> Usually they do not hold them for very long.

I am confused here. If the law grants ICE (or whatever is the umbrella agency that ICE operates under) the power to detain to determine legality of the status, ICE does it, and then releases people back, the law works as intended, no?

I am confused what is the difference between this, and police who can detain a “tall man in black short and red hat” and 10 hours later (or whenever) release back due to new information, or mistake in ID?

I understand that we absolutely have to strive to zero of such cases, but operations at scale (like law enforcement) have zero chance to have no mistakes.

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abustamam 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Replace "tall man in black short and red hat who may have committed a violent crime" with "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed," even if they have a valid government ID card and we arrive at the problem with ICE.

	▲	reliabilityguy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> "anyone who looks like they may speak Spanish even if no crime has been committed," There are two parts to it in my view. First, sure, I understand where you are coming from. At the same time I find this argument a bit problematic because if the numbers on border crossings from South America are true, and majority of those that crossed through are from South and Central America, who do you think ICE is going to look for? Tall, blond, white people from Norway (and I am not saying that there are no people who are out of status from Norway)? Second, while Trump and co claimed that they will go after "only after criminals", and ICE arrests a bunch of people who may be not criminals in the hardcore sense of killers, etc., but they do arrest a significant amount of those as well. I do not understand this -- if the person crossed the border, are they supposed to get a pass just because? Why?