ICE: We’re Here To Stop Illegal Ideas From Crossing The Border
from the actual-thought-police dept
In an unforced error that will only burnish ICE’s reputation for being a brawn operation that’s talked itself into believing it’s a brains operation, ICE briefly let the American public know it was no longer willing to let illegal ideas to enter (or even exit) the United States.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s job is to stop illegal ideas from crossing the U.S. border, according to a now-deleted social media post from the agency that drew condemnation on Thursday.
In a promotional graphic on X, ICE said they enforce over 400 federal laws to “ensure public safety and national security,” with the picture showing ICE will stop the crossings of people, money, products — and ideas. The post directs people to visit the ICE website.
Yeah, it actually said that. There are screenshots of it and everything.
Sure enough, the image posted on ICE’s official xTwitter account says:
If it crosses the U.S. border illegally, it’s our job to STOP IT.
The list next to it reads:
People
Money
Products
Ideas
Illegal ideas, eh? That’s a new one. ICE later walked back that post after being mocked and derided by nearly everyone who came across it, claiming its own official post was a mistake.
ICE told POLITICO that the post was put up in error, and that it is drafting a new post that will include “intellectual property” — not ideas.
That only makes it slightly less stupid.
First, it’s not a stretch to assume ICE is in the business of stopping “illegal” ideas at the border. ICE is soliciting offers for a social media dragnet that would, among other things, monitor the “total number of negative references to ICE found in social media.” Also, it would monitor whatever the hell this is:
Information indicating a potential for carrying out a threat (such as postings depicting weapons, acts of violence, refences to acts of violence, to include empathy or affiliation with a group which has violent tendencies; references to violent acts; affections with violent acts; eluding to violent acts, etc.).
Yes, that’s taken verbatim from ICE’s call for bids, one that makes it clear whoever (or whatever) wrote it believes “affection” should be accompanied by “with” and that it’s possible to “elude to” something rather than simply hope to avoid it completely.
On top of the that, Marco Rubio’s State Department is telling diplomats to scour social media posts and other online content created by visa applicants for the sole purpose of denying them entry if they show:
“a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles)”
Given that, it’s not ridiculous to take ICE at its word when it says (via tweet) that it’s going to prevent illegal “ideas” from entering this country.
Even if you take ICE at its post-ratio word, it’s still very stupid. First of all, ideas are not the same thing as intellectual property, as anyone who’s tried to patent or copyright an idea can attest. An idea alone is not protected by IP law.
Then there’s the absurd assertion that intellectual property respects physical borders. Just ask anyone downloading RARs from .tv domains. Just ask anyone who’s ever sent a PDF via email. The market for physical forms of copyright infringement is so small no one is really trying to sneak boxes of burned discs past customs authorities. Stopping “illegal” intellectual property at the border is a futile gesture at best. Anything that needs to get “into” the United States can be virtually tossed over the highest of walls and well over the heads of ICE officers staffing border crossings and international airports.
Whatever ICE actually meant is barely less stupid than what it actually said. And I, for one, am inclined to believe the agency truly thinks part of its job is being the literal thought police. Whatever it takes to deny someone entry and/or eject them from the country. And, for the moment, they’re all working for a man who truly believes any idea he doesn’t agree with is illegal or dangerous or both.
Filed Under: border agency, ice, immigration, intellectual property, ip, surveillance
Comments on “ICE: We’re Here To Stop Illegal Ideas From Crossing The Border”
They said what they meant. They want people to stop talking about the innocent people they trafficked to an El Salvador torture pit.
everyone wants intelligence
So ICE is going to also spy on people that supported Jan 6th?
We also have yet another agency buying this web crawling tech, how many times are we going to pay the contactor for the same job when there already are intel specific agencies that probably have this data or could get it?
Re:
“Not unless they’re brown.” — ICE, probably
Hey Koby you’re up bro. Come say something stupid so we can all point and laugh at you.
Re:
He knows it’s indefensible and the Trump admin aren’t really sending out surrogates to defend it so he’s just hiding under a box, waiting for the next story about something he can pin on Biden or rebuff with heritage foundation talking points, semantics or whataboutism.
Wrong order
People
Ideas
Money
Products
PIMP
Re:
Given that they’re scouring social media for people who post anything pro-Palestinian, they are very much the thought police.
They didn't change their mind, they just changed the terminology
Given ICE can’t read minds the only way to stop ‘ideas’ from crossing the border is to stop the people expressing those ideas, and given copyright applies to anything that’s put into a tangible form like ‘social media posts’ that can only apply to those.
