I'm sure they'll run on not using it but when systems like this exist they tend to find applications
> The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources.
So, they have a tool that sucks up data from a bunch of different sources, including Medicaid. But there's no actual nexus between Medicaid and illegal immigrants in this reporting.
Edit: In the link to their earlier filings, EFF claims that some states enroll illegal immigrants in Medicaid: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/eff-court-protect-our-...
To accomplish things like that, a lot of us are going to be removed. I don't think these are jokes, it's a pattern of statements to condition and normalize. A thing he has done over and over.
The FBI has been showing up at the door of some people who dare to organize protests against ICE.
Stingrays have been deployed to protests, ICE is collecting photos of protestors for their database, and has been querying YCombinator funded Flock to pull automated license plate camera data from around the country. Trump, Vance, Noem and Miller are calling anyone who protests them domestic terrorists.
It's pretty clear this isn't just about immigration, that this is about pooling data for a surveillance state that can quash the constitutional rights of anyone who dares to oppose the current regime. We've seen this story before.
Given what kind of garbage from human gene pool gets and thrives in high politics its more surprising the show lasted as long as it did.
Now the question shouldn't be 'how much outraged we should be' since we get this situation for a year at this point, but rather what to do next, how we can shape future to avoid this. If there will be the time for such correction, which is a huge IF.
Also naturalized and birthright citizens are far more likely than others to associate or live with others of less legal status.
Naturalized and birthright citizens quality for benefits and they and their families are at risk.
If they are allowed to detain and deport without any due process as they have asserted anyone not white is at risk.
The DHS official social media presence shared a picture of an island paradise with the caption America after 100 million deportations.
This is the number of non-whites not the number of immigrants in even the most ridiculous estimates.
(For more context: https://www.tbf.org/blog/2018/march/understanding-the-census...)
Pretty sure this is a feature not a bug. Most people aren’t here for political topics.
Technology, technology leaders, and technology companies are literally driving politics, buying elections, driving the whole US economy.
Saying what “political” topics are IS political - and it’s decidedly a right wing position. Only those with the powers protecting them get to avoid politics.
You never see the "no politics please thk u" crowd when it is about protests in Iran, Chinese oppression in Hong Kong, Russian aggression on Europe or hell, when people were literally running a political campaign the EU to stop killing games. You only see people flagging political submissions when it is a particular kind of politics - just like you only see corrupt officials jailed when they are a certain kind of officials.
Connect the dots, make your own conclusions.
Otherwise you're proving his point, which is that there's no middle ground, only "ICE raids terrorizing people" and "sanctuary cities/states where local governments refuse to do any sort of immigration enforcement and specifically turn a blind eye to immigration status".
Nice job sneakily changing "immigration enforcement" to "deporting immigrants".
I think the main benefit is the same as with any law: if you have a law with no consequences for the people who break it, you don’t really have a law. If we don’t have immigration laws, we have an open border and with an open border, we can’t regulate the rate at which people enter the country. This rate can easily exceed the amount that the country reasonably accommodate, which negative impact on housing, healthcare, welfare, transportation, civic cohesion, and education systems.
Immigration law is standard around the world, with deportation being the standard response to people who violate that law. The more interesting question here is how you think a modern country will function and continue serving the needs of its citizens when it stops enforcing its immigration laws.
Which would put you in the minority (16%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/03/26/am...
Even without getting into a debate of whether we should do immigration enforcement at all (a sibling reply goes into it in better detail), there's the practical effect that most people do, and if Democrats don't oblige, people like Trump will get in power instead.
...and that's best case scenario, giving the benefit of the doubt.
Alternatively, you have an essentially open border, which obviously can lead to unmanageable waves of immigration that strain a country’s housing, healthcare, schools, welfare, and other resources, among other effects.
Disruption to peoples’ lives happens when we have administrations who arbitrarily decide not to enforce the immigration law (e.g. the previous administration). It sends mixed signals to potential immigrants, and leads to the outcomes we have today when we decide to resume enforcing our laws.
I don't agree that this is "obvious". Immigrants bring important social and cultural capital. Who do you think is building a lot of the infrastructure in the US? The people putting a strain on the system are actually the aging baby boomer generation.
I have many other reasons for supporting open immigration that are less transactional, but the suggestions that immigrants "strain" our infrastructure is incorrect.
It's like these people never got past their childhood phase worrying about the monster in the closet. In fact I do have to wonder how much of the non-Boomer+ support for this regime is just from naive kids who have zero life experience.
Undoubtedly influenced by social media, they're now realizing that what they voted for was their own future's destruction and are now abandoning him in droves.
We'll see if it's too late or not.
Delete your social media, shit is poison.
For instance, if you believe the border should be strict to keep out serial killers, what does that have to do with removing Korean car factory workers who aren't serial killers?
