Trump immigration policy is backfiring

[Rideback]

Trump's record ain't great compared to Obama & Biden's
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigr ... rcna217752

[Rideback]

These stories seem to be coming out by the hour now. Too many innocent people caught up in Noem's ICE net
"An 82 year old man was taken by ICE at a green card replacement appointment. His family was never informed where he was or how to get ahold of him until he was in a foreign hospital... despite the fact that he was a permanent legal resident of the US.
Luis Leon came to the US 38 years ago.
He had been tortured in his native Chile by the administration of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. The US gave him political asylum and he came legally to the United States in 1987.
Luis built a life here in the US. He worked at a leather manufacturing plant, raised four kids, and eventually retired.
He’s well-loved in his neighborhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He likes to garden and fish and do small repairs for the neighbors.
In June he lost his wallet, which had his green card in it.
No problem. Luis and his wife made an appointment to get it replaced.
But when they arrived for the appointment, Luis was handcuffed and taken away, and his wife was held for ten hours until her granddaughter showed up to get her.
His family couldn’t find him for a full month. The immigration detention tracker never showed him as in ICE custody. Immigration officials had no answers they were willing to give, despite multiple calls. The family called local prisons and hospitals and even morgues but couldn’t find anyone who knew where Luis was.
A relative in Chile called the family yesterday to let them know that 82-year-old Luis was now in a hospital in Guatemala… apparently deported to this country by the US government, though ICE still won’t even confirm that Luis showed up for his green card replacement appointment, let alone that they had him in custody and deported him.
Now that the family has found Luis, ICE says they are “investigating” what happened.
Sometimes when I share these stories, people push back and say something like, “If he was here for all these years, why didn’t he become a citizen.” It’s a really weird and ignorant question for a variety of reasons, but more importantly it’s off topic to this post. So before we change subjects to why someone might not get their US citizenship, let me pose a few counter questions: Do you think legal permanent resident of the US should be taken into custody at what should be a normal administrative appointment? Do you think people should be held with no access to lawyers or family? Should permanent legal residents be deported to a country other than their home country and put in a hospital without ever informing family or legal representation? Because that’s what we’re talking about.
Meanwhile, we have no idea if ICE deported a legal, permanent resident of the United States on purpose or somehow “by accident.”
Certainly since ICE’s tripled quota for arrests they’ve had a lot more “mistakes.” And I’m not just talking about the more famous moments, like “administrative errors” that involve illegally deporting someone to El Salvador.
We also have things like:
* A US marshal being mistakenly detained by ICE.
* ICE apologized for detaining US citizens because it caught them… speaking Spanish.
* ICE claims assaults against agents had increased between 500-700% but then released statistics that showed — despite the huge increase in ICE arresting people — ICE’s own self-reported stats of assaults barely increased at all. Probably because they’ve been arresting people on bogus assault claims and then never charged any of them because it was just an excuse to put bystanders in handcuffs.
* ICE accidentally sent a 15 year old to the Everglades Concentration Camp because they didn’t verify his age or identity.
Meanwhile, Luis — a permanent resident of the US who came here legally, had legal status and doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket — has been taken from his family, kept from legal counsel, deported to a country he has never been from, and put in the hospital.
Why?
Because he lost his wallet."

[mister_coffee]

The Clintons and anyone else would be well beyond the statute of limitations. And if Bill Clinton is on that list no Democrats would care very much anyhow. This would be like ranting about Ike in the 1980s.

The rapidly changing explanations, the very implausible explanations, and attacking the people asking the questions are consistent with someone who has something to hide. It is reasonable to be curious about what exactly that is.

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, a high-level government advisor, and a critically important government contractor said he was on the list. We ought to at least get to the bottom of whether such an important person is a delusional liar or not. Should government and military operations be so critically dependent on a person who might well be a total whackjob? Over half of the satellite launches for DOD operations were on SpaceX hulls.

And 84 percent of satellites launched in 2024 we launched by SpaceX.

[Rideback]

Court cases have already demonstrated that Trump's policies are overreach. By closing down FBI and ICE open cases in order to give more manpower for his immigration delusions he's already cost valuable work that was targeting sex trafficking and drug cases.

Your credibility about sex trafficking went out the window when you gave Trump a pass on the Epstein case.

