Since she was in her car they could have identified her by her car’s number plate - but facial recognition sounds scarier - which I guess is the point.
it's not speculation, they specifically tell people that they're using facial recognition. They threaten protestors that they're entering them into a domestic terrorist database using facial recognition. They're arresting people and detaining them for long periods of time without due process, even while having proof of citizenship (real id, passports) on them, because of a facial recognition hit.
Who knows, but ICE agents are terrorizing people with the threat. It’s fascinating that the Ministry of Information is trying to redefine terrorist to mean something other than the people who try to induce mass terror for political gain:
Would be cool if America required law enforcement not to be able to lie to citizens so we could actually know what is going on, and what law enforcement is doing. But I guess police secrets/secret policing/lies are better for an open society.
Along with MAGA supporters who buy pizzas and leave threatening messages for judges and politicians who rule against or oppose Trump after he makes a social media post decrying them. Senator Elissa Slotkin talked about all the death threats she and her family received when the president was calling her treasonous and saying she along with the five others who were reminding military and intelligence members of their oath to the Constitution.
With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.
> With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.
Oh this, 1000 times. I believe some of the protesters are also targeting cars out-of-state plates.
I recently had a rental with out-of-state Texas plates, which just gave me another reason to avoid any place where there was ICE activity. Otherwise I'd have to show my passport to one group and I suppose point to my child car seat to the other, just to avoid getting caught in the middle.
It seems easy enough to not cover your face, not look like you're itching to kill someone, and honk your horn in support when you see some protestors. I'd be more worried that they had been smoking meth in the car.
it starts with a rental car trip, an "incidental roadrage" incident while travelling, then the surveillance and whistle blowing starts at a rest stop, and then the complete lockout from any business, lodgings, or financial dealings.
This is a bit thin to be drawing any conclusions. Only what one person claims. Has this happened to anyone else? Might there be another reason (that they're not telling us) that this happened?
The US existed just fine before 2003. We can structure any replacement organization to hold it accountable with checks and balances, like every other agency.
Yeah, but there is quite a gulf between possible and even likely.
I can think of very few time seen the state give up extra powers it gives itself in emergencies, and the few places where I see it give up powers are at the behest of industries demanding "de-regulation".
Even, say, cannabis decriminalization can be understood (from the stand point of the legislators) as pro-business.
So serious question: when has the US given up powers? It'd do my brain a lot of good to have a picture of how this has happened in the past so I can be less cynical in the present.
You might site the Church commission, maybe, but that seems to be exactly the kind of thing that is both likely and wholly ineffective beyond a the 5-10 year timescale.
Maybe this is not helpful either, but I wonder if that person is correct. The national debt is already bad. With the trillions of new national debt from the Trump administration, and also the destruction of basically every foreign relationship, how will the country manage its finances? I feel like the only way out is to print money and cause extreme inflation. But that also means the death of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Look at any other country that went through a similar period. These regimes never voluntarily relinquish power, but they're forced to within 20 years due to some crushing military defeat, economic collapse, assassination, violent revolt, etcetera. It's never ended with a peaceful transition of power and a smooth winding down of the bad stuff.
The authoritarianism infrastructure was always there, it's been built for decades from red scare, McCarthyism, post 9/11 legislation, carnivore type monitoring with joke oversight, and now AI for the firehose.
We are extremely lucky that this is the form of authoritarianism is currently being exerted.
Completely authoritarian and unacceptable. This entire saga shows the American political system has serious flaws where it cannot hold the executive branch accountable.
Agree. This is absolutely unacceptable by any measurement you can name. They are not respecting equality under the law, they are behaving like a terrorist regime. Every one of these people needs to be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent the US Constitution allows. End of Story.
It's not "cannot" but "will not", and the flaw is not with the American political system but with the GOP and the American populace. Congress could absolutely rein this in at any time if Republicans in Congress cared to do so; the Supreme Court could rein this in at any time if the Republicans on the Supreme Court cared to do so. Do not let yourself be convinced that the problem is Trump or a too-powerful executive; the problem is an entire party and the people who cheerfully vote for it.