It sounds like you're saying that you want the country to have open borders so that everyone can come live and work here given they pass some basic checks (no criminal history for example). I am not saying that is wrong, but that's not how pretty much every country in the world operates.
Once they are in (incl illegally so) you concede you have lost on this instance. Now you admit that forcefully removing immigrants carries too high a cost (literally + damage in the communities you remove the immigrants from + your humanitarian image). So you don't.
Somehow that balance seems really hard to get right and edge cases (criminal record) matter.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/number-deported-im...
This basically states that the figures are based on self reported ICE data and are unreliable at best.
The figure is within a rounding error, and regardless does nothing to change the CCP tech and public executions of citizens in the street in broad daylight in front of dozens of cameras.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...
The goal is to minimize such outcomes as much as humanly possible while also maintaining the law.
We could also save lives if we stopped politicizing the act of law enforcement. The left didn’t mobilize ordinary people to harass armed ICE officers when Obama was in office and deporting illegal immigrants, and naturally this preserved lives. The difference isn’t in the act of law enforcement then and now, which is essentially the same, but in its politicization from both the right and left.
You need free time for kids and if the salaries are too low for a single income household a lot of people will end up opting out of having kids.
This isn't unique the the US. Basically every country with a whack work life balance is looking at population replacement problems.
Immigrants also commit crimes at fewer rates than US born people and crime is at all time lows. Yet they sold us for years on a crime moral panic and phantom "migrant crime".
So you said, propose a solution that also involves deporting people, and I will say NO. You are wanting to target a mostly fake problem.
Crime is at an all time low because liberal DAs like the one here in Minneapolis let repeat offenders off constantly because locking them up (enforcing the law fairly) which be racist. Literally their arguments are that these people are from a disadvantaged background so they should be allowed to run around harming innocents, repeatedly. These crimes are never fully prosecuted, so the police department and local governments can count them as “not crimes” meaning the crime rate they report stays low. Crime is visibly terrible here in Minneapolis - whole blocks of decent neighborhoods having their cars broken into, regularly shootings and violent crime even in commercial areas, the complete destruction of uptown, I could go on - and yet our police chief and mayor are out there touting a historically low crime. On top of large scale fraud taking place that liberal female judges are throwing out after unanimous guilty verdicts.
Social services left at the State level would be subject to a smaller pool of votes for approval and are more likely to be funded by actual tax revenue instead of debt.
That is: sustainably.
Furthermore, the lack of One True Database is a safety feature in the face of the inevitable bad actors.
In naval architecture, this is called compartmentalization.
There are good arguments against this, sure, but the current disaster before you would seem a refutation.
If you work on this kind of tech, please, quit your job.
They are eligible for Emergency Medicaid, which covers emergency medical needs like labor and delivery or life-threatening conditions; hospitals that accept federal dollars for medicare/medicaid are required under federal law (EMTALA) to provide stabilizing emergency care regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.
simonw•1h ago
The classic example here is what happens when someone is being stalked by an abusive ex-partner who works in law enforcement and has access to those databases.
This ICE stuff is that scaled up to a multi-billion dollar federal agency with, apparently, no accountability for following the law at all.
jfyi•1h ago
Jaepa•57m ago
To quote the standard observability conference line "what gets measured gets managed".
plagiarist•1h ago
j16sdiz•1h ago
I am not American and genuinely curious on this.
ungreased0675•1h ago
Remember, Republicans represent half the country, not some isolated sect living in small town Appalachia.
tfehring•57m ago
jfyi•55m ago
Calvinists or Evangelicals?
I don't think that holds water either way.
helterskelter•50m ago
This statement isn't necessarily wrong because about half of elected government officials are Republican, but I want to point out that less than 60% of eligible Americans voted in 2024, so we're talking about <30% of Americans who vote Republican.
gritspants•1h ago
gunsle•33m ago
hackyhacky•24m ago
The Heritage Foundation certainly publishes, but they don't have a coherent ideology.
Project 2025 is not an work of political philosophy, it's just a roadmap for seizing power at all costs.
efnx•57m ago
steveklabnik•51m ago
That said, I'm ex-Catholic, so I don't feel super qualified to make a statement on the specific popularity of predestination among American evangelicals at the moment.
That said, in a less theological and more metaphorical sense, it does seem that many of them do believe in some sort of "good people" and "bad people", where the "bad people" are not particularly redeemable. It feels a little unfalsifiable though.
alwa•51m ago
But the same observation applies to lots of other attitudes, too—like “might makes right” and “nature is red in tooth and claw” or whatever the dark princelings evince these days. I feel like “logic matters” mainly pertains to a liberal-enlightenment political context that might be in the past now…
https://time.com/7311354/donald-trump-heaven-hell-afterlife-...
mythrwy•49m ago
JumpCrisscross•52m ago
godelski•44m ago
JumpCrisscross•21m ago
"Trump’s net approval rating on immigration has declined by about 4 points since the day before Good’s death until today. Meanwhile, his overall approval rating has declined by 2 points and is near its second-term lows" [1].