[dorankj]

Well if you ever have any evidence and not conjecture due to politics I'll be right there. Now what happens when it's slick Willy on that plane MANY, MANY times but you guys still love him!

[mister_coffee]

If you really actually cared about children being exploited and endangered you'd be demanding that your pervert cult leader be put on the end of a rope for his involvement with the sexual abuse of hundreds of girls.

But you don't. So that's that.

[dorankj]

So 14 children saved from child exploitation and endangerment just doesn't matter? If not for DOUBLE standards you guys have no standards whatsoever!

[Rideback]

Idaho farmer speaks out
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/idaho ... amid-raids

[Rideback]

More and more citizens are being illegally detained and now speak out. This is a disabled vet US citizen who was swept up in a raid and detained for days
https://abc7.com/post/disabled-veteran- ... /17131486/

[Rideback]

Big Time
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/13/politics ... p-analysis

"President Donald Trump and his administration continue to bet big on the issue that, more than any other, appeared to help him win a second term in 2024: immigration.

The administration and its allies have gleefully played up standoffs between federal immigration agents and protesters, such as the one Thursday during a raid at a legal marijuana farm in Ventura County, California.

And as congressional Republicans were passing a very unpopular Trump agenda bill last month, Vice President JD Vance argued that its historic expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and new immigration enforcement provisions were so important that “everything else” was “immaterial.”

But this appears to be an increasingly bad bet for Trump and Co.

It’s looking more and more like Trump has botched an issue that, by all rights, should have been a great one for him. And ICE’s actions appear to be a big part of that.

The most recent polling on this comes from Gallup, where the findings are worse than those of any poll in Trump’s second term.

The nearly monthlong survey conducted in June found Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration by a wide margin: 62% to 35%. And more than twice as many Americans strongly disapproved (45%) as strongly approved (21%).

It also found nearly 7 in 10 independents disapproved.

These are Trump’s worst numbers on immigration yet. But the trend has clearly been downward – especially in high-quality polling like Gallup’s.

An NPR-PBS News-Marist College poll conducted late last month, for instance, showed 59% of independents disapproved of Trump on immigration. And a Quinnipiac University poll showed 66% of independents disapproved.

Trump has managed to become this unpopular on immigration despite historic lows in border crossings. And the data suggest that’s largely tied to deportations and ICE.

To wit:

59% overall and 66% of independents disapproved of Trump’s handling of deportations, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
56% overall and 64% of independents disapproved of the way ICE was doing its job, according to Quinnipiac.
54% overall and 59% of independents said ICE has “gone too far” in enforcing immigration law, per the Marist poll. (Even 1 in 5 Republicans agreed.)
Americans disapproved 54-45% of ICE conducting more raids to find undocumented immigrants at workplaces, according to a Pew Research Center poll last month.
Americans also appear to disagree with some of the more heavy-handed aspects of the deportation program:

They disapproved 55-43% of significantly increasing the number of facilities to hold immigrants being processed for deportation, per Pew – even as the Trump administration celebrates Florida’s controversial new “Alligator Alcatraz.”
They said by a nearly 2-to-1 margin that it’s “unacceptable” to deport an immigrant to a country other than their own, per Pew – another key part of the administration’s efforts.
They also disapproved, 61-37%, of deporting undocumented immigrants to a prison in El Salvador – the place where the administration sent hundreds without due process, in some cases in error (such as with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has since been returned).
There’s a real question in all of this whether people care that much. They might disapprove of some of the more controversial aspects of Trump’s deportations, but maybe it’s not that important to them – and they might even like the ultimate results.

That’s the bet Trump seems to be making: that he can push forward on something his base really wants and possibly even tempt his political opponents to overreach by appearing to defend people who are in the country illegally.

But at some point, the White House has got to look at these numbers and start worrying that its tactics are backfiring.

Gallup shows the percentage of Americans who favor deporting all undocumented immigrants dropping from 47% last year during the 2024 campaign down to 38% now that it’s a reality Trump is pursuing.

And all told, Trump’s second term has actually led to the most sympathy for migrants on record in the 21st century, per Gallup. Fully 79% of Americans now say immigration is a “good thing,” compared with 64% last year.

The writing has been on the wall that Americans’ support for mass deportation was subject to all kinds of caveats and provisos. But the administration appears to have ignored all that and run headlong into problems of its own creation."