But neither congress nor the presidency is an accurate representation of the will of the people, and that is one of the flaws with the American political system.
The problem is that it does represent a lot of people in America. A very vocal and active part of America. It’s not some tiny demographic either. It doesn’t represent the majority but the majority doesn’t vote, doesn’t take action, and is overall extremely passive in their political position. Some of this is good because most Americans are wildly uneducated. Problem is that people are more likely to try to protect what exists than try to move towards a new paradigm. That’s the biggest reason we have such a slow moving system in the US. Most people in the US are very wary of change at this point because they’re not educated about anything.
I agree the voters and party are a problem, but disagree that we shouldn’t do more. We need better checks and balances on an administration that willfully and casually violates constitutional rights all the time. Not to mention the constant corruption and grifting that enriches the Trump family. We should have a system that can protect against this even when the majority makes a bad voting decision.
There were some. They all got dismantled. Loyalists have been systematically installed into all relevant positions. What system is immune to this? There is none. Voters have to take responsibility for what they voted for, which is the complete destruction of the United States of America as a political unit.
How on earth can you say that with a straight face?
> Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.
> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
This is an official filing--facts, not a news report. A judge placed his job on the line and said these things in a written, filed, official ruling.
The problem isn't judicial rulings; the problems are petulant bullies who simply ignore the rulings; and completely subservient sycophants who only can say "As you wish, master."
It was a long period of time voting for totalitarians. Checks and balances worked by design: preventing immediate radical changes. And they worked by design: allowing changes gradually over a period of time if people keep voting for the same thing. And now it's here.
This story in particular seems like a flaw. There should not be such a thing as a privilege that the executive branch can revoke with no explanation or process.
The American political system has definite problems, but so does every other system. If you rank democracies by any metric, the USA has done rather well, if not the best. If you disagree with that statement, I invite you to list the countries you consider democratic, in your order of ‘successfulness’.
LOL, the first list also seems to use the US as the cut-off & first country that is a “deficient democracy”. The magic number must be between somewhere between 0.811 and 0.821.
Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.
Not that they had a wide field of choice and not that they can actually fire him.
Both reasons the US political system isn't all that great - it nosedived into a two party Hotelling's Law quagmire despite the founders being against party politics. It's hardly suprising a system centuries old and creaking failed to scale.
Washminster systems are a literal reaction to the cracks in the Westminster and Washington systems.
Maybe check those American Exceptionalism / Manifest Destiny blinkers and look about a little, it's hard to see out of a rut.
Washington captured many issues of the party system in his farewell address. This can relate to many times in history for both parties.
"They serve to organize faction, to give it an
artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place
of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party;
often a small but artful and enterprising minority of
the community; and, according to the alternate
triumphs of different parties, to make the public
administration the mirror of the ill concerted and
incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ
of consistent and wholesome plans digested by
common councils and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above
description may now and then answer popular ends,
they are likely, in the course of time and things, to
become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious,
and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the
power of the people and to usurp for themselves the
reins of government, destroying afterwards the very
engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Ben Franklin on why the US Constitution is "Probably the best we can do for now" but will likely "fall to a Despot" is worth a revist in these Trumpian times.
> The Germans literally elected the Nazis... you think they’re better at democracy
FYI - Germany changed their government after this regime fell, to ensure that it would become more democratic and harder to concentrate power in the executive. So they became more democratic as a learning process.
The US had an actual civil war (over slavery no less) and didn't change anything fundamental about their constitution nor government structure as a result. It was less deadly than the holocaust, but enduring a civil war is not a sign of a functioning democracy.
Yes, and in part because of that. The way they teach history and make their citizens resistant to authoritarianism through schooling is different from the really basic ways history is taught in America.
Note how these thugs just casually lie to create some fantasy narrative that runs completely counter to the ideas of the Constitution, an open society, and government responsible to The People. When the fascist talking heads get on TV and claim that agents had no choice but to execute another American because they were being "impeded", everyone would do well to remember how readily their whole organization characterizes passive and peaceful democratic activity as "impeding".
Uh-huh. I've got to love how half of you fascist apologists drop into broken English when pushed ("Not a loser like you living on dole"). I get it - you want to harm the United States and Grump is doing a great job at that.
