Rather than these local governments memorializing resolutions to Congress to change democratically enacted immigration law, by democratic means, they seek to thwart democracy by impeding enforcement of democratically chosen law.

A fascist effort by the governments and The Stranger to thwart the democratic will?

Can I ask a dumb question?

Why does ICE need more and more detention facilities if the immigrants are being deported?

concentration camps, not “detention facilities”

@2,

They have due process rights to challenge their detention for deportation. Think of it as immigration jails for people awaiting their "court" date.

Receiving countries may delay or refuse to take some of them. Negotiations of when, where, how many, will be returned can be lengthy.

It takes awhile to accumulate enough deportees per country to fill a plane, or a substantial portion of a plane. They have to be held somewhere while that happens.

If you are going to deport more, you have to detain more. That requires more facilities.

Part of the inhumane detention conditions, lack of due process, etc. is Trump has mandated more arrests of alleged immigration law violators. They have funded more ICE agents, but not more immigration attorneys, immigration administrative law judges, immigration prosecutors, immigration jailers, immigration jail medical staff, immigration cooks, immigration janitors, etc. So those arrested for alleged violations wallow for longer and longer in more and more inhumane conditions as they are held.

When are any of you losers going to give up your citizenship for an immigrant?
Until then, STFU and let the adults handle the situation.

In a span of just 5 comments we’ve got one genius who thinks it’s undemocratic for a democratically elected legislature to pass laws and another who thinks immigration operates like a student exchange program. We deserve better trolls than this.

@6, Immigration law and enforcement are Federal matters by the U.S. Constitution. The Supremacy Clause applies. States and localities are trying ti thwart rule of law and Federally, democratically determined immigration law. Anti-constitutioanl and antidemocratic.

I have no problem with Congress reforming immigration law. I wish they would.

Did we learn nothing from 1861 and states defying the Feds?

@6 too bad it's not like a student exchange program I'd be happy to trade many of the commenters here for literally anyone from say Honduras

7 no one is stopping ice from doing their job just applying the law under their purview to regulate local land use. If this is unconstitutional (ianal) then the federal government can sue for the right to build concentration camps anywhere they please. Until then democratically elected officials are doing the job their constituents elected them to do and they can vote them out if they’re not.

8 if there were an aptitude test these dumbasses would all fail

Phoebe dear, someone is making real money off of the detentions. That's why.

@9, The Feds can and do sue successfully on the subject, and yet localities keep doing the same stuff, at great costs to local and Federal taxpayers.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/appeals-court-ice-king-county-airport-deportation-flights/281-b33113ee-5787-42b2-8b69-e41fa2147932

https://www.chronline.com/stories/northwest-ice-detention-center-to-remain-open-after-washington-law-deemed-unenforceable,321534

Kind of like the run up to 1861. The locals kept trying and trying to legally defy the Feds. As they kept losing the legal arguments, they kept trying newer and more novel ones, while getting more and more militant. Didn't end well.

Once they run out of immigrants they will fill them with political enemies dubbed domestic terrorists. After robbing our tax dollars to enrich themselves, they will need to keep their head counts full to appropriate them to the prisons so we can pay to imprison ourselves. The big beautiful is the single greatest abuse of tax dollars in history, no taxation without representation. You people have no idea how savage and malevolent the monster you have created is. We are under international and domestic assault to enslave ourselves.

@12, Progressives created this monster by driving increasing numbers of union workers, other blue-collar workers, African Americans, Hispanics, and other traditional voters to join with MAGA and vote Trump.

Not analogous and entirety beside the dumb argument that this is antidemocratic. The city is applying a number of legal options at their disposal to hinder ice operations in seattle. Cost is also beside the point but since you brought it up i would rather have my local tax dollars spent challenging the federal government building concentration camps than the government using my federal tax dollars to build concentration camps.

If enough people don’t want their state/local legislatures to challenge the federal government building concentration camps in their area they can vote them out democratically. Perhaps the courts will rule that the city can’t prevent city-owned land for ice operations or support private land owners who wish to prevent ice operations on their property, or that the federal government can bypass local land use review and build a concentration camp where/whenever they want, but in any case this entire process is democratic from top to bottom.

@14, Having your local tax dollars SUCCESSFULLY challenges the Feds is one thing. To keep challenging them on immigration and losing, and then do more local virtue signalling measures that eventually legally lose, is another matter altogether.

