> The evidence they cited included his wearing of a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie and a confidential informant’s claim that Abrego Garcia belonged to MS-13’s “Westerns clique” in Long Island, New York, despite having never lived there.
Some pretty flimsy evidence…
And all this time this guy was what? Working and being productive like anyone else…
this what happens when you centralize all decision making to people who have no local knowledge of the community they are administrating, and predicate their jobs on following a checklist, usually as implemented by buggy software, instead of making a judgement call based on experience and circumstances.
If you go by the Marriam Websters definition of fascism this is getting pretty close.
> Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
As if this has anything to do with locality? Rulers of parcels of land small enough you could see it all from a single hill have been utter despots before. Heck, just look at how some parents treat their children.
This is what happens when you elect a convicted felon, rapist, bullying loser compromised by the Russian state who outright says he wants to be a dictator and he puts sycophants and bullies into positions of power to do exactly that.
Saying this is about local vs nonlocal governance is nothing more than shirking the responsibility of 70,000,000 Americans who wanted this and 100,000,000 Americans who couldn't be bothered to stop it.
I do think that there’s an aspect of small government that connects those 70M to their government in a way that large scale federalization may fail to do. Not sure how to achieve benefits of scale without this problem…
Either way I think it speaks to the effectiveness / end result of policy where you take someone working and being productive, paying taxes … and then expend government resources to prevent that (and apparently do a poor job at that even).
He’s undisputedly in the country illegally, and both an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration appeals ordered his deportation for suspected gang ties: https://www.wmar2news.com/infocus/family-of-alleged-gang-mem... (“Other court documents show an immigration judge ordered Abrego-Garcia to be removed from the U.S. back in April 2019 over his alleged gang ties.”)
Did you miss the part where the same judge that authorized his deportation, also specified it to be somewhere other than El Salvador? It's right in the same article you quoted. That is central to the ICE screw up. It's not that they deported him, but that they ignored the court's ruling to not deport him to El Salvador, because they're ignoring due process and rushing things for political points.
Right, but if you've been following the situation since the current administration took office, you would know that if they want something, they're not shy to ask.
Nor it is reasonable to not have processes to get back someone if they're wrongfully deported. Moving fast and breaking things is not acceptable when you're dealing with people's lifes - and i somehow think if a rich white man were to be deported by mistake, he would be brought back quite fast
Except the administration is paying for these people to be in the El Salvadoran prison. Also, since when is the administration that uses threats of giant tariffs to accomplish its goals powerless to right these wrongs?
In my opinion, this should be an 8th amendment violation. "We threw you in a pit forever but its not our pit so your legal protections are void" is not good.
This isn't just flying somebody to their country of origin and leaving them there. This is flying somebody to an unrelated country and the paying a foreign nation to throw them in an overcrowded prison with no oversight for the rest of their lives.
> This is flying somebody to an unrelated country and the paying a foreign nation to throw them in an overcrowded prison with no oversight for the rest of their lives.
That's true of most of the people the Trump administration are sending to CECOT in El Salvador, but not the guy the article is about:
> Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador around 2011, “fleeing gang violence,” according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.
Backend thought exercise: Do you think they could get back someone they wanted to get back, such as a member of the administration? Do you think they could follow a process that made it easier to get people back?
He’s an El Salvadoran citizen! He’s in prison because El Salvador believes he’s an MS-13 gang member. If he believes he’s being held wrongfully in El Salvador he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his country. This has nothing to do with the U.S.
Got a source on El Salvador's position? The article states the MS-13 claims come from the US and are unsubstantiated:
> The allegations about his affiliation with MS-13 stem from a 2019 arrest outside a Maryland Home Depot store, where he and other young men were looking for work, according to the complaint.
They also claim he had legal protections from being deported specifically to El Salvador:
> An immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request in October 2019 but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador.
> In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
This is the part that concerns the US. Also the part where this is all being paid for by American tax dollars.
Yes, the “administrative error” relates to the narrow point about the supposed “protection from deportation.” He was ordered deported for gang ties, upheld after an administrative appeal. And his asylum claim was denied. The article omits the information about the immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals finding that he was deportable for being an MS13 member, making it seem like the “administrative error” was about that.
There is no legitimate reason for any El Salvadoran citizen to receive asylum in the U.S. The country is now safer than Canada. If this guy thinks he is being unlawfully detained, he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his own country.
He is not a citizen of El Salvador, he is Venezuelan. The sole reason he was classed as a member of that criminal organisation are his crown tattoos, and 'secret inside information'.
The Guardian article gives some more background, and explains these (catholic) tattoos:
> Yes, the “administrative error” relates to the narrow point about the supposed “protection from deportation.”
He was not granted protection from deportation, he was granted protection from being deported to El Salvador. The administrative error is that he was indeed deported to El Salvador. If he was deported elsewhere this wouldn't be an issue:
> Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said U.S. government lawyers had multiple opportunities to try legally to deport him, including appealing the judge’s 2019 decision or deporting him elsewhere.
> The article omits the information about the immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals finding that he was deportable for being an MS13 member, making it seem like the “administrative error” was about that.
It is my understanding that he had not been convicted of anything and that the administration immediately backpedaled on the claim. Do you have contradictory source?
> There is no legitimate reason for any El Salvadoran citizen to receive asylum in the U.S. The country is now safer than Canada. If this guy thinks he is being unlawfully detained, he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his own country.
I don't see how this is relevant at all, nobody was claiming he had asylum here. Again, the problem is not that he was deported, the problem is that the US government violated a US court order.
He went before an immigration judge (which is not a real judge, but rather an employee of the DOJ) who determined that he was deportable due to gang ties. He then appealed to the Board of Immigration appeals, which is not a real court but an agency within the DOJ. The BIA affirmed the immigration judge.
He wasn’t eligible for asylum, so the immigration judge said he could be deported anywhere but El Salvador. There was no violation of a “court order,” just a mix-up within the executive branch about where an illegal alien could be deported to.
This is entirely as it is supposed to operate. See Archibald Tuttle
[0]. Cowardly, weak little men who would never have the nerve to look
another in the eye, are depicted in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" in a
different way to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. Whereas the "Thought
Police" of the latter are happy to use violence, the grey bureaucrats
of Gilliam's world hide behind malfunctioning machinery which is their
unpredictable attack dog. As with weapon dogs it is a vicarious
instrument which they claim to have "no control over".
There's no honesty in the current administration, legal arguments or otherwise.
It's all big talk and false macho garbage and then the next moment victim card when the president complains that people say bad things about him and he needs the legal system to come down on critics ...
You’re complaining about lack of honesty, but you’re talking about an article that fails to mention that this guy was ordered deported in 2019 for gang ties after an administrative appeal. Or that this man immigrated illegally in 2011 but didn’t file an asylum claim until 2018. Or that the immigration judge denied his asylum claim.