Who’s the useful idiot for a hostile foreign power? Peter Thiel is likely a literal Russian agent, given the Epstein files mention he met with Russian officials and his handler at Epstein’s home. His buddies Elon Musk and David Sacks probably know this and are therefore also compromised, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the government positions and contracts they have. Trump refused to ban TikTok despite the law requiring it and has generally been soft on China on many things. He also did nothing to stop Putin.
Also you should know that Musk and Melania are both illegal immigrants who violated our laws. Yet you’re aligned with them and complain here about “illegals”.
If Musk or Melania have violated laws, let action be taken - I am not going to argue against it. Illegal immigration and economic migrants masquerading as refugees are a big threat to western nations and is setting the political discourse in many countries. Why do you think countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, are slowly changing their laws to make it easier to deport people? How are the hordes of unskilled economic migrants/illegals going to contribute to any modern economy? My belief is that a country should defend its borders with an iron hand, otherwise you’ll lose control pretty quickly.
> The point of Global Entry is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement did a background check on you and decided you were cool
Technically Global Entry is run by a different organization than ICE, but under the same parent organization. GE is run by "Customs and Border Protection", which is a sibling organization to ICE. Obviously it's all the US government, so it doesn't matter a ton...
> well, your background just changed, didn't it?
NO! This is an absolutely unreasonable take.
The bigger issue is "When you demonstrate against them" is a protected action by our laws. So taking a legally protected action and expecting to keep your government entitlements is reasonable. This is entirely a non-essential scheme to help punish people for speaking out against ICE; they're just pulling all the levers they have.
It is a reasonable assumption that the government would not declare you a higher-risk traveler because you attended a protest. Let's not pretend that this is reasonable behavior.
It also depends. Do you mean protesting by holding up a sign on the sidewalk and chanting. That's absolutely protected. Do you mean "protesting" where you obstruct ICE officers, throw things at their vehicles, create an "autonomous zone" and vandalize businesses? Because none of those things are actions that a reasonable citizen who is a low risk for reentry takes.
Global Entry is a fast lane because they've evaluated the risk an individual poses. Someone who shows they're angry with the authorities also shows that the risk profile has changed. The fast lane at Immigration and Customs is not a right.
Yes it is. Especially when this is all in context of the article, which you have either not read, willfully ignored the context within it, or somehow decided it is untrustworthy while providing no reasoning as to why.
> Do you mean "protesting" where you obstruct ICE officers, throw things at their vehicles, create an "autonomous zone" and vandalize businesses? Because none of those things are actions that a reasonable citizen who is a low risk for reentry takes.
We have no evidence the woman in the article did any of that. She was filming them in a public space.
We have seen DHS try to claim this is illegal repeatedly - as noted in this Cato Insitute article (hardly a left leaning institution!) - so there is no reason for us to disbelieve that they would take this stance.
Why you think it is acceptable for a government agency to penalize you for holding them accountable with your first amendment right is beyond me. I would also suggest that it is inherently unamerican.
Global entry is just a fast pass for getting through the border.
I can't tell any difference between arriving with global entry or using the regular lane. Who ever is working the border asks the same dumb questions that they ask in the regular line.
As someone who has traveled extensively with and without GE, your experience is extremely atypical. Not just for myself, not just for people I am acquainted with, but for all of the people I see in the customs lines and watching the speed of the lines. When I was dating a woman who was not a citizen, if we were returning internationally she would have me go through the GE line to go get the car, etc., and I would regularly have gotten through, walked to the car, loaded my luggage, and driven back around to arrivals and still had time to kill while waiting for her to arrive.
This is perhaps the first time in my life I've heard of someone saying that they haven't seen a difference after acquiring GE.
How can you say that's not true when Ive crossed the border and been asked the same silly questions they ask on the regular line? Its just faster because the line is shorter.
I have GE and haven't even talked to an agent in the last four entries. The last time I didn't have to claim my baggage which was really strange (YVR).
That would still be a benefit even if that was the case, but I frequently do not have to say a word beyond "hello" or "have a good one" to the border agent.
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