader region. And we will end prosecution of asylum seekers at the border and policies that force them to apply from "safe third countries," which are far from safe.

Democrats believe that our fight to end systemic and structural racism in our country extends to our immigration system, including the policies at our borders and ports of entry, detention centers, and within immigration law enforcement agencies and their policies and operations. And Democrats will immediately halt enforcement of and rescind the Trump Administration's un-American immigrant wealth test.

Even as we work to reverse the enormous damage caused by the Trump Administration, we are determined to build a 21st century immigration system that embodies our values, expands economic opportunity for all Americans, and enhances our global competitiveness.

Democrats believe it is long past time to provide a roadmap to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers, caregivers, students, and children who are an essential part of our economy and of the fabric of our nation. We will fast-track this process for those workers who have been essential to the pandemic response and recovery efforts, including health care workers, farmworkers, and others. We will also eliminate unfair barriers to naturalization, reduce application backlogs, and make our immigration processes faster, more efficient, and less costly. These reforms will strengthen our communities, our families, our economy, and our country. Democrats oppose President Trump's illegal, chaotic, and reckless changes to the legal immigration system, including decisions to slash family-based immigration as well as H-1B and other visa programs that can help our economy.

Democrats believe family unity should be a guiding principle for our immigration policy. We will prioritize family reunification for children still separated from their families, and we will restore family reunification programs ended by the Trump Administration. We support legislation to treat the spouses and children of green card holders as immediate relatives and end their unfair separation. We will eliminate family-based green card backlogs and reform the system to speed up family-based visas. And we will work with Congress to eliminate immigration barriers, such as the three- and 10-year bars, and remove the 10-year waiting period for waivers to the permanent bars that keep loved ones apart.

We believe we should expand, not reduce, the annual visa cap for victims of human trafficking, including victims of sex trafficking, violence against women and children, and other heinous crimes; ensure that same sex-couples and their children receive equal treatment in the immigration and naturalization systems; reaffirm America's commitment to family-based immigration; and preserve the critical role of diversity preferences in our immigration system. Democrats will ensure that law-abiding individuals with Temporary Protected Status or Deferred Enforced Departure are not sent back to countries where they cannot live safely, and we will work to pave a path to citizenship for those who have been in the country for an extended period of time and built their lives in the United States.

Democrats know that when employers feel free to abuse and bully immigrant workers, all workers suffer. That's why we will hold employers accountable, promote workers' rights, and prioritize the enforcement of labor and employment laws across the economy, including discrimination and sexual harassment protections, wage and hour laws, and health and safety rules. We will prevent employers from taking advantage of immigrant workers by establishing an affirmative process to request deferred action for workers who report labor violations and by supporting the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights and the Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation (POWER) Act.

We will ensure that enforcement mechanisms are humane and consistent with our values and international humanitarian obligations. That's why we will end workplace and community raids. We will protect sensitive locations like our schools, houses of worship, health care facilities, benefits offices, and DMVs from immigration enforcement actions, and prohibit raids in which children and members of vulnerable populations are left behind without their caregivers. We will prohibit enforcement actions that deter access to justice at courthouses and repress freedom of speech and assembly, end programs that force state and local law enforcement to also be responsible for immigration enforcement, and stop targeting men and women who served in uniform and their families. We will reaffirm enforcement officials' ability to engage in the pre-Trump practice of prosecutorial discretion for deserving cases, including when needed to address humanitarian issues or other injustices. We will also prevent enforcement officials from retaliating against individuals for their political speech or activity, or because of their efforts to advocate for individuals' rights.

We believe detention should be a last resort, not the default. Democrats will prioritize investments in more effective and cost-efficient community-based alternatives to detention. We will end for-profit detention centers and ensure that any facility where migrants are being detained is held to the highest standards of care and guarantees their safety and dignity. We will ensure all detention centers provide access to competent interpreters who speak migrants' native languages and dialects. Detention of children should be restricted to the shortest possible time, with their access to education and proper care ensured. We will prioritize alternatives to detention for individuals with special vulnerabilities—those who are known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness, who have disabilities, who are elderly, pregnant, or nursing, who demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm person, identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, gender non-conforming, or intersex, or whose detention is otherwise not in the public interest.

Democrats will implement robust mechanisms for oversight, accountability, and transparency to ensure immigration agencies abide by our values, the U.S. Constitution, and international law.