The information omitted by the AP article completely changes the understanding of what actually happened.
He was ordered deported because he wore a bulls hat and an anonymous informant claimed he was a member of a gang in a city he never lived in? Is that the basis we're talking about?
If a determination by an immigration judge followed by a BIA appeal isn’t sufficient to deport suspected gang members, how can we enforce our immigration laws at all? Do we need a jury trial with proof beyond a reasonable doubt?
Seems like probably yes! The rest of our legal system overwhelmingly favors errors that let the guilty go free over ones that punish the nonguilty. Due process is not just for citizens.
Due process here is administrative, not criminal, so the non-citizen isn't entitled to the kind of trial you're thinking he would get were he criminally charged. Due process for an administrative action just means the prescribed process under the law must be followed, which in US immigration means being seen by an executive branch (fake) judge in the immigration kangaroo courts.
> Due process here is administrative, not criminal
While it remains, sadly, Constitutional for the US to enslave people, and the various iterations of statute law abolishing the export slaves first in 1794 and then the slave trade more generally later probably do not bind the operations of the US government only other persons subject to it, the Constitution does require that those enslaved—and those being committed to CECOT are not merely being removed they are being enslaved and trafficked—may only be so enslaved as a punishment for a crime of which they have been duly committed.
So while the actual process in the Alien Enemies Act removals is executive fiat, and the due process under existing law for deportation (which is not afforded in Alien Enemies Act removals) is administrative rather than criminal, the Constitutionally-mandated process for those receiving the sanction being applied in the Alien Enemies Act process is normal criminal process.
It's an interesting idea, but good luck getting your argument heard. I've been tossed in immigration cell as a US citizen. I filed an FBI records search and there was not even an arrest record or any record of it happening, they just lock you up and that's that without even any process or paperwork. Since it is administrative I did not have the opportunity to talk to a lawyer or even see an immigration judge. They just locked me up and then when they were satisfied with stripping naked and searching me they dumped me on the street.
Sorry I was using due process in a more lay sense I guess, something along the lines of "the constraints we place on ourselves to limit the risk of accidental harms." None of that will be effective at preventing intentional harms, which is what this is anyway. It wasn't a good word choice on my part I don't think.
Removal of an illegal alien is not about “guilt” or “non-guilt.” And being expelled from the U.S. when you have no right to be here isn’t a “punishment.”
It’s like civil trespass. You don’t need a trial to kick someone off your property. And when the police remove them, they’re not being punished.
Look it's fine let it go. You think this is good because you can't imagine it happening to you or people you care about and I think it's bad because I can. People stripped of citizenship also have "no right to be here" and that's the obvious direction this is heading.
In the many years we've been discussing similar things I've never known you to change your mind on even the smallest point of any subject. I frankly just don't respect you enough to put more energy into this conversation.
Why on earth should people facing extreme legal sanction (deportation) not be entitled to a trial to dispute the claims against them? This is basic rule of law stuff. Currently the admin is trying to deny these people the right to plea their case in front of judges at all.
Because the law isn't based on justice, morality, or ethics. It is merely a system by which power is wielded. You are basing your judgement on a fictional caricature that is not reality. What 'should' happen has zero bearing there. The immigration judges are merely delegates of the AG, and only empowered to the extent the AG allows. It is an administrative action without protection criminal defendants get.
Believe me I'm well aware of the distinction between Article II administrative law judges and Article III judiciary. It's just bullshit, and SCOTUS is chipping away at the legality of admin law judges wielding sanctions at corportations, but apparently you can abduct individuals and send them to a place where it's likely they'll be tortured and killed and that's no problem.
People facing deportation have never been entitled to a trial. What you’re describing would be a vast expansion of the procedural requirements for deportation.
Deportation is not an “extreme sanction” if it’s proven that someone is not a U.S. citizen. Non-citizens have no right to remain on U.S. soil except what the government chooses to extend.
They are in fact currently at least entitled to a hearing to ascertain that they are removable. Absent that, the state could just start snatching anybody and shipping them to CECOT.
But this particular person we are talking about got a hearing and a BIA appeal and was found to be deportable. His asylum request claim was denied. What’s perplexing is why the immigration judge didn’t order him deported.
Thank you for the additional context. However, this individual would not have been eligible for expedited removal as he entered the US in 2011, and the arrest where he was alleged to be a gang member was in 2019. To be eligible for expedited removal a person must have not been present continuously for the previous 2 years. No indication that's the case here.
I suspect the judge would allow a deportation to a country other than El Salvador as soon as the government presented an option of a country willing to accept him. I also suspect few governments in the world would assent to such a transfer.
Let’s say I apply for a tourist visa to US, and I get denied. Am I entitled to a jury trial in US to decide whether I get the visa or not?
Let’s say I do get a tourist visa, get admitted at the border, and the second I cross it, I begin openly violating the terms of the tourist visa. Can the government deport me right there and then, or am I entitled to a full jury trial that decides my deportation?
Finally, let’s say that I violate my tourist visa covertly instead of overtly, so that the government finds out only 3 years later. You seem to be claiming in your comment that at that point, I am certainly entitled to a jury trial. If you answered “no, you’re not entitled to trial” in the previous scenarios, what exactly do you think has changed that makes me entitled to it now?
As I learned earlier today, time in country is legally relevant in this case. Current law is that someone who has been in the country for over 2 years is entitled to a hearing prior to removal.
To specifically answer your questions, I think it's reasonable that countries can deny visa applications, but I don't think they should be able to do so for behavior that would be legally be protected in the jurisdiction a person is trying to enter. I do not think the US should be able to deny visa applications for speech critical of the US government or Israel.
Once a person is in the country I would absolutely want for a judicial fact finding exercise to determine whether a person has violated the terms of their admittance. I would prefer that process to take the form of a jury trial, but practically speaking I will also accept the opportunity for people to appear before a judge as a workable but less than ideal situation.
For your final situation time in country changes things legally and entitles a person to a hearing before a judge. Ideally this would be a trial. Furthermore, it is repugnant to think that visas can be revoked for nothing but constitutionally protected activities, such as writing opinion pieces for a newspaper. I believe a judiciary not captured by fascists would find that such revocations are a violation of the plain letter of the first amendment and fourteenth amendment, and that the US government should not be able to take adverse actions against anyone for purely expressive activity.
> I don't think they should be able to do so for behavior that would be legally be protected in the jurisdiction a person is trying to enter
This is very much not the current practice. The DS-160 form asks you a bunch of questions about things that are not illegal in US, but will almost certainly result in denial of the visa. Not only that, it asks about your family members, and your answers can and will cause visa denial, even if your family members are not applying for a visa with you. This is good and proper: foreigners have no right to enter our country, and just because something is legal for US citizens doesn’t meant it’s desirable, or that we need to extend this right to noncitizens.