Thwarting the enforcement of laws adopted by democratic means is by definition anti-democratic.

You and I would likely agree that Federal immigration laws need to allow more immigrants in. Fine. Change them by the same process they were adopted. Disregarding them and thwarting them is undemocratic.

@12, The Atlantic took a deep dive into how Progressives keep Dems losing.

https://archive.is/qItvw

There is no way of knowing which laws will succeed without trying but the fact that we’re talking about laws that were passed democratically by democratically elected legislators should be your next clue that this process is not antidemocratic. Perhaps the laws the city is applying to hinder ice operations are as unenforceable as the state’s private prison ban but we won’t know that until they are challenged in the courts in the manner our country, a constitutional republic, was designed.

Homeland Security
Wants Social Media Sites
to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

The department has sent Google, Meta and other companies
hundreds of subpoenas for information on accounts that
track or comment on Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, officials and tech workers said.

"[The Department of Homeland Security] said it had 'broad administrative subpoena authority' but did not address questions about its requests. In court, its lawyers have argued that they are seeking information to help keep ICE agents in the field safe."

more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html

and

ICE Agents Menaced
Minnesota Protesters at
Their Homes, Filings Say

Protesters in Minneapolis and St. Paul
said in sworn statements that they were singled out
by agents who demonstrated that they knew where they lived.

oodles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents-protester-home-visits.html

"Stupid protests just give the administration more excuses to abuse." 
--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

"The way to address any issues with ICE
is via our elected representatives,
not through street protests."

--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

"Stupid protests just give the administration more excuses to abuse." 
--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

"Monsters
And their enablers
are accessories to murder

It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.

At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

I wish I could believe that the last few weeks will be the last straw, but I don’t. To be honest, I wish I believed in Hell, because if it did exist, the enablers would be going there along with the monsters.

What I do believe in is the courage and decency of millions of ordinary Americans, which have been so dramatically on display in Minneapolis. We can only hope that this courage and decency get us through this nightmare — and we must do all we can to make it happen."

--by Paul Krugman; January 25, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/monsters

"The way to address any issues with ICE
is via our elected representatives,
not through street protests."

--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

"Stupid protests
just give the adminis-
tration more excuses to abuse."

--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

"As our government slides ever further into open fascism, I have zero patience for anyone continuing to peddle the nonsense that the people to blame for all this are the ones who wouldn’t vote for a party that actively supported a right-wing genocide and the brutalization of those who protested it

If you took even a cursory glance at history you would understand what you are doing, who you are defending, and what it will mean for politics in America, but you can’t shake yourself out of a childish dichotomy of red-team-bad, blue-team-good, and the whole world is going to suffer because of it

You are, at heart, conservatives, and you maintain a conservative’s belief that nothing has fundamentally changed and nothing should, even as change overwhelms us. For the sake of not being wrong you are damning us all to a suffering you don’t yet fear only because it hasn’t reached you yet.

You were happy to urge moderation and norms and ignore the misery your leaders caused as long as it was comfortably distant and involved people you didn’t have to talk to. But you’re going to learn the folly of thinking a city on fire is acceptable as long as the flames don’t reach your door.

Even now you hold us in contempt as we organize and agitate every day to overturn the system that got us here. I have no more tolerance for your push-button solutions or your simple-minded civil scolding. History has already judged you and found you wanting. Get with the program or shut the fuck up."

--by Leonard Pierce
‪@leonardpierce.bsky.social‬

"The way to address any issues with ICE
is via our elected representatives,
not through street protests."

--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

Whose
Side are
YOU On?

"ICE agents shot Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

And the only person in the world
who has been held accountable by DHS
is the pilot who somehow forgot to move Kristi Noem’s blankie."

--Eric Swalwell (D CA) U,S, Representative

@14: “The city is applying a number of legal options at their disposal to hinder ice operations in seattle.”

These applications may also provoke the administration to target Seattle, as it recently targeted MN. This administration considers outraged liberals — and possibly dead ones, too — as a benefit to gain, not as a threat to avoid. The risk of needless attention should, therefore, figure into the local elected officials’ calculations, but we see little evidence it has.

“Cost is also beside the point…”

Amazing, especially considering how many articles the Stranger has recently posted about the deficits faced by Seattle and Washington state.