Democrats believe immigration judges should be able to operate free of inappropriate political influence, and will support steps to make immigration courts more independent. We will demand that leaders of our immigration agencies be Senate-confirmed professionals, and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection personnel abide by our values and professional, evidence-based standards and are held accountable for any inappropriate, unlawful, or inhumane treatment.

A 21st century immigration system that honors our values is an essential prerequisite not just to recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but to strengthening our democracy and guaranteeing America's long-term economic competitiveness. That's why Democrats believe in improving and increasing opportunities for legal, permanent immigration. Our family, humanitarian, and diversity pathways have contributed immeasurably to the vibrancy and productivity of American society and should continue to be the centerpiece of our immigration system. We also support awarding visas for permanent, employment-based immigration in a way that is responsive to labor market needs. We want to attract and keep talent in this country, which is why Democrats will end the Trump Administration's freeze on green cards for new immigrants and instead pursue a meaningful reform agenda.

Democrats support policies and programs to make it easier for qualified immigrants and their families to become full and equal citizens, including increasing funding for culturally appropriate immigrant inclusion and citizenship services, legal support, English classes and bilingual education, workforce development, and adult education.

Finally, Democrats will address the root causes of migration—violence and insecurity, poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and the impacts of climate change. Disciplined American leadership and well-designed assistance programs can help prevent and mitigate the effects of migration crises around the world, from Southeast Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa to Central America. We will support a comprehensive strategy to strengthen security and prosperity in partnership with the people of Central America and the Caribbean and with the support of the international community. And we will renew American diplomacy as our tool of first resort, rebuild our partnerships and alliances, and once again lead the global humanitarian response.
I know that's a long section, but I would encourage reading it, and having a bit of a laugh, since I think we all here can at least agree that they won the election and then definitely didn't do all that. Didn't even try for most of it. But that's the rhetoric, that is what you would see from the outside, a party in power that claims they'll outlaw nearly all immigration enforcement practices, offer a path to citizenship, and get undocumented workers labor protections. Hindsight tells us that isn't what happened, but people can't plan their future with hindsight. And all of these promises were used by human traffickers to advertise their transport into the US. That rhetoric persisted until 2024, when immigration became a serious election issue that was losing Democrats support, and then their 2024 platform instead of all that said "secure the border" like a dozen times and included the sentence "When the system is overwhelmed, the President should have emergency authority to expel migrants who are crossing unlawfully". And wouldn't you know it, that year the numbers started dropping back down rapidly.

I'm sure you will pitch that it is unrelated to either policy or rhetoric, that the 4 year surge was a result of outside causes, but I would point out that not only does that height match the period of particularly welcoming rhetoric, both of Trump's inaugurations coincide with local minimums even lower than the covid lockdowns. In politics, perception has real consequences, and I really think the Trump (and Obama for what it's worth) version is the better option because the perception of our border laws matches the reality. You and I both know that the actual legal distinctions between Biden's administration and those that came before him are relatively small, that of the ~3 million people showing up at the border in those peak years only a very small fraction are still allowed in the US. A ~500% increase in people coming vs a ~50% increase in actual grants of asylum demonstrates a marked disconnect between perception of US immigration and reality, and I think those millions of people were misled, and I think Biden's administration did them a disservice by not being clear about the reality while they were trying to distinguish themselves from Trump.[/spoiler]
Is this graph actually being used as evidence of laxness? (I mean other people, you have a naunced approach.)
 

tstorm823

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Something isn't "clickbait" if it just reports something you don't like.

What Phoenix said was false. That's the difference. Hope this helps.
What Phoenix said was just as true as the fake news you defend on the narrowest of technicalities. The school was closed to students for a day to house immigrants. If you wanted to defend all headlines that aren't explicitly lying, you have to defend the claim that they closed the school. If you want to condemn headlines that present information in deliberately misleading ways, you gotta condemn the whole practice.

At the moment, you and Phoenix are made for each other.
 

Silvanus

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What Phoenix said was just as true as the fake news you defend on the narrowest of technicalities.
That "narrowest of technicalities" being that he did say exactly what he was reported as having said.

You see, the issue isn't that the headline just wasn't "technically lying", but was still misleading through ommission. It simply wasn't misleading. You claim it was misleading because they didn't interpret his words in the way you did and then report that interpretation rather than the simple facts. But that's not ommission: no pertinent fact is missing, and the full context is right there in the article as expected. You want them to add subjective interpretation to put his statement in a better light.