> I do not think the US should be able to deny visa applications for speech critical of the US government or Israel.
How about for being a fan of Hitler, glorifying Holocaust, and advocating for changes in US constitution to allow wholesale genocide of Jews and Muslims? None of this is illegal. You are saying that we should we not be able to keep this freak out of our country, right?
> Once a person is in the country I would absolutely want for a judicial fact finding exercise to determine whether a person has violated the terms of their admittance.
When you enter US through a port of entry, a random CBP employee is fully empowered to deny you entry if he decides you violate the terms of your visa, or some other entry denial reason applies. Importantly, you have no right to judicial review of this denial. You can make an administrative appeal, but you are not entitled in any way to have a judge hear your complaint. You are saying now that the second you get admitted into the country, the same process that was due to you before the entry is now insufficient to adjudicate your rights. I don’t buy it, and neither does the law.
> Furthermore, it is repugnant to think that visas can be revoked for nothing but constitutionally protected activities, such as writing opinion pieces for a newspaper.
Why? You can very much be denied the visa for constitutionally protected activities. Happens all the time, in fact. It would be ridiculous if we could deny entry people who glorify Holocaust, but couldn’t kick them out if we find out they do so only after we let them in. First amendment doesn’t prevent us from denying entry to foreigners based on their speech. This is settled law. If we can refuse their entry, I don’t see why it should prevent us from removing them too.
I appreciate the thought you put into this response, I'll admit that some of my contentions may be a failure of imagination on my part. I think I lean toward assuming admissibility even for freakishly bad speech, but I'm honestly not sure.
However, much like the legal concept that habeas corpus follows the physical body, once a person is in the United States they should be granted the protections that are granted to all persons within the US and subject to its jurisdiction (I'm using "should" as both normative and descriptive, current actions are in part so controversial because they're violating this principle).
You missed the point. Imagine we want to deport a British citizen to Britain for felony fraud committed in US, and it just so happens that the same person is wanted in Britain for a completely different crime, say burglary. We know that if we deport him, he will be jailed and prosecuted in Britain according to British laws. Should this prevent us from deporting him? Is him being considered a criminal in his own country somehow protecting him from deportation there? Are we only allowed to deport non-criminals, and must keep foreign criminals in US, lest they get thrown in jail in the countries we deport them to?
> In determining whether a fugitive should be extradited, the Secretary may consider issues properly raised before the extradition court or a habeas court as well as any humanitarian or other considerations for or against surrender, including whether surrender may violate the United States’ obligations under the Convention Against Torture. See 22 C.F.R. 95.1 et seq.
Hence the judge’s ruling, and the Administration’s admission of error.
That’s extradition, it’s a completely different process, unrelated to deporting illegal aliens. Moreover, I specifically gave Britain as an example target, and these concerns are not relevant for extraditing to Britain.
> If a determination by an immigration judge followed by a BIA appeal isn’t sufficient to deport suspected gang members
Kind of a weird question to ask, given that the deportations to El Salvador pretext on the Alien Enemies Act involve none of that, and this specific individual was granted protection from deportation to El Salvador at his immigration hearing in 2019, and the government chose not to appeal.
Note that as well as being in violation of the only decision made by an immigration judge in his individual case, his removal under the Administrations invocation of the Alien Enemies Act also is outside of the authority of invocation of that Act even if one assumes the invocation is valid, as, being invoked on the pretext of an existing war with Venezuela initiated by a Venezuelan invasion of the US (which is preposterous on its face, and the Administration is doing nothing to prosecute the war initiated by this invasion beyond deporting people without due process, demonstrating the lack of seriousness of the claim), it applies only to Venezuelan nationals, and he is Salvadoran.
That said, before being enslaved—and those sent to CECOT are both enslaved and trafficked in the international slave trade—under the 13th Amendment, yes, anyone is entitled to criminal trial.
This specific alien was not deported under the AEA. And the immigration judge and BIA both found him deportable on the basis of ties to MS13. And they denied his asylum claim.
So the scope of what’s at issue here is compliance with whatever “protection from deportation” might exist where someone has been found to be deportable due to gang ties, and found to lack a valid asylum claim. What possible justification could there be, and are we going to let all the 22 million illegal aliens in the country invoke such third-string justifications?
Does it matter? Both candidates promised to deport gang members. You think it’s possible to do what Harris promises to do by giving each one a jury trial?
If adhering to rule of law is inconvenient, the state doesn't get to ignore it. What if I were to anonymously report you as a gang member? Surely then we'd want to remove you from the country expeditiously, in fact so expeditiously that allowing you to make your case in court would harm public safety. Have fun in CECOT!
That's the strength of the evidence that this individual was a gang member. If it can happen to him it can happen to you or to me.
> In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
He was granted protection from deportation to El Salvador. You seem very concerned about the rule of law except when it's ignored or treated carelessly for immigrants.
I think this shows the worst part of HN. You can have thoughtful and interesting discussions 100+ comments and wider. But when a few people are triggered, they feel that they want to ruin the discussion for everybody else. Whereas they could have closed the tab, and move on.
No clue how to solve it at a wider scale. For me? I just don't engage in topics I don't care about. No need to force my views on others.
Update: it took 5 minutes for this article to also be flagged. Sigh.
It's got nothing to do with being triggered and everything to do with this website trying to not also become completely flooded with political discussions
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This is the way imo. I flagged this story, I believe in due process, I don’t agree with the administration but I also don’t want HN to become yet another tribal battleground and these posts only fuel those comments.
Why do you assume it was knee-jerk? The spirit is not now relevant a story is but the value it has. These stories are everywhere and there is little nuance in it. The comments of such a story also add no value and are a low signal tribal us vs them.
> Please don’t trivialize the suffering of others for the use of your argument.
I believe the people sent to a gulag would dislike more people not eschewing the sanctity of a internet forum, than someone 'trivializing' their suffering by using them for argument about how their situation should be discussed in said forum.
The value is that right now a HN user on a visa could be disappeared in to dungeon for months for political speech if Marco Rubio's goons notice him.
You may be familiar with the layer structure of communications: Internetwork layer,below that transport, below that link layer, and at the bottom the physical layer. The physical layer is where it gets really messy: noise, interference, reflections,whatever.
In human interaction, at the bottom layer is the simple fact that at any time, any human can just not follow the rules. That's not necessarily wrong. Maybe the rule just isn't important, and everyone recognises that. Or maybe some deep moral principle should override it. But at that point, other people have to make a moral call - do they ignore this breach of the rules? Do they object? Do they assess the moral principle as overriding?
