I think you don’t have to look far to find warrantless arrests or illegal detentions under the guise of “immigration enforcement.” I also think you’d be hard pressed to point to a crime in those instances.
We should compensate those who are improperly arrested and quickly correct these violations, attempt to prevent them in the future, reprimand those involved if necessary, but absolutely keep pushing ahead at full steam on law enforcement efforts otherwise.
Hot take: some small number of unlawful arrests aren't the "neener neener neener, you can't stop illegal immigration" that folks seem to think they are.
Why? And separately, do you believe that people wrongly arrested in the US are being compensated accordingly? The justice system in the US isn’t known for being easy or cheap to navigate, and I don’t think getting a warrant before detaining people is that huge of an ask.
Because these are human systems involving humans: there will always be mistakes. Advocating for the elimination of 100% of mistakes is a typical "rules for radicals" method of backdoor legislation through increased bureaucracy.
I'm not advocating to "move fast and break things," but that it's very easy and cheap for illegal immigration maximalists to advocate that society should "move never so nothing breaks." This type of obstruction is actually a form of conservative policy, but "it's for the causes I like so it's okay."
> don’t think getting a warrant before detaining people is that huge of an ask
The law doesn't require a warrant before detaining people - and shouldn't. This doesn't even make sense: "Hold on Mr. Bank Robber - I'm not detaining you, but pretty please don't go anywhere, I gotta go get a warrant first!"
Hey, I'm all for accounting for human error. But I don't think what we've been seeing in the news is not "hold on Mr. Robber, I need a warrant" (also, you don't need a warrant for that), nor is it "oops I arrested you by accident." It's people being taken off the street because of vague determinations about their identity, the types of jobs they're working, etc. That's not probable cause, and that's certainly not human error. That's an extrajudicial decision made intentionally to have a chilling effect.
> I’ve heard this argument in the context of capital punishment, and I find it incredibly unconvincing.
This is more or less a false dichotomy.
Capital punishment is by definition irreversible, so mistakes aren't tolerable.
Being arrested is legally and reasonably far more correctable with few lasting consequences: we can absorb these mistakes in the rare events they occur.
Any law-enforcement also non-reversible. Do false positives get their years of life back? No. And there is far less scrutiny on that (see DA deal and all that).
Capital punishment just takes all of them instead of few-to-tens of percent of a life (often the most valuable years).
Absolutely agree. Mistakes should be corrected immediately, protocol revised, and those responsible punished, if malicious acts are found. Otherwise, enforcement should be full stream ahead. Illegal immigration has hurt the US enormously and it's time that we enforce our laws.
So for solving crimes.
I'm in favor, then!