The school was closed to students for a day to house immigrants. If you wanted to defend all headlines that aren't explicitly lying, you have to defend the claim that they closed the school.
I'm not wanting to defend headlines that aren't explicitly lying if they're otherwise misleading. Nice try though.

Its unsurprising to see you leap at an opportunity to defend misinformation demonising immigrants. Just as your regular behaviour betrays how little you actually care about human life, this little episode betrays how little you actually care about media clarity.
 

Agema

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Your vague reference to well identified reasons are generalized answers to why migrants exist, and say little to nothing about why at that particular moment at that rate.
Both Asita and I have detailed specific reasons for 2020-2023 US immigration as well as general ones for immigration.
 
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Phoenixmgs

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And I told and showed you that that was cherry picked data that ignored the enforcement figures, actions on record, and analysis of the 'what and why' behind all of them in order to misrepresent Biden as having such an "open borders" policy (which is to say, lack of enforcement) that you insist that the recent actions of ICE be viewed as an nothing more than an "equal and opposite response".
If you have a ton more people coming to the border and you turn away similar numbers, there's a lot more getting in and people noticed.

School used as an emergency shelter during a dangerous storm (which is normal procedure), for less than 12 hours, while classes continue =/= "school closed for immigrants".

You fell for rage-bait misinformation again. Just use a bit more healthy scepticism next time.
The school day was remote learning (in which, you know, kids don't actually learn anything) because the school had to house migrants. Remote learning is a joke. If there weren't so many migrants, they wouldn't have needed to use a school building as shelter. The problem is too many migrants.

Students at James Madison High School in Brooklyn were informed Tuesday that classes would be conducted virtually on Wednesday because of the school's use as a “temporary overnight respite center."

Do you think that if the vaccine was ready before the election anything would have changed?

Do you not know Trump's base?
Thousands of lives would've been saved if the vaccine was released on schedule... There was no scientific reason to change the end date.
 

Asita

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If you have a ton more people coming to the border and you turn away similar numbers, there's a lot more getting in and people noticed.
And once again, that's not what happened.

To reiterate (and I'll even bullet point it this time):

In actuality, during the same period the Biden administration:
  • Tripled interior detention over what Trump had done in his first term,
  • Increased Border Patrol detention by 12-fold from January to July 2021
  • Increased US removal flights by 55 percent during his term. (For context, in 2020 there were 1,009 flights. In 2021 there were 1,049, in 2022, that was up to 1,416, then 1,482 in 2023, and 1,565 in 2024).
  • Extended unprecedented contracts with airplane charter companies for deportations when the prior contract lapsed,
  • Negotiated broader expulsion deals with other countries,
  • Removed or expelled three times as many border crossers as the Trump administration

Hell, want to look at the actual track record of the administration? Because that track record is very different from what you imply.

In fact, it includes things like:
  • Negotiating stricter enforcement in other countries (including Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica) to make it harder for undocumented migrants to reach the US border in the first place,
  • Reopening detention facilities and opening new ones,
  • Launching anti-migration messaging in foreign countries to disincentivize migrants from approaching the border,
  • Reinstating expedited removal,
  • Initiating expulsion flights,
  • Hiring a record number of deportation judges,
  • Surging the border with National Guard troops,
  • Increasing migration criminal enforcement by 33%,
  • Opening up new detention facilities,
  • And even initially supporting - and even extending - the aforementioned Title 42 expulsion policy
And that is just naming a few examples.

Contrary to the claims of Trump and his supporters, enforcement structure under Biden remained quite active - and indeed removal and flights increased substantively and deportation and processing capacity expanded in a variety of ways.
 
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Silvanus

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The school day was remote learning
I can't overstate how totally uninterested I am in your irrelevant rant about remote learning.

A school building was used as an emergency storm shelter for less than a day, as is normal procedure, and classes went ahead in a different format.

You fell for misinformation. Its alright, just learn from it, be less credulous next time.

Thousands of lives would've been saved [...]
He said, while complaining that the government allowed people to shelter from a dangerous storm.
 

Phoenixmgs

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And once again, that's not what happened.