The military have some usefully neutral terms for behaviors, one of which is 'revisionist'. A revisionist power wants to change the rules, a status quo power wants to keep them. It's fairly clear that the US government is presently a revisionist one. That means that pretty much everyone has now to make the call as to whether what they see is allowable or, given the scale and power of the US federal government, a five-alarm fire. And they will often want to take that to places where they have some kind of trust in the intelligence or good will of the other people there. For a lot of engineers, that's right here. If this were a workplace or uni, there would be break rooms and water-coolers where this kind of discussion could go. But HN has none of that - there's only one category of discussion. So if you flag every such discussion, you're denying them the opportunity to do that. And that's not keeping politics out of HN - that's a political act itself.
If you think you can bury your head and ignore politics for any amount of time, you are mistaken. Your purchases, comments, and actions are all political and strategic, whether you want to believe them to be or not.
Huh? You must not have seen the thread. I recognize that politics pop up everywhere but in HN they usually end up being low signal. There is no nuance or discussion to be had. And that’s why they get flagged. I am not the only member of HN that has no interest in brining political debate into HN.
That argument doesn't hold. HN itself has no obligation to be a political forum. There are many other forums for that already.
It's good to compartmentalize topics. Your argument is like complaining you're not learning Geography in your Physics class. The subject of the site is not politics and that is by design.
This design has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of any given submission related to the topic of politics. Conflating "people who want to keep conversations on-topic" and "people who support policy X" is not fair, helpful or accurate.
Why? That's a technology company buying another tech company, and so many people here either work at tech companies, have founded companies or some variation thereof. Very much on topic for hacker news.
Could you recommend some other forums where politics are allowed but people also have a deep technical knowledge and understanding? With also an expected level of mutual respect and effort given to discussion?
I never said they were as well moderated as HN, and I think that's the case for a variety of reasons, but primarily because people like dang (and now tomhow!) are very hard to find... and because people for some reason struggle to keep emotions in check when discussing politics
So there are many other forums available but you recognise that none of them are actually as suited to the kind of discussions we might want? It's very "but we've got Hacker News at home."
I am not obtuse I just have no desire to get into political debates on HN. It’s been beaten to death already. Now if something new happened or if there was a different way to look at something then it makes sense.
Facism is taking hold. There's no hyperbole. Everything will be affected. We need to respond. The only over-reaction is here in choosing to bury your head in the sand.
Yeah its absolutely wild to me that a single flag can silence this sort of discussion, especially given that the tech ecosystem is so influential in ascendant fascism.
Your right. I was thinking wrong. The only way to combat a flag is upvoting and even then it’s hard to see the impact since I believe it’s karma weighted.
Just based solely on comments alone you can see why these posts get flagged. It’s against the spirit of HN to house ideological battlegrounds regardless of whatever the truth or right side is.
Edit: I don’t have the exact theory of the inner workings but always assumed that’s why vouching existed. You are more effectively weighting the opinion of higher karma folks to help drive the site. You could always vouch for something but with each cycle it might down weight it as that’s a signal the story is too contentious. You probably lose some valuable discussions but also get to cut many more that are worthless.
You're trying to attribute reason and justification. You have 0 insight into why however many people clicked the 'flag' button. In fact, there's no way to even enter a reason.
I'm looking at the simple fact that flagging/disappearing an article with 150 comments by a select minority is abhorrent in of itself. (Doubly ridiculous is the disappeared article is about disappearing people.)
Again, if you're too triggered about a subject matter, close the tab. Turns out, that's a really simple operation.
Please don’t project, no one’s triggered, at least not me. This kind of language is why these threads get flagged. The comments are low-signal rehashes without new value and just fuel tribal conflict. People can vouch, but that may still lead to moderation.
> Please don’t project.... This kind of language is why these threads get flagged.
As the person who you responded to noted, you don't know why other people flagged a thread. None of us do. That you believe it's due to tribal battles is your own projection.
What's not a projection is that many people chose to have a discussion on a topic despite the flag, and that's interesting, so maybe worth discussing.
I am one of the flaggers. I do have some idea and that’s why I said don’t project ideas. This is the exact reason. I am simply saying these stories usually miss the mark for HN, you are welcome to vouch for it.
You said: "This kind of language is why these threads get flagged. "
But you don't know that, so the claim is projection. As a flagger, you only know why you flagged, but don't know why anyone else flagged. There are many alternative reasons any given story, political or otherwise, could be flagged. People can be engaging in tribalism as their reason for flagging. What's worse: engaging in discussion that is along tribal lines, or hiding discussion for tribal reasons? Which does more damage to this community?
Since we can't know why a given story is flagged, a better discussion might be: given that many people in the community want to discuss a topic despite a flag, how can HN better support those community members?
We have one signal: a low-fidelity binary flag we can't know the reason for and how many people voted for it; and another signal: the discussion, a high fidelity signal we can look into and see all kinds of useful discourse. So clearly your claim that these topics are not wanted on HN is false, given the community involvement in these topics.
Maybe there is some tribalism, but generally it's not at all like reddit, and I find those discussion insightful. Maybe you don't, and that's fine. But why does that mean you get veto over the many people who want to have those discussions here?
Why can't we support those discussions, that again people here want to have, in a way that doesn't involve treating the topic as verboten? Because you keep saying these topics miss the HN mark, yet the community is continually interested in these topics.
So maybe it's the guidelines miss the mark and need updating to meet the community where it's at.
You are free to vouch and introduce moderators into the process. It still is flagged but it may happen. What nuance do you think the prior discussion that was flagged added?
In general reading political-charged discussions here gives me insight into how people with opposing viewpoints think.
And yes I'm aware of how the flag and vouch system works.
My point was that given the amount of discussion that occurs every day about how this mechanism is failing to meet community needs, perhaps HN needs to start talking about better ways to serve the people.
I could not speak on the prior post. I did not flag it. But you are indeed projecting intent and feelings because you yourself have strong feelings in it. That’s ok.
I can speak for myself, I don’t care to see political posts that don’t involve anything new and also have low signal in the discussion. You end with either side either demonizing or praising. Again that’s simply my take on it which might differ from others. It’s not I don’t like the topic but rather I don’t want HN to be another space that gets overwhelmed with political talk. Same with discussions on Israel vs Palestine.
While I sometimes dip in the political side of comments I am one of those folks that flag these type of posts.
I think they detract from HN and before you start accusing me of being something I am not, I fully support due process. It’s bit of a blurry line but it comes down to seeing how polarizing these topics are and the horse has already been beaten. I always have felt that HN is a mix of excellent moderation as well as a bit of the will of the audience. I don’t want this to be a place to talk politics, it’s already so pervasive.
[I w]ish there was a "vouch" option for when things that the US political right feels is an attack, despite it just being facts and worthy of discussion in an economic sector that is heavily connected with immigration, is flagged.
And now the current discussion is also flagged. The flagging system is entirely broken. HN makes a point not to have Reddit-style post downvoting, but instead it implemented something even worse in practice; at least downvoted posts on Reddit don't get automatically disappeared.