“… i would rather have my local tax dollars spent challenging the federal government building concentration camps than the government using my federal tax dollars to build concentration camps.”

Bold words, but your only choice here is whether to spend money at the local level. The 2024 elections went to Trump, thanks, at least in part, to the GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA attacks progressives constantly made upon the Democrats — all concern for which has since completely disappeared.

The only impedance the administration now faces is from Congressional Democrats, who have, today, started defunding DHS and ICE. We should focus attention there, not on local theatrics of dubious value.

"The 2024 elections
went to Trump, thanks . . .
to the GAZA GAZA GAZA GAZA
attacks progressives constantly made upon the Democrats... "

victims!

nevermind the Genocide!
schweep it Away like
it's a Homeless
Family

local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.
local theatrics of dubious value.

"As our government slides ever further into open fascism,
I have zero patience for anyone continuing to peddle
the nonsense that the people to blame for all this
are the ones who wouldn’t vote for a party that
actively supported a right-wing genocide and
the brutalization of those who protested it."

--Leonard Pierce
‪@leonardpierce.bsky.social‬

"Congressional
Democrats,
who have,

today,

started
defunding
DHS and ICE."

fucking
FINALLY.
Led by the
Citizenry at
fucking LAST.

"Stupid protests
just give the adminis-
tration more excuses to abuse."

--@tensorna on January 18, 2026 at 2:12 PM

perhaps there's More
then Meets The
Wormtongue's
Devoted eye.

from Principles of Abuse
(The Bully's Hand-
book*):

NEVER Admit
when you're
Wrong.

*Fascists
LOVE It
Too!

at Times
like These it's
Imperative to remember
Nietzsche's 'Aphorism 146'
from "Beyond Good and Evil":

"He
who
fights
with monsters
should look to it that
he himself does not become a monster.

And if you gaze
long into an abyss,
the abyss also gazes into you."

--Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

and then
(and Now),
there's ICEStapo.

who Claims
to be slacking
off in Minnesota

but who may show up
Here, at Our Doorsteps,
including @the Stranger's

so how will We
answer the
Call?

to quote JRR Tolkien

"I wish
it need not
have happened
in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do
all who live to see such times. But
that is not for them to decide.

All we have to decide
is what to do with
the time that is
given us."

kringeofartian

yes, Little Lord "scro-
tus mcbarfingly"
Crimewatch?

you rang?

so, is Tomorrow 'NOT
M Y PRESIDENT!''s
Day, or what?

Contrary to what the Fascist right thinks, Democrats and the Progressive Left do not want open boarders, and are not opposed to moral and ethical immigration enforcement. That's why most of us protested against ICE under Obama or Biden. We certainly protested for immigration reform, because the laws certainly could be improved. AT the same time, both Obama and Biden deported more undocumented people, because they actually targeted the criminals, and largely ignored those hard working undocumented immigrants who follow the law. They did that wearing windbreakers, no masks, and mostly only carrying sidearms.

What we certainly oppose is Trump turning turning ICE, CBP, HSI, and the rest of Homeland security into a personal army answerable only to him, that brutalizes and terrorizes everyone, including citizens.

Chinga la Migra!
Chinga tu MAGA!

@2 I'm surprised to say this, but that is not a dumb question. It is actually a revealing question. They need to hold more people because while Trump was expanding ICE, CBP , & etc. he was firing immigration judges and not replacing them. Fewer judges and expanding cases mean more people waiting for a judge. If they can't be paroled back to their communities, that means more detention facilities are needed. As those facilities are run and often owned by private contractors, that means Trump can transfer more tax money to people who funded his campaign. It's just another part of Trump's complete corruption.

@30: Senate Democrats have now blocked continued funding of DHS, including ICE. I take it you support their effort?

speaking
of support

@32

it's ok,
wormmy, you
Don't gotta Admit
'those stupid protests'
Had Any Effect Whatsoever

but
will you
continue to
denigrate them?

@32 Absolutely! Given how Trump has made ICE a jobs program for J6 traitors, I support completely support abolishing ICE and replacing it with an immigration enforcement agency made up of actual professionals, who can actually go after undocumented criminals, and not terrorize entire neighborhoods, including citizens.

@34: Spot-on and well-said. Thank you!