The UK has more arrests for social media posts than any other country in the world, including authoritarian countries like Russia, Belarus, etc. Germany is the third highest. Both have thousands, not "a small handful".
In 2023, UK police forces made around 12,000 arrests under the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988. These laws cover sending messages that are "grossly offensive, threatening, indecent, or menacing over communications networks" (which includes social media). Prosecutions resulting tend to come from a small subset of serious crimes - stalking, incitement to hatred, endangering minors etc...
This was gleefully misinterpreted by Musk, Steven Forbes and the rest of the right-wing braintrust as "12,000 people were arrested for saying politically incorrect things."
Germany at third highest is equally in the realm of complete fantasy. The Tagesschau debunked it and concluded that the German numbers make no sense. There is no statistic in Germany for the number of arrests, but the number of people investigated is lower for the period claimed and not all led to arrests so the number is simply a fabrication.
Finally, the notion that China or Russia would self-report less cases than the UK and expect the figure to be believed is farcical. There isn't even something comparable to the anti-activism laws or the HK47 in the UK.
While I love the premise that he is choosing arbitrary groups to go after and we just haven't been chosen yet, no, he campaigned on this and was elected for exactly this. This is what the people want.
Did you even read the article? He entered the country on a tourist visa and never left. That is entering the country illegally. Getting married and applying for adjustment of status does not give him legal status. He should rightfully be deported.
Except most US voters disagree with you. Someone married to a US citizen does have residency rights, notwithstanding the paperwork quirk that you're supposed to exit and re-enter, which typically involves flying somewhere going to the US embassy to get a stamp and flying back. So just as most people don't support the death penalty for speeding, most people don't support criminal deportation for someone who has the right to be in the US but for whatever reason (perhaps lack of money or perhaps fear of strip searching and disappearing to the gulag) didn't follow the proper process. Because most voters don't see this situation as a crime and certainly not one requiring deportation, the law doesn't treat this situation as a serious crime, or actually a crime at all.
If you want to aggressively going after folks who have skirted immigration rules perhaps the place to begin is in the east wing (if it still existed).
He has resided and worked in the country illegally for 16 years. Getting married at the end of that time doesn't automatically grant you legal status, you have to apply for adjustment of status at which point they will review your history with adhering to US immigration law. He could have chosen to be deported, per the terms of the visa waiver program he entered on, but he chose not to so he can wait in detention until the legal process he has repeatedly avoided proceeds.
Majority of Americans are against illegal immigration. Only liberal elites want it in order to stay in power. The people do not want this. Every poll confirms this.
It's not a lie to point out the truth. Words have meaning and wantonly applying the most scariest sounding words you can find does not help your cause.
Have you considered they could maybe just stop interfering with federal law enforcement and let them do their jobs as they have been doing for decades under all sorts of administrations? You'll be hard pressed to find a tear shed for agitators protecting illegal immigrant criminals with deportation orders.
Neither you nor anyone else believes this is how immigration enforcement has been done "for decades under all sorts of administrations."
You can make it appear as if you have a better grasp on reality by just acknowledging that this is a much different enforcement mechanism than we've seen in the past, but you think that's okay.
Anyway there are now several known cases of people being detained or deported without deportation orders. This is another point that you could at least give the appearance of honesty and grasp on reality by acknowledging.
DHS's own data proves that current enforcement priorities have changed.
So what's more probable in your mind?
( Hypothesis A ) -- Mobs trying to interfere with law enforcement has caused DHS to focus on arresting and deporting immigrants without criminal background
( Hypothesis B ) -- DHS's focus on arresting and deporting immigrants without criminal background has required significant scale-up of personnel with minimal training (validated by DHS's own data) and required tactics that a large number of Americans believe to strike an unacceptable cost-benefit balance
( Hypothesis C ) -- The two facts (enforcement approach and public response) are not causally related to each other at all
I never liked this quote, because it makes help a matter of anticipated reciprocal help rather than simply a good thing to do. Besides, memories are short.
How much "good thing [we] do" is based on anticipated reward has been a topic of debate for roughly as long as we've had language, but I'll take anything that convinces people like that to actually care about people other than themselves.
The legal immigrants have it the worst --- they're the ones who got in legitimately, that already being a struggle as it is, only to be cheated by all the ones who didn't.
What does it mean to be "cheated by all the ones who didn't"? Their ire, if it's a real thing, is directed at the wrong people. They should direct it at the ones who made becoming an American citizen a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process, not their fellow immigrants who came to the US seeking a better life through hard work. As a true blue and red-blooded American, I'd vote a hundred times to make it as simple for those people to become an American citizen as it was for my forefathers, who only had to hop on a boat over in Europe and not shit themselves to death before they got here.
>They should direct it at the ones who made becoming an American citizen a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process, not their fellow immigrants who came to the US seeking a better life through hard work.
No one is entitled to come to the US. We are not the world's soup kitchen. You follow the process we the people have decided or you go somewhere else. Period.
You alone don't get to decide this, these laws were passed by a democratically elected Congress.
> No one is entitled to come to the US. We are not the world's soup kitchen. You follow the process we the people have decided or you go somewhere else. Period.
I strongly disagree. Everyone is entitled to come to the US, and we should welcome them with open arms. Immigrants built this country and immigrants make it better, whether they're highly qualified programmers and doctors, or refugees from "shithole countries" who had to bribe their way across the border and now work on a dairy. All are welcome! Though please spare me your inevitable "have you let them into your home?!" bullshit, it's a tired argument.
> You alone don't get to decide this, these laws were passed by a democratically elected Congress.
"Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King Jr.
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” — Henry David Thoreau
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" — The poem engraved on the plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
Though please spare me your inevitable "have you let them into your home?!" bullshit, it's a tired argument.
You are the one who's spouting bullshit, and alongside the usual deliberate confusion of legal immigrants with illegal ones. We don't need any more of the latter, especially the ones who commit violent crimes and are otherwise a threat to society.
You would have to include ALL actions, including ICE troopers shooting dead US citizens too. You can not merely confine it to "this is what they do in theory"; you need to look at what they do in practice.
They should have thought of that before entering this country illegally. Millions more have an opportunity to avoid this risk right now by leaving voluntarily but they choose not to.
Nobody needs to bet - in a lawful society, the law should protect citizens from government agents shooting them dead. ICE already shot dead two US citizens. What would a bet change here? That is a system that clearly does not work.
Zero citizens got shot that didn't spend their days conspiring ways to obstruct and assault federal law enforcement executing deportation orders given by our judicial system.
If you obstruct ICE, you are going against the executive branch executing these laws, against the legislative branch who passed these laws, and the judicial branch who granted the deportation orders. You are a traitor to this country.
People died after they deliberately put themselves in harms way in an attempt to illegally interfere with law enforcement. That's tragic but doesn't make the law enforcement inherently wrong.
One wonders if you would be equally philosophical about an ICE agent getting shot after breaking down someone's door with an "administrative warrant" (which isn't a warrant).
WTF are you talking about? Next time you fail to obey a yellow light signal, you'd be rightfully distraught if you were put in prison and someone were to say that you deserved it because you should have thought about stopping at the yellow as the law prescribed.
Me too I was "Speechless, shocked, unbelievable, insane, speechless" the first time I sent Claude Code on a complicated 10-year code base which used outdated cross-toolchains and APIs. It obviously did not work anymore and had not been for a long time.
I saw the AI research the web and update the embedded toolchain, APIs to external weather services, etc... into a complete working new (WORKING!) code base in about 30 minutes.