It is terrifying is what it is. That HN seems to be pretending that everything is going just fine and allowing these discussions to be buried is more than a little bit concerning. Have a fucking spine!
Just asking a question like proves the point. Bluntly yes those discussions are fine. With the huge polarization in politics, regardless of side it devolves into an endless low-signal comments that add nothing new of value. There is no added value in any comments that would crop up from a post like this. It is also why anything related to Israel vs Gaza get auto flagged. People like to project it’s because of secret operations to remove all negative publicity but generally it’s more mundane, folks don’t want to rehash the same arguments over and over.
I understand the idea here of course. I have been posting and commenting on HN for the better part of two decades. I don't want to see HN descend into a complete chaos of political news, I agree with that. But it also feels not so right to have absolutely zero response or reflection on current events within this community given how close this democracy seems to be teetering on the edge.
This community DOES generally have a higher level of discourse than other parts of the internet and I don't believe that is wholly because we avoid contentious topics. (thus my vim vs emacs example)
Tenure of two decades has little to do with these stories having low signal. These news stories are everywhere, the comments have low to no value and the article itself has no nuance or insight.
This is my feeling exactly. I also don't want to be discussing politics here and have used the "hide" function many times since 2009. But this is bigger than everything we'be been discussing here in all that time, and if we don't fight back soon everything we have will be lost.
Israel v Palestine. Lots of posts will pop up over time. If it’s simply an another attach or similar and you start seeing a he roll of disagreement from both sides, flag. There is nothing additive to it. I remember vouching a story though that was touching on Israel’s PR marketing ability of the war. That’s fascination and both new as well as high potential to discuss something new.
In the current immigration and administration. I feel like to some degree the horse has been beaten. There is not much to add for yet another misstep in the administrations policy. There is both no new interesting angles from the news itself and the discussion has been beaten to death by both sides already.
It is not an indication that the topic is not important but to me that there is nothing left to say on the topic. I am certain there are folks that would love to keep going on and on about it for either side but nothing new or engaging comes from it. I am sure others disagree but that is my mental model.
For the 94th time: It's not that we don't have a spine. It's not that we're pretending everything is fine. It's that we don't want to discuss it all day long on HN. We want HN to be something else than a political discussion site.
Then don't discuss it? Literally don't click the thread, that's all it takes. Heck, you can even hide it! Why does everyone else have to pretend the world doesn't exist for your sensitivites? Why are a couple of users allowed to entirely dictate what is "authorized" to discuss?
The site guidelines dictate what is appropriate to discuss. The site guidelines say that most politics is off-topic. Partly because political conversations turn into... into the kinds of discussions that the political threads here have been turning into.
Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy, Tildes X, Reddit. Do you want more?
On Bluesky and X you're actually fairly likely to read the conversation or at least policy viewpoints of actual policy makers and think tanks. Rather than hackers speculating about a field they have little experience in.
> Davino Watson, a U.S. citizen, was wrongfully held in immigration detention centers for more than three years while he sought to prove his citizenship.
The cruelty and capriciousness is the point. Abolish ICE.
An immigration judge ordered him deported in 2019 because of suspected gang ties, after an appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals: https://www.wmar2news.com/infocus/family-of-alleged-gang-mem... (“Other court documents show an immigration judge ordered Abrego-Garcia to be removed from the U.S. back in April 2019 over his alleged gang ties.”).
> Despite affirming Abrego-Garcia's link to MS-13, and authorizing his deportation, an immigration judge determined he should be removed somewhere other than El Salvador due to potential safety concerns.
Who on earth would take someone suspected to be a gang member, other than his home country where he has the right to return? What makes more sense it to deport him (not that I agree with deportation here) to El Salvador and have the authorities escort him to some bumfuck area of the country where no one would know him.
Immigration judges aren't judges in the conventional sense (like the ones in the judicial branch), so they don't have the legal power you're thinking of. They are members of the executive branch and judges basically only in title. They are actually just shills ('delegates') for the AG, who as far as I can tell can override them by fiat. [ Not legal advice ]
Since AP decided to not actually even say this in their article:
"Abrego Garcia was deemed by an immigration judge in 2019 to be a likely member of the MS-13 gang — a decision Abrego Garcia sharply contested and that the government credited to information gleaned from a confidential informant. But the court also agreed at the time that he should not be deported to El Salvador, finding that his fear of being persecuted was credible."
> In support thereof, ICE offered a Gang Field Interview Sheet (“GFIS”) generated by PGPD. The GFIS explained that the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique.
> According to the Department of Justice and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, the “Westerns” clique operates in Brentwood, Long Island, in New York, a state that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia has never lived in.
> The attorney for Plaintiff Abrego Garcia subsequently made multiple attempts to obtain additional information from law enforcement concerning these allegations. PGPD indicated that it did not have any incident report related to the Home Deport episode at all, nor did the Department have any incident reports containing his name. The Hyattsville City Police Department (“HCPD”), on the other hand, confirmed it had an incident report for the Home Depot incident, but that only 3 people were named and Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was not one of them, nor did it have any other incident reports with his name in its database. His attorney also contacted the PGPD Inspector General requesting to speak to the detective who authored the GFIS sheet, but was informed that the detective had been suspended. A request to speak to other officers in the Gang Unit was declined.
> On August 9, 2019, the attorney for ICE indicated on the record that ICE had conferred with its law enforcement partners and that all the evidence and intelligence they had was what was contained in the GFIS.
This is intentionally deceptive messaging, as per usual. This "Maryland man" was an illegal immigrant who had been previously found by a judge to've been a member of MS-13.
Wish there was a "vouch" option for when things that the US political right feels is an attack, despite it just being facts and worthy of discussion in an economic sector that is heavily connected with immigration, is flagged.
1. It requires flagging first. And that immediately kills posts ability to naturally grow. They're now invisible, so getting karma to get visibility is way harder. Even if they're unflagged, they're inherently disadvantaged and the original flagger still gets their way.
2. It's not accounted for in deduplication. So if a post is unflagged and it loses all momentum, nobody can repost it or it gets flagged for duplication!
3. Only some people can vouch, and they usually don't even know it exists.
4. And even if you can vouch, you need to go looking for flagged posts to find the post to vouch for.
Maybe some people should lose their flagging privileges when they're clearly abusing it? But I have a sneaking suspicion that won't happen.
Most of what you said is correct but, in this case, the post cannot be vouched anymore. Only [dead] posts can be vouched and this was (presumably) vouched enough when it became [flagged][dead] to have those tags removed until it was flagged more to be [flagged] again. Because it's not also [dead], it cannot be vouched anymore. I've seen that pattern progress a couple of times and it lines up with the posts I am actually able to vouch. Rarely, there are comments that are [flagged] but not [dead], which similarly cannot be vouched.
It could be what you say, “political right feeling attacked” or folks like me that that have seen this post before and other like it and think there is not much more value beating the horse some more.