To reiterate (and I'll even bullet point it this time):

In actuality, during the same period the Biden administration:
  • Tripled interior detention over what Trump had done in his first term,
  • Increased Border Patrol detention by 12-fold from January to July 2021
  • Increased US removal flights by 55 percent during his term. (For context, in 2020 there were 1,009 flights. In 2021 there were 1,049, in 2022, that was up to 1,416, then 1,482 in 2023, and 1,565 in 2024).
  • Extended unprecedented contracts with airplane charter companies for deportations when the prior contract lapsed,
  • Negotiated broader expulsion deals with other countries,
  • Removed or expelled three times as many border crossers as the Trump administration

Hell, want to look at the actual track record of the administration? Because that track record is very different from what you imply.

In fact, it includes things like:
  • Negotiating stricter enforcement in other countries (including Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica) to make it harder for undocumented migrants to reach the US border in the first place,
  • Reopening detention facilities and opening new ones,
  • Launching anti-migration messaging in foreign countries to disincentivize migrants from approaching the border,
  • Reinstating expedited removal,
  • Initiating expulsion flights,
  • Hiring a record number of deportation judges,
  • Surging the border with National Guard troops,
  • Increasing migration criminal enforcement by 33%,
  • Opening up new detention facilities,
  • And even initially supporting - and even extending - the aforementioned Title 42 expulsion policy
And that is just naming a few examples.

Contrary to the claims of Trump and his supporters, enforcement structure under Biden remained quite active - and indeed removal and flights increased substantively and deportation and processing capacity expanded in a variety of ways.
You don't at all talk about asylum seekers... which I mentioned in my very first reply. Immigrants increased in record numbers, that is just a fact.

I can't overstate how totally uninterested I am in your irrelevant rant about remote learning.

A school building was used as an emergency storm shelter for less than a day, as is normal procedure, and classes went ahead in a different format.

You fell for misinformation. Its alright, just learn from it, be less credulous next time.



He said, while complaining that the government allowed people to shelter from a dangerous storm.
The school was literally closed...
 

Asita

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You don't at all talk about asylum seekers... which I mentioned in my very first reply. Immigrants increased in record numbers, that is just a fact.
And as I told you a page ago:

What you're doing now is complete non-sequitur invoking presumed xenophobic sentiments of "we don't want any more immigrants" as a value judgment on the existence of immigration in any sense, which - once again - does not rebut anything I said or provided, nor does it in any way support your claim about ICE being an "equal and opposite reaction" to the "open borders" policy that you attribute to the Biden administration by dismissing the enforcement figures, actions on record, and analysis of the 'what and why' behind all of them.

Again, unless you're trying to argue that any form of immigration is itself the problem, it does not support the point you're invoking it to push.
 
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tstorm823

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Both Asita and I have detailed specific reasons for 2020-2023 US immigration as well as general ones for immigration.
Humor me, name a reason you believe it increased at the end of 2020 and remained exceptionally high for 3 years.
 

Phoenixmgs

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And as I told you a page ago:

What you're doing now is complete non-sequitur invoking presumed xenophobic sentiments of "we don't want any more immigrants" as a value judgment on the existence of immigration in any sense, which - once again - does not rebut anything I said or provided, nor does it in any way support your claim about ICE being an "equal and opposite reaction" to the "open borders" policy that you attribute to the Biden administration by dismissing the enforcement figures, actions on record, and analysis of the 'what and why' behind all of them.

Again, unless you're trying to argue that any form of immigration is itself the problem, it does not support the point you're invoking it to push.
You're not posting in good faith. You won't comment on the asylum seekers, it doesn't matter when you are keeping the same immigration policies/increasing them when you're letting in tons of immigrants in through another way that those policies don't stop.

Not arguing that. Citizens were fine with the normal amount of immigration for nearly the last 100 years, and when you increase that when polling says people don't want more immigrants than the status quo, you don't increase immigration. It's pretty fucking simple.
 

Asita

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You're not posting in good faith. You won't comment on the asylum seekers, it doesn't matter when you are keeping the same immigration policies/increasing them when you're letting in tons of immigrants in through another way that those policies don't stop.

Not arguing that. Citizens were fine with the normal amount of immigration for nearly the last 100 years, and when you increase that when polling says people don't want more immigrants than the status quo, you don't increase immigration. It's pretty fucking simple.
That's not me 'not posting in good faith'. That's me 'ignoring derailing irrelevancies' and me 'not humoring your attempts to change the scope of the argument'.