I'd encourage anyone watching to actually pay attention to "how many people care more about party than principle." I suspect it's fewer than MAGA high command thinks.
[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-is-losing-normies-on-immi...
ck_one•1h ago
skrebbel•1h ago
alecco•1h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat_control
lillecarl•20m ago
Jordan-117•1h ago
direwolf20•51m ago
nathan_compton•36m ago
Don't confuse "GDP not as big as ours" with "totally non-functional."
p1esk•29m ago
Yes, things are different in totalitarian states.
koolba•1h ago
There’s a world of difference between a government using legally collected data for multiple purposes and an individual abusing their position purely for personal reasons.
sosomoxie•1h ago
simonw•1h ago
Jaepa•1h ago
& effectively if there is no checks on this is there actually a difference? There only difference is that the threat is to an entire cohort rather than an individual.
monooso•53m ago
godelski•51m ago
The whole social battle is a constant attempt to align our laws and values as a society. It's why we create new laws. It's why we overturn old laws. You can't just abdicate your morals and let the law decide for you. That's not a system of democracy, that's a system of tyranny.
The privacy focused crowd often mentions "turnkey tyranny" as a major motivation. A tyrant who comes to power and changes the laws. A tyrant who comes to power and uses the existing tooling beyond what that tooling was ever intended for.
The law isn't what makes something right or wrong. I can't tell you what is, you'll have to use your brain and heart to figure that one out.
blurbleblurble•1h ago
steve1977•56m ago
You don't know today on which side of legality you will be in 10 years, even if your intentions are harmless.
direwolf20•52m ago
whatshisface•27m ago
soulofmischief•15m ago
iugtmkbdfil834•5m ago
p1esk•38m ago
nfinished•22m ago
WrongOnInternet•50m ago
AndrewKemendo•48m ago
This is why there shouldn’t be any organization that has that much power.
Full stop.
What you described is the whole raison dêtre of Anarchism; irrespective of whether you think there’s an alternative or not*
“No gods No Masters” isn’t just a slogan it’s a demand
*my personal view is that there is no possible stable human organization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_symbolism#No_gods,_n...
wahnfrieden•36m ago
hypeatei•43m ago
For any piece of data that exists, the government effectively has access to it through court orders or backdoors. Either way, it can and will be used against you.
sheikhnbake•34m ago
baconbrand•7m ago
When you use a computer to tell you who to target, it makes it easy for your brain to never consider that person as a human being at all. They are a target. An object.
Their stated capabilities are lies, marketing, and a smokescreen for their true purpose.
This is Lavender v2, and I’m sure others could name additional predecessors. Systems rife with errors but the validity isn’t the point; the system is.
SkyPuncher•32m ago
To me, this is a problem that can only be solved at the government/regulatory level.
ben_w•20m ago
The evidence I have that causes me to believe them to be overstated, is how even Facebook has frequently shown me ads that inherently make errors about my gender, nationality, the country I live in, and the languages I speak, and those are things they should've been able to figure out with my name, GeoIP, and the occasional message I write.
thangalin•31m ago
Some retorts for people swayed by that argument:
"Can we put a camera in your bathroom?"
"Let's send your mom all your text messages."
"Ain't nothin' in my pockets, but I'd rather you didn't check."
"Shall we live-stream your next doctor's appointment?"
"May I watch you enter your PIN at the ATM?"
"How about you post your credit card number on reddit?"
"Care to read your high-school diary on open mic night?"
JumpCrisscross•20m ago
Do any of these actually prompt someone to reconsider their position? They strike me as more of argument through being annoying than a good-faith attempt to connect with the other side.
Arch485•20m ago
People are unafraid of the government knowing certain things because they believe it will not have any real repercussions for them. The NSA knowing your search history is no big deal (as long as you're not looking for anything illegal), but your church knowing your search history would absolutely be a big deal.
RcouF1uZ4gsC•30m ago
Are you against business registration?
All of these are subject to the similar issues with the stalker ex abusing a position of power?
JumpCrisscross•19m ago
You seem to be asking a question. The answer is no.
The IRS does not need to know my sexual orientation or circumcision status. Medicaid, on the other hand, may. (Though I'd contest even that.)
tw04•28m ago
Which has literally happened already for anyone who thinks “there’s controls in place for that sort of thing”. That’s with (generally) good faith actors in power. What do you think can and will happen when people who think democracy and the constitution are unnecessary end up in control…
https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/politics/nsa-snooping/
jimmydoe•10m ago
Problem today is ICE has no accountability of misuse data/violence, not they have means to data/violence.
femiagbabiaka•8m ago