From the numrtosity of comments in threads like these, we may infer these to be relevant and interesting conversations regarding subjects capable of holding people's attention, whether direct or topical.
162 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 210 ms ] threadSome pretty flimsy evidence…
And all this time this guy was what? Working and being productive like anyone else…
Vibes-based justice is back. AI-driven deportations next?
this what happens when you centralize all decision making to people who have no local knowledge of the community they are administrating, and predicate their jobs on following a checklist, usually as implemented by buggy software, instead of making a judgement call based on experience and circumstances.
> Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
This is what happens when you elect a convicted felon, rapist, bullying loser compromised by the Russian state who outright says he wants to be a dictator and he puts sycophants and bullies into positions of power to do exactly that.
Saying this is about local vs nonlocal governance is nothing more than shirking the responsibility of 70,000,000 Americans who wanted this and 100,000,000 Americans who couldn't be bothered to stop it.
Either way I think it speaks to the effectiveness / end result of policy where you take someone working and being productive, paying taxes … and then expend government resources to prevent that (and apparently do a poor job at that even).
This isn't the only case, how many others are out there? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/its-a-tradit...
This isn't just flying somebody to their country of origin and leaving them there. This is flying somebody to an unrelated country and the paying a foreign nation to throw them in an overcrowded prison with no oversight for the rest of their lives.
That's true of most of the people the Trump administration are sending to CECOT in El Salvador, but not the guy the article is about:
> Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador around 2011, “fleeing gang violence,” according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.
> The allegations about his affiliation with MS-13 stem from a 2019 arrest outside a Maryland Home Depot store, where he and other young men were looking for work, according to the complaint.
They also claim he had legal protections from being deported specifically to El Salvador:
> An immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request in October 2019 but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador.
> In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
This is the part that concerns the US. Also the part where this is all being paid for by American tax dollars.
There is no legitimate reason for any El Salvadoran citizen to receive asylum in the U.S. The country is now safer than Canada. If this guy thinks he is being unlawfully detained, he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his own country.
The Guardian article gives some more background, and explains these (catholic) tattoos:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/its-a-tradit...
(Hint: there are legitimate reasons for receiving asylum in the US as well.)
He was not granted protection from deportation, he was granted protection from being deported to El Salvador. The administrative error is that he was indeed deported to El Salvador. If he was deported elsewhere this wouldn't be an issue:
> Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said U.S. government lawyers had multiple opportunities to try legally to deport him, including appealing the judge’s 2019 decision or deporting him elsewhere.
> The article omits the information about the immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals finding that he was deportable for being an MS13 member, making it seem like the “administrative error” was about that.
It is my understanding that he had not been convicted of anything and that the administration immediately backpedaled on the claim. Do you have contradictory source?
> There is no legitimate reason for any El Salvadoran citizen to receive asylum in the U.S. The country is now safer than Canada. If this guy thinks he is being unlawfully detained, he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his own country.
I don't see how this is relevant at all, nobody was claiming he had asylum here. Again, the problem is not that he was deported, the problem is that the US government violated a US court order.
This is exactly what I was complaining about when I said the article omits key information. Here is a better one: https://www.wmar2news.com/infocus/family-of-alleged-gang-mem...
He went before an immigration judge (which is not a real judge, but rather an employee of the DOJ) who determined that he was deportable due to gang ties. He then appealed to the Board of Immigration appeals, which is not a real court but an agency within the DOJ. The BIA affirmed the immigration judge.
He wasn’t eligible for asylum, so the immigration judge said he could be deported anywhere but El Salvador. There was no violation of a “court order,” just a mix-up within the executive branch about where an illegal alien could be deported to.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)
It's all big talk and false macho garbage and then the next moment victim card when the president complains that people say bad things about him and he needs the legal system to come down on critics ...
The information omitted by the AP article completely changes the understanding of what actually happened.
While it remains, sadly, Constitutional for the US to enslave people, and the various iterations of statute law abolishing the export slaves first in 1794 and then the slave trade more generally later probably do not bind the operations of the US government only other persons subject to it, the Constitution does require that those enslaved—and those being committed to CECOT are not merely being removed they are being enslaved and trafficked—may only be so enslaved as a punishment for a crime of which they have been duly committed.
So while the actual process in the Alien Enemies Act removals is executive fiat, and the due process under existing law for deportation (which is not afforded in Alien Enemies Act removals) is administrative rather than criminal, the Constitutionally-mandated process for those receiving the sanction being applied in the Alien Enemies Act process is normal criminal process.
It’s like civil trespass. You don’t need a trial to kick someone off your property. And when the police remove them, they’re not being punished.
In the many years we've been discussing similar things I've never known you to change your mind on even the smallest point of any subject. I frankly just don't respect you enough to put more energy into this conversation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
Deportation is not an “extreme sanction” if it’s proven that someone is not a U.S. citizen. Non-citizens have no right to remain on U.S. soil except what the government chooses to extend.
But this particular person we are talking about got a hearing and a BIA appeal and was found to be deportable. His asylum request claim was denied. What’s perplexing is why the immigration judge didn’t order him deported.
I suspect the judge would allow a deportation to a country other than El Salvador as soon as the government presented an option of a country willing to accept him. I also suspect few governments in the world would assent to such a transfer.
Let’s say I do get a tourist visa, get admitted at the border, and the second I cross it, I begin openly violating the terms of the tourist visa. Can the government deport me right there and then, or am I entitled to a full jury trial that decides my deportation?
Finally, let’s say that I violate my tourist visa covertly instead of overtly, so that the government finds out only 3 years later. You seem to be claiming in your comment that at that point, I am certainly entitled to a jury trial. If you answered “no, you’re not entitled to trial” in the previous scenarios, what exactly do you think has changed that makes me entitled to it now?
To specifically answer your questions, I think it's reasonable that countries can deny visa applications, but I don't think they should be able to do so for behavior that would be legally be protected in the jurisdiction a person is trying to enter. I do not think the US should be able to deny visa applications for speech critical of the US government or Israel.
Once a person is in the country I would absolutely want for a judicial fact finding exercise to determine whether a person has violated the terms of their admittance. I would prefer that process to take the form of a jury trial, but practically speaking I will also accept the opportunity for people to appear before a judge as a workable but less than ideal situation.
For your final situation time in country changes things legally and entitles a person to a hearing before a judge. Ideally this would be a trial. Furthermore, it is repugnant to think that visas can be revoked for nothing but constitutionally protected activities, such as writing opinion pieces for a newspaper. I believe a judiciary not captured by fascists would find that such revocations are a violation of the plain letter of the first amendment and fourteenth amendment, and that the US government should not be able to take adverse actions against anyone for purely expressive activity.