But since you insist:
Seeking asylum is not in itself a problem, and an increase in the number of people seeking asylum usually speaks more towards the countries they were fleeing from than to the countries that are deciding whether to accept them. For the sake of example, the fact that between 1934 and 1937 there were between 80,000 and 100,000 Germans on the waiting list for a US immigration visas had more to do with the situation in Europe than US Immigration policy.

And I remind you, your claim was very specific to US Immigration policy, in that it declared that ICE's 2025-Present actions were an equal and opposite response to the Biden Administration's policies. So the number of people seeking asylum is completely irrelevant to the point you invoked it to defend.

And tangentially, while I grant that I never went into it in detail, I did in fact touch on it as early as my first post: " Moreover, a deeper dive into the data shows that it was broadly driven by a perfect storm of regional instability, post-COVID movement, and economic shock, not the immigration policy of either administration".

And I further noted that "one of causative factors of the increase was the Trump Administration's implementation of Title 42 expulsions - starting in March 2020, and which Biden did not lift until May 2023 - which both incentivized border patrol evasions by removing legitimate avenues of immigration (such as asylum) and ended up incentivizing repeat crossings due to the specifics of implementation, which actually made it easier to make repeat attempts in a short period of time, inflating the border crossing figures substantially."

So let me break this down for you:
  1. The question of asylum seekers is already covered in the data categories being discussed, and moreover, it's irrelevant to the question of immigration enforcement, which is the only thing that matters when discussing whether the actions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) are warranted, especially as the 'equal and opposite response' that you claim.
  2. "People don't want it" does not support the argument. That is a claim about preference, not a causal explanation. And again, it's utterly irrelevant. ICE's purview is to enforce Immigration Laws. So again, the number of asylum seekers is irrelevant.
  3. And whether or not I'm addressing your claim doesn't matter unless you introduce data that affects the causal claim.
And that causal claim was that Biden Era policy caused contemporary ICE action as an "equal and opposite reaction". That claim can only function if Biden era policy was extremely lax. And the data does not support that.

Not arguing that. Citizens were fine with the normal amount of immigration for nearly the last 100 years, and when you increase that when polling says people don't want more immigrants than the status quo, you don't increase immigration. It's pretty fucking simple.
...You're talking as if it's a supply and demand thing, like a given administration puts in an order for a number of immigrants rather than evaluating their cases. Which is simply bizarre given your current focus on asylum. Because asylum is definitively a humanitarian effort, more defined by the recognized need of the refugees and asylum seekers than by any 'we have enough of your kind' sentiment in the host country's population.
 
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XsjadoBlayde

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Even with the admin as it is right now, the genocides the war crimes, assassinations, kidnappings of sovereign nations, the blatant pedo sex trafficking blackmail cover ups, even with their naming convention of "operation Epstein's fury" even then....I was not ready to believe they had named another operation "operation "Total Extermination" inside Ecuador. But hey, whaddya know...

Pentagon Reveals Attacks in Latin America Are Just the Beginning

With “Operation Total Extermination” and Trump’s threats against Cuba, expect more U.S. military strikes in the region.

Farmer Jose Pena looks for belongings amid rubble after a bomb dropped by the Ecuadorian army in the Lago Agrio region, Sucumbios province, Ecuador, on the border with Colombia, on March 18, 2026.

Farmer Jose Pena looks for belongings amid rubble after a bomb dropped by the Ecuadorian army in the Lago Agrio region, Sucumbios province, Ecuador, on the border with Colombia, on March 18, 2026. Photo: Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images

As the Trump administration continues to bombard Iran, a top Pentagon official revealed that U.S. wars in the Western Hemisphere are also expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed “Operation Total Extermination.”

Attacks on Latin American drug cartels are “just the beginning” Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told members of the House Armed Services Committee last week.

Humire indicated that many more strikes in Latin America are on the horizon. The comments came a day after President Donald Trump again teased American annexation of Cuba. “I do believe I’ll be the honor of — having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said last week. “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.”

Humire announced that the Department of War supported “bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border” — Pentagon-speak for March 3 strikes on unnamed “Designated Terrorist Organizations” previously reported by The Intercept. “The joint effort, named ‘Operation Total Extermination,’ is the start of a military offensive by Ecuador against transnational criminal organizations with the support of the U.S.,” he said.

The U.S.–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by “ricochet effect” on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region. In response to a request for comment, U.S. Southern Command referred The Intercept to a statement on X by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense confirming the bomb landed in Colombia.