They’re still aiming to stop ‘ideas’, they’re just calling it something else and banking on the mind-numbing effect that the magic words ‘intellectual property’ cause in people to keep them from realizing that.
Re:
“Given that ICE can’t read minds”
Oh, great, just what we need- a nightmare scenario where the Psi-Cops from Babylon 5 are real and are deep scanning us for illegal ideas, and there’s no Garibaldi to save us from their corrupt chief of police.
So real life Psi-Cops. That would be a nightmare scenario, and it proves that not one member of ICE has actually watched Babylon 5 to know why that’s a terrible idea
Re:
Bester is a role model if they watched it. And Clark.
Re: Re:
I watched the TV series last year and I kept reminding myself that it’s scary accurate what a Trump administration would do to try and replicate what Earthgov President Clark did.
This is NOT a drill...
…or a “mistake”, or an “error”. This is them saying EXACTLY what they are doing. Fascism, full on NAZI STYLE fascism, is here and alive and well in the US, folks.
We have masked agents “disappearing” “undesirables” from our streets without due process NOW. We have a President thumbing his nose at the Courts (including the SUPREME COURT!) when they tell him that he can’t do that and that he has to return people deported illegally.
And we have ICE turning away foreign visitors at the border if they have ever said anything publicly or online against the current regime.
Now is NOT the time to panic! Now is the time to ORGANIZE and PROTEST, while we are still able to do so!
They didn’t mean intellectual property. You can tell because ideas and intellectual property are very much not the same thing. They’re doing the Trumpy thing of saying the horrendous thing out loud so that all of the horrendous people will hear it and know that they have a sympathetic ear in the white house, then pretending it was an accident, or that no one really knows what was said, or something else to muddy the waters and give cover to everyone who absolutely supports them in their awfulness but doesn’t want to try to own or defend the awful position in polite company.
By their own stupid-ass definition around support for those who carry out illegal or violent acts, I couldn’t voice support for this administration or even ICE itself without running afoul of its dragnet even if I wanted to.
Remember all the talk about thought crimes from ‘Free speech absolutists’ when people were banning nazis and conmen from their platforms? Those people were the nazis and conmen all along and they’re chomping at the bit to deport people for thought crimes and ban people from bringing in dangerous ideas like equality.
Appropriate, really -- unintentional honesty
Isn’t this ultimately what MAGA, at its very core, is really about — ie. quashing any ideas and/or knowledge that they don’t approve of (or simply makes them feel nervous and uncomfortable)?
DEI, CRT, LGBTQ+, immigrants, equality under/rule of law, fair elections…
Illegal ideas
Like, for example, a computer program that can allow, say, sideloading apps on an iPhone that don’t go through the Apple store.
Or a little gizmo that, using ordinary and readily available parts, can plug into a Tesla and unlock all those capabilities that they all have – if you pay for them, but this unlocks them for $5 in parts.
Or for heated seats in your BMW (they may have backtracked on that one, but they will try again).
Perhaps an ad-blocker for Facebook that also blocks Facebook’s ads, and while so doing generates dozens of spurious clicks…
Oh, there are many dangerous, and, according to US law, felonious, ideas.
This is the Trump Administration.
Of course Ideas are illegal.
Ideas are the result of people thinking.
And Trump can’t have that.
If Rubio wants to get rid of people with a hostile attitude towards US founding principles, he should start by looking in a mirror.
ICE as people
I asked an ICE agent if he liked doing his job. He said, “Yes!” Well you like sending people out of the U.S. without consideration for family and “actual” status? He said, “Well not really, but I am only following orders, as I like my job.” I asked if he had any legal worries about his, maybe, illegal actions. “No, I am a representative of the government, and I will be saved by the attorneys.”
I wanted to explore this abit more and asked, if the government changes and they say that ICE was doing extra-legal actions contrary to the Constitution he could be sued personally for his actions. What would he do? “I never thought of that.” Did he carry insurance for any personal liability? “No.”
I reminded him about crimes against humanity. Reminded him that later in life he might want to travel and would not be allowed. I pointed out that they “might” come for him as a domestic terrorist since he covered his face. After all there will be a new administration in the White House that might want to “right the wrongs” of the prior administration. He could be “hung out to dry” in the future. Has he thought of the future? “No!”
Maybe they all need to think about the future.
Strictly speaking, I’d interpret the “illegal” in ICE’s statement as referring to the way each of the listed things are crossing the border, not the listed things themselves, but we all know they’re not speaking strictly. They fully believe that certain people are illegal, regardless of how they cross the border.
Illegal ideas
If empathy or affiliation with a group which has violent tendencies is a criterion, perhaps anyone who has shared a post praising the US military is at risk?? (I doubt it.)