This is very much not the current practice. The DS-160 form asks you a bunch of questions about things that are not illegal in US, but will almost certainly result in denial of the visa. Not only that, it asks about your family members, and your answers can and will cause visa denial, even if your family members are not applying for a visa with you. This is good and proper: foreigners have no right to enter our country, and just because something is legal for US citizens doesn’t meant it’s desirable, or that we need to extend this right to noncitizens.
> I do not think the US should be able to deny visa applications for speech critical of the US government or Israel.
How about for being a fan of Hitler, glorifying Holocaust, and advocating for changes in US constitution to allow wholesale genocide of Jews and Muslims? None of this is illegal. You are saying that we should we not be able to keep this freak out of our country, right?
> Once a person is in the country I would absolutely want for a judicial fact finding exercise to determine whether a person has violated the terms of their admittance.
When you enter US through a port of entry, a random CBP employee is fully empowered to deny you entry if he decides you violate the terms of your visa, or some other entry denial reason applies. Importantly, you have no right to judicial review of this denial. You can make an administrative appeal, but you are not entitled in any way to have a judge hear your complaint. You are saying now that the second you get admitted into the country, the same process that was due to you before the entry is now insufficient to adjudicate your rights. I don’t buy it, and neither does the law.
> Furthermore, it is repugnant to think that visas can be revoked for nothing but constitutionally protected activities, such as writing opinion pieces for a newspaper.
Why? You can very much be denied the visa for constitutionally protected activities. Happens all the time, in fact. It would be ridiculous if we could deny entry people who glorify Holocaust, but couldn’t kick them out if we find out they do so only after we let them in. First amendment doesn’t prevent us from denying entry to foreigners based on their speech. This is settled law. If we can refuse their entry, I don’t see why it should prevent us from removing them too.
However, much like the legal concept that habeas corpus follows the physical body, once a person is in the United States they should be granted the protections that are granted to all persons within the US and subject to its jurisdiction (I'm using "should" as both normative and descriptive, current actions are in part so controversial because they're violating this principle).
Before sending someone to an overseas slave camp no one has ever been released from? Uh, yes.
... in direct violation of an American judge's legal order. Even the White House admits this!
We're just gonna keep glossing over that fact, eh?
https://www.state.gov/extraditions
> In determining whether a fugitive should be extradited, the Secretary may consider issues properly raised before the extradition court or a habeas court as well as any humanitarian or other considerations for or against surrender, including whether surrender may violate the United States’ obligations under the Convention Against Torture. See 22 C.F.R. 95.1 et seq.
Hence the judge’s ruling, and the Administration’s admission of error.
The UK, incidentally, does the same for us if sending someone here would result in the death penalty.
Kind of a weird question to ask, given that the deportations to El Salvador pretext on the Alien Enemies Act involve none of that, and this specific individual was granted protection from deportation to El Salvador at his immigration hearing in 2019, and the government chose not to appeal.
Note that as well as being in violation of the only decision made by an immigration judge in his individual case, his removal under the Administrations invocation of the Alien Enemies Act also is outside of the authority of invocation of that Act even if one assumes the invocation is valid, as, being invoked on the pretext of an existing war with Venezuela initiated by a Venezuelan invasion of the US (which is preposterous on its face, and the Administration is doing nothing to prosecute the war initiated by this invasion beyond deporting people without due process, demonstrating the lack of seriousness of the claim), it applies only to Venezuelan nationals, and he is Salvadoran.
That said, before being enslaved—and those sent to CECOT are both enslaved and trafficked in the international slave trade—under the 13th Amendment, yes, anyone is entitled to criminal trial.
So the scope of what’s at issue here is compliance with whatever “protection from deportation” might exist where someone has been found to be deportable due to gang ties, and found to lack a valid asylum claim. What possible justification could there be, and are we going to let all the 22 million illegal aliens in the country invoke such third-string justifications?
That's the strength of the evidence that this individual was a gang member. If it can happen to him it can happen to you or to me.
Due process has been working mostly fine for the last 200+ years, no need to switch to fascism.
> In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
He was granted protection from deportation to El Salvador. You seem very concerned about the rule of law except when it's ignored or treated carelessly for immigrants.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43544534
210 points, 146 comments
I think this shows the worst part of HN. You can have thoughtful and interesting discussions 100+ comments and wider. But when a few people are triggered, they feel that they want to ruin the discussion for everybody else. Whereas they could have closed the tab, and move on.
No clue how to solve it at a wider scale. For me? I just don't engage in topics I don't care about. No need to force my views on others.
Update: it took 5 minutes for this article to also be flagged. Sigh.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Maybe think about this before knee-jerk flagging
We are not in normal times to have normal rules.
The spirit of HN guidelines still exist. What value do you believe is derived from a discussion like this?
I believe the people sent to a gulag would dislike more people not eschewing the sanctity of a internet forum, than someone 'trivializing' their suffering by using them for argument about how their situation should be discussed in said forum.
The value is that right now a HN user on a visa could be disappeared in to dungeon for months for political speech if Marco Rubio's goons notice him.
You may be familiar with the layer structure of communications: Internetwork layer,below that transport, below that link layer, and at the bottom the physical layer. The physical layer is where it gets really messy: noise, interference, reflections,whatever.
In human interaction, at the bottom layer is the simple fact that at any time, any human can just not follow the rules. That's not necessarily wrong. Maybe the rule just isn't important, and everyone recognises that. Or maybe some deep moral principle should override it. But at that point, other people have to make a moral call - do they ignore this breach of the rules? Do they object? Do they assess the moral principle as overriding?
The military have some usefully neutral terms for behaviors, one of which is 'revisionist'. A revisionist power wants to change the rules, a status quo power wants to keep them. It's fairly clear that the US government is presently a revisionist one. That means that pretty much everyone has now to make the call as to whether what they see is allowable or, given the scale and power of the US federal government, a five-alarm fire. And they will often want to take that to places where they have some kind of trust in the intelligence or good will of the other people there. For a lot of engineers, that's right here. If this were a workplace or uni, there would be break rooms and water-coolers where this kind of discussion could go. But HN has none of that - there's only one category of discussion. So if you flag every such discussion, you're denying them the opportunity to do that. And that's not keeping politics out of HN - that's a political act itself.
If you think you can bury your head and ignore politics for any amount of time, you are mistaken. Your purchases, comments, and actions are all political and strategic, whether you want to believe them to be or not.
It's good to compartmentalize topics. Your argument is like complaining you're not learning Geography in your Physics class. The subject of the site is not politics and that is by design.
This design has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of any given submission related to the topic of politics. Conflating "people who want to keep conversations on-topic" and "people who support policy X" is not fair, helpful or accurate.
Go flag this one then.
Could you recommend some other forums where politics are allowed but people also have a deep technical knowledge and understanding? With also an expected level of mutual respect and effort given to discussion?
Maybe to flag, you should have to click 'hide' first, and be angry enough that you then go and look it up in the hidden list to flag it.