Humire referred to the attacks as “joint land strikes” and said that America was providing Ecuador with “capabilities that they otherwise would not have.” The U.S. has since conducted at least one more strike with Ecuador. “Yes — as @POTUS has said — we are bombing Narco Terrorists on land as well,” self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X on March 6, announcing the new strike. Days later, in a war powers report announcing the introduction of U.S. armed forces into “hostilities” in that country, the White House informed Congress of “military action taken on March 6, 2026, against the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.”

The attacks in Ecuador are also part of, and an expansion of, Operation Southern Spear: the U.S. military’s illegal campaign of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean. The U.S. has conducted 46 attacks since September 2025, destroying 48 vessels and killing almost 160 civilians. The latest strike, on March 19 in the Pacific, killed two more people and left one survivor. The Trump administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name.
“Rushing to war on one man’s whims is the exact opposite of what the Constitution demands.”
“This Administration is barely paying lip service to the constitutional or international law governing the use of force. But we have these rules for a reason,” said Rebecca Ingber, a former State Department lawyer and now a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York. “Rushing to war on one man’s whims is the exact opposite of what the Constitution demands.”

Gen. Francis Donovan, the SOUTHCOM commander, told lawmakers last week that “boat strikes are not the answer,” but teased an even larger campaign. “What we’re moving for right now might be an extension of Southern Spear, but really a counter-cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network,” he told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I believe these kinetic [boat] strikes are just one small part of that.”

Humire could not say how many land strikes were being conducted across almost 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations. “I don’t have an exact number,” he replied to a question. But when asked by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, if the War Department would “be moving to a lot more terrestrial strikes,” Humire replied, “Yes, ranking member.”

The Office of the Secretary of War did not respond to a request to clarify how great that increase might be.

Humire said the U.S.–Ecuadorian campaign was “setting the pace for regional, deterrence-focused operations against cartel infrastructure throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.” The word “deterrence” has become a popular Pentagon euphemism for the use of lethal strikes, in contrast to previous efforts to U.S. government efforts to marshal economic, diplomatic, and military means to convince adversaries to abandon a specific course of action. “Deterrence has a signaling effect on narco-terrorists, and raises the risks with their movements,” Humire claimed.

Joseph Humire, Performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense, speaking at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, speaking at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on March 17, 2026. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images

In January, the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. It now rules the country through a puppet regime. Federal prosecutors have reportedly drafted a criminal indictment against Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, threatening her with corruption and money laundering charges if she does not continue to do the bidding of the Trump administration. Trump also recently teased the possibility of making Venezuela the 51st U.S. state.

The Trump administration is reportedly undertaking a regime-change operation in Cuba, attempting to push out President Miguel Díaz-Canel as a requirement for negotiations between the U.S. and that island nation. U.S. officials are said to favor Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of 94-year-old Raúl Castro, the former Cuban president and brother to Fidel, the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008. Díaz-Canel referenced U.S. plans to “seize the country” on X late Tuesday and said the U.S. would be met with “impregnable resistance.”

“I am holding Cuba,” Trump said recently, noting his costly regime-change war in the Middle East takes precedence at the moment. “We’re going to do Iran before Cuba.” Trump imposed an oil blockade on Cuba in January, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis. The island’s national electrical grid has already collapsed three times this month, with one blackout lasting more than 29 hours. U.N. human rights experts have condemned Trump’s fuel blockade on Cuba as “a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.”


Trump, who has repeatedly spoken of “taking” Cuba, is the latest in a long line of U.S. presidents who have attempted to overthrow the Cuban government. During the Cold War, the CIA launched the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The agency also tried to assassinate Fidel Castro at least eight times. The U.S. also conducted a covert campaign of bombing Cuban sugar mills and burning cane fields, among other acts of sabotage.

In the wake of the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Pentagon prepared top-secret plans to pave the way for an attack on the island. In the spring of 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a top-secret memorandum titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba.” It described numerous false-flag operations that could be employed to justify a U.S. invasion, including a plot to “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated)” and even staging a modern “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and blaming the incident on Cuba. Other U.S. plans for covert action on the island specifically prioritized attacking Cuba’s electrical grid.

