ICE just seems to be a setup for "federal personal thugs".
We've seen them now threatening not just American citizens, other politicians, judges. ICE has been given instructions to simply go operate on their own without direction to "find" people.
The laws surroundings them are surprisingly forgiving / people have few protections. This step seems to just be to dump vast quantities of data they could just for anything they wish from departments that had rules for how they can use that data ... to a group that has few rules ...
That’s one way to push generally law abiding, tax paying people into the black market where they won’t pay taxes, and have a higher likelihood of dabbling in criminal enterprise.
I would recommend reading Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell if these types of thing concern you. A relevant passage:
"First, I would never provide my home address on any application or W-9 form. This should only be your PO Box, UPS Box, or PMB address. Your employer likely does not care much about where you live, unless the job has residency requirements, such as a police officer. The IRS does not object to the use of a mail box address. They just want their money."
If you're an American, you're living in the "before times". You need to take action to preserve your freedom, or you'll find yourself in an Orwellian hell hole wondering why you didn't do something when it was much easier to take political action.
If they are serious, they'd be using taxpayer data not to find people to deport, but to audit those with labor expenses that don't map to American taxpayers. Many American business owners are getting rich on the back of "illegal" labor, and the US's enforcement efforts seem to be willingly ignoring the demand side of the equation.
It’s obviously an extremely efficient way to identify those in the country illegally as it will provide their address, work location, information that can be easily, whether they’ve stolen someone’s identity and quickly linked to another database that can verify work authorization. Third parties like employers/banks/payors have to provide the information that they have into the system.
Whether you like it or not, it totally makes sense that ICE would want information from the IRS.
Any existing theories where all this is going? What’s the long term play here?
When Bush Jr. was president, he grabbed so much power. Didn’t make sense he would just hand that power over to the next guy, but he indeed have a peaceful transfer of power.
I’m not sure Democrats would want to give this much power to ICE. Not really thinking about Trump as a third term, but maybe we’re just doomed to have Republicans in power - forever being elected?
as for the illegals, if they're in the IRS database that means they're paying taxes -- which means they're contributing positively to the economy; give them legal status so they can continue contributing -- all this does is push them to _not_ file
the country would be much better off if engineers' time was spent building systems to catch the large amount of tax fraud by the wealthy -- IRS estimated a tax gap of $700 billion.
Rather than spending billions of dollars on ICE and filling up the queues, the money should have been spent on the bottleneck, the courts. Invest in more courts and judges to address the bottleneck. It's obvious to me it's not about kicking and keeping some people out, it's about dehumanizing and detaining people for long periods of time, or indefinitely, and forcing them to provide free and cheap labor via the for-profit prison BS, here in the US or abroad.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 26.4 ms ] threadWe've seen them now threatening not just American citizens, other politicians, judges. ICE has been given instructions to simply go operate on their own without direction to "find" people.
The laws surroundings them are surprisingly forgiving / people have few protections. This step seems to just be to dump vast quantities of data they could just for anything they wish from departments that had rules for how they can use that data ... to a group that has few rules ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/us/politics/ice-expansion...
"First, I would never provide my home address on any application or W-9 form. This should only be your PO Box, UPS Box, or PMB address. Your employer likely does not care much about where you live, unless the job has residency requirements, such as a police officer. The IRS does not object to the use of a mail box address. They just want their money."
Whether you like it or not, it totally makes sense that ICE would want information from the IRS.
When Bush Jr. was president, he grabbed so much power. Didn’t make sense he would just hand that power over to the next guy, but he indeed have a peaceful transfer of power.
I’m not sure Democrats would want to give this much power to ICE. Not really thinking about Trump as a third term, but maybe we’re just doomed to have Republicans in power - forever being elected?
as for the illegals, if they're in the IRS database that means they're paying taxes -- which means they're contributing positively to the economy; give them legal status so they can continue contributing -- all this does is push them to _not_ file
the country would be much better off if engineers' time was spent building systems to catch the large amount of tax fraud by the wealthy -- IRS estimated a tax gap of $700 billion.
Rather than spending billions of dollars on ICE and filling up the queues, the money should have been spent on the bottleneck, the courts. Invest in more courts and judges to address the bottleneck. It's obvious to me it's not about kicking and keeping some people out, it's about dehumanizing and detaining people for long periods of time, or indefinitely, and forcing them to provide free and cheap labor via the for-profit prison BS, here in the US or abroad.