It's short sighted, when this kind of thing comes banging on their door, they won't be able to 'flag' it away.
Edit: I don’t have the exact theory of the inner workings but always assumed that’s why vouching existed. You are more effectively weighting the opinion of higher karma folks to help drive the site. You could always vouch for something but with each cycle it might down weight it as that’s a signal the story is too contentious. You probably lose some valuable discussions but also get to cut many more that are worthless.
I'm looking at the simple fact that flagging/disappearing an article with 150 comments by a select minority is abhorrent in of itself. (Doubly ridiculous is the disappeared article is about disappearing people.)
Again, if you're too triggered about a subject matter, close the tab. Turns out, that's a really simple operation.
As the person who you responded to noted, you don't know why other people flagged a thread. None of us do. That you believe it's due to tribal battles is your own projection.
What's not a projection is that many people chose to have a discussion on a topic despite the flag, and that's interesting, so maybe worth discussing.
But you don't know that, so the claim is projection. As a flagger, you only know why you flagged, but don't know why anyone else flagged. There are many alternative reasons any given story, political or otherwise, could be flagged. People can be engaging in tribalism as their reason for flagging. What's worse: engaging in discussion that is along tribal lines, or hiding discussion for tribal reasons? Which does more damage to this community?
Since we can't know why a given story is flagged, a better discussion might be: given that many people in the community want to discuss a topic despite a flag, how can HN better support those community members?
We have one signal: a low-fidelity binary flag we can't know the reason for and how many people voted for it; and another signal: the discussion, a high fidelity signal we can look into and see all kinds of useful discourse. So clearly your claim that these topics are not wanted on HN is false, given the community involvement in these topics.
Maybe there is some tribalism, but generally it's not at all like reddit, and I find those discussion insightful. Maybe you don't, and that's fine. But why does that mean you get veto over the many people who want to have those discussions here?
Why can't we support those discussions, that again people here want to have, in a way that doesn't involve treating the topic as verboten? Because you keep saying these topics miss the HN mark, yet the community is continually interested in these topics.
So maybe it's the guidelines miss the mark and need updating to meet the community where it's at.
And yes I'm aware of how the flag and vouch system works.
My point was that given the amount of discussion that occurs every day about how this mechanism is failing to meet community needs, perhaps HN needs to start talking about better ways to serve the people.
However there is a large difference in mindset between the following:
1. I don't like the topic or the conversation, so I'm closing the tab or leaving.
2. I'm going to shit on the people who are talking, and force THEM to leave.
That's what flagging does.
And I'm arguing that flagging a post with 150+ comments where people are having spirited discussions is a terrible poisonous thing for a community.
I can speak for myself, I don’t care to see political posts that don’t involve anything new and also have low signal in the discussion. You end with either side either demonizing or praising. Again that’s simply my take on it which might differ from others. It’s not I don’t like the topic but rather I don’t want HN to be another space that gets overwhelmed with political talk. Same with discussions on Israel vs Palestine.
I think they detract from HN and before you start accusing me of being something I am not, I fully support due process. It’s bit of a blurry line but it comes down to seeing how polarizing these topics are and the horse has already been beaten. I always have felt that HN is a mix of excellent moderation as well as a bit of the will of the audience. I don’t want this to be a place to talk politics, it’s already so pervasive.
[I w]ish there was a "vouch" option for when things that the US political right feels is an attack, despite it just being facts and worthy of discussion in an economic sector that is heavily connected with immigration, is flagged.
This community DOES generally have a higher level of discourse than other parts of the internet and I don't believe that is wholly because we avoid contentious topics. (thus my vim vs emacs example)
Israel v Palestine. Lots of posts will pop up over time. If it’s simply an another attach or similar and you start seeing a he roll of disagreement from both sides, flag. There is nothing additive to it. I remember vouching a story though that was touching on Israel’s PR marketing ability of the war. That’s fascination and both new as well as high potential to discuss something new.
In the current immigration and administration. I feel like to some degree the horse has been beaten. There is not much to add for yet another misstep in the administrations policy. There is both no new interesting angles from the news itself and the discussion has been beaten to death by both sides already.
It is not an indication that the topic is not important but to me that there is nothing left to say on the topic. I am certain there are folks that would love to keep going on and on about it for either side but nothing new or engaging comes from it. I am sure others disagree but that is my mental model.
On Bluesky and X you're actually fairly likely to read the conversation or at least policy viewpoints of actual policy makers and think tanks. Rather than hackers speculating about a field they have little experience in.
The following article is from 2018. It’s even worse now. They are out of control.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-a...
> Davino Watson, a U.S. citizen, was wrongfully held in immigration detention centers for more than three years while he sought to prove his citizenship.
The cruelty and capriciousness is the point. Abolish ICE.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/1003.10
"Abrego Garcia was deemed by an immigration judge in 2019 to be a likely member of the MS-13 gang — a decision Abrego Garcia sharply contested and that the government credited to information gleaned from a confidential informant. But the court also agreed at the time that he should not be deported to El Salvador, finding that his fear of being persecuted was credible."
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/01/salvador-man-maryla...
Court filing: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578...
Relevant sections include:
> In support thereof, ICE offered a Gang Field Interview Sheet (“GFIS”) generated by PGPD. The GFIS explained that the only reason to believe Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was a gang member was that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique.
> According to the Department of Justice and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, the “Westerns” clique operates in Brentwood, Long Island, in New York, a state that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia has never lived in.
> The attorney for Plaintiff Abrego Garcia subsequently made multiple attempts to obtain additional information from law enforcement concerning these allegations. PGPD indicated that it did not have any incident report related to the Home Deport episode at all, nor did the Department have any incident reports containing his name. The Hyattsville City Police Department (“HCPD”), on the other hand, confirmed it had an incident report for the Home Depot incident, but that only 3 people were named and Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was not one of them, nor did it have any other incident reports with his name in its database. His attorney also contacted the PGPD Inspector General requesting to speak to the detective who authored the GFIS sheet, but was informed that the detective had been suspended. A request to speak to other officers in the Gang Unit was declined.
> On August 9, 2019, the attorney for ICE indicated on the record that ICE had conferred with its law enforcement partners and that all the evidence and intelligence they had was what was contained in the GFIS.
1. It requires flagging first. And that immediately kills posts ability to naturally grow. They're now invisible, so getting karma to get visibility is way harder. Even if they're unflagged, they're inherently disadvantaged and the original flagger still gets their way. 2. It's not accounted for in deduplication. So if a post is unflagged and it loses all momentum, nobody can repost it or it gets flagged for duplication! 3. Only some people can vouch, and they usually don't even know it exists. 4. And even if you can vouch, you need to go looking for flagged posts to find the post to vouch for.
Maybe some people should lose their flagging privileges when they're clearly abusing it? But I have a sneaking suspicion that won't happen.