Asked if the Joint Chiefs of Staff were involved in analogous actions today, spokesperson Maj. Annabel Monroe referred The Intercept to Southern Command, who then referred The Intercept to the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Humire said that the War Department was “currently focused on partner-led deterrence operations,” but would not rule out unilateral U.S. strikes across Latin America. He said that, in addition to Ecuador, the U.S. had forged agreements with 17 partner-nations in the Western Hemisphere, as part of the so-called Americas Counter Cartel Coalition. This international body, formally announced by Trump at his Shield of the Americas summit earlier this month, will focus on “bi-lateral and multi-lateral operations against cartels and terrorist organizations.”

Humire was asked if any of the 18 nations were concerned about issues of sovereignty regarding the U.S. potentially conducting attacks in their countries. “Members of the coalition specifically signed a joint security declaration mentioning that they want this support and most of them all are looking for this,” he replied. But the barebones statement they signed is astonishingly vague and offers little of substance on the subject.

Humire indicated that the U.S. had leveraged gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela to strong-arm Cuba and assist in “gaining compliance from Nicaragua,” as well as “shifting the Caribbean in a favorable direction toward U.S. interests.”

Recent official leaks about the potential U.S. indictment of President Gustavo Petro of Colombia on drug charges — the official reason for Maduro’s kidnapping, and the means reportedly used to keep his successor, Rodriguez, in line — suggest the U.S. may employ that tactic as leverage or an eventual pretext for military action. (Petro has denied ties to drug traffickers.)

“It sounds as if Petro is potentially on the chopping block,” a former defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to his current employment, told The Intercept. The source said leaks about the potential indictment of Petro, coupled with the U.S.–Ecuadorian attack, which has stirred up tensions along the South American nations’ border, increasingly look like a coordinated campaign to foment “discord” if not conflict. Asked in January about attacking Colombia, Trump responded: “It sounds good to me.”

The U.S. attacks on the Colombia–Ecuador border come as America has recently established a “permanent FBI presence in Ecuador,” joining agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. Just before the U.S. began attacks on the Ecuador–Colombia border, Donovan traveled to Quito, Ecuador’s capital, to meet with President Daniel Noboa and senior Ecuadorian defense officials.

Last August, Lt. Col. Phillip Vaughn — the commander of an Expeditionary Task Group overseeing Air Force Special Operations in the Caribbean and South America — coordinated meetings to increase “interoperability between U.S. and Ecuadorian forces” to “counter illicit actors operating along Ecuador’s northern border” with Colombia including “operational planning scenarios, execution of close air support procedures,” and “multiple topics on Joint Terminal Attack Controller support,” which relates to targeting and airstrikes.

America’s Western hemisphere blitz is part of what Trump and others have called the “Donroe Doctrine”: a bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. While President James Monroe’s policy sought to prevent Europe from colonizing and meddling in the Western Hemisphere, Trump has wielded his variant as a license for America to do exactly that.

The National Security Strategy, released late last year, decrees the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine a “potent restoration of American power and priorities,” rooted in the “readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere.” Humire defined “America’s immediate security perimeter” as “Alaska to Greenland in the Arctic to the Gulf of America and the Panama Canal and surrounding countries.” Trump has also threatened to annex Greenland (and possibly Iceland), turn Canada into a U.S. state, and conduct military strikes in Mexico. Humire also detailed efforts to strong-arm Panama to cut ties with China to ensure access to the Panamanian-owned canal that he nonetheless called a U.S. “national asset.”

In addition to his wars in the Western hemisphere, Trump has also launched attacks on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during his second term — most of them sites of U.S. conflicts during the war on terror.

Smith, the House Armed Services Committee ranking member, told Humire that Trump’s wars in the Americas also appeared to be morphing into a new “forever conflict” with no clear goal or “end point.” Asked what “level of achievement” would be necessary to “stop kinetic action,” Humire responded with a wall of words about border security, terrorism, and cartels. When Smith interrupted to clarify if the boat strikes would continue unabated, Humire confusingly replied: “No, correct.”

Also, fucking dystopian shit
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Oh err, some pesky kid must've graffiti'd on it again. Try to ignore that while I call a cleaner.
 
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tstorm823

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Even with the admin as it is right now, the genocides the war crimes, assassinations, kidnappings of sovereign nations, the blatant pedo sex trafficking blackmail cover ups, even with their naming convention of "operation Epstein's fury" even then....I was not ready to believe they had named another operation "operation "Total Extermination" inside Ecuador. But hey, whaddya know...
Other sources indicate Ecuador coined that name, and the US only assisted with intelligence and a single strike contributed to a much larger campaign against armed drug traffickers.