Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Second rate reporter says what?

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

This blog will pay for itself.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / PSA: What To Say To ICE Agents

PSA: What To Say To ICE Agents

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In a world where anyone might be shipped to a foreign prison without a hearing, some advice if approached by ICE:
1. Don't say anything.
2. Don't sign anything.
3. Talk to a lawyer ASAP.
Gift link: wapo.st/3SbvLqA

[image or embed]

— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) May 19, 2025 at 8:54 AM

(Let me know if the gift link has expired, and I’ll add on of mine.)

Part of my conversation with immigration attorney David Leopold took place over zoom. Here's a condensed video in which he offers his advice to those targeted by ICE. www.washingtonpost.com/video/opinio…

[image or embed]

— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) May 19, 2025 at 10:57 PM

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    The “gift” link requires you to create an account just to read the “free” article.

  3. 3.

    Ohio Mom

    My neighbors adopted a baby girl from Guatemala; she’s in high school now, driving to her after school/summer job and otherwise gallivanting about.

    Her parents worry about her getting picked up and her mom answered yes when I asked if Daughter had one of those mini-passport cards in her wallet.

    But is she in any real danger here in suburbia, I don’t think so — yet.

  4. 4.

    JoyceH

    Just saw on Nicole Wallace a report that fifty of the Venezuelans shipped to El Salvador had entered the country legally and had committed no crimes. Particularly interesting that the report is from those old lefties the Cato Institute.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    @JoyceH:

    IIRC Cato is a relatively principled libertarian shop and I think they’ve been good on immigration issues.

  6. 6.

    NobodySpecial

    @JoyceH: There’s always been a tension in the modern GOP between the group who needs immigrants as scapegoats and the group who needs immigrants as low cost labor. Cato is more the second type.

  7. 7.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @JoyceH:

    The actual piece:

    cato.org/blog/50-venezuelans-imprisoned-el-salvador-came-us-legally-never-violated-immigration-law

    It’s actually a really good piece.

    Now I need to take a long hot shower by saying that about anything written by the glibertarian clowns at Cato.  And yes, I know the usual libertarian stance on due process, civil liberties, etc.  They just many times don’t make that clear when it comes to the rest of the glibertarian agenda of horror.

  8. 8.

    JoyceH

    Call me cynical, but I don’t think it’s an accident that this administration is deporting or imprisoning so many legal immigrants. They want to dump out a high number and the legal immigrants are easier to find.

  12. 12.

    Trivia Man

    I know folks at an Intentional Community (modern take on a commune) and they are all aligned on procedure.
    Never open the door, hold up a red card to the window and call the lawyers who live in the building. They have pre-planned routes so they can approach ICE from outside so they never have to open a door where the agents are.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    One more time.

    You can bypass the paywall and access anything at WaPo merely by turning off javascript in your browser before heading there. Doesn’t hurt to disable cookies, also too.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    Jasmine Crockett: “That’s why they hired everybody from Fox because all they’re trying to do is put on a show. I want us to refocus our attention on the American people and stop demonizing every person that ends up in ICE custody.”

  15. 15.

    RaflW

    BF and I are going on a vacation overseas in about two weeks. We’re a little anxious about the return. We’re both US citizens, but who knows with this Admin? I have a lot to say on Bsky (but within common sense bounds), and he’s done some fairly bluntly worded preaching in UU congregations, where our commitment to democracy – nonpartisanly – is definitely a thing.

    I also happen to have been born abroad, which does show in my passport since country of birth is listed, even though I was an instant American because of parentage (Dad was an international executive, but his mother was a freakin’ D.A.R. so yeah, we’re American).

    It’s unlikely to be a big deal, we’ll get off the plane, get processed along with all the US citizens in the US-er line, get bags, perfunctory Customs and head home. But I greatly dislike thinking about the power and leverage the gov’t has. Pre-Covid I tended to fly to Europe 2X per year and it seemed like the CBP guys were a bit more abrupt and gruff c. 2016-2020. Huh.

    (eta: I will at the very least delete the Bsky app and any Bsky cookies from my phone before travel. I use FB a little but shy away from politics there because FB sucks and I don’t want to spend time there beyond checking on a few friends and fam.)

  18. 18.

    Raven

    I have a pal, badly wounded by an NVA Ak, who wants to know if the Georgia Stand Your Ground law will apply if he is assaulted my masked gunmen?

  22. 22.

    bjacques

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: for what it’s worth, several years ago I found a report by the Cato Institute that waste in the UK (or maybe US) welfare system was less than 5%, the bulk of it being human error, and most of that was on the part of the caseworker.

  24. 24.

    catclub

    @Raven: ​
     

    who wants to know if the Georgia Stand Your Ground law will apply if he is assaulted my masked gunmen?

    First question: Is he white? Those SYG laws seem to only ever apply in that case.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    @RaflW: CBP can’t legally make you open your phone or laptop via passcode, but they can make you use any biometric  such as a thumb print or facial recognition to open your device. Once it is open, they can search it as the Courts have ruled that was giving “consent”.

     

    So if you have any of those features turned on, turn them off.

  26. 26.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @dnfree: The part that this analysis doesn’t mention is that Biden was running in 2020 to replace Trump.  Hillary and Kamala both had the burden of running to extend Dem rule.  Our electorate is incredibly prone to stupid “let’s just try something different” bullshit with respect to the party of the President.  The analysis also leaves out the media’s relentless bashing of both Biden and Kamala.  After going fairly easy on Biden in 2020, the media spent four years reverting to 2016 form by endlessly demonizing Biden/Harris.  In 2016 and 2024 the media, Republicans and Progressives all worked simultaneous to defeat the Dem candidate.  That’s a pretty difficult coalition for any Dem to overcome.

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    @UncleEbeneezer:  I am not a fan of Amy Walters.  Democracy was on the ballot in 2024.

    It was not an “here is an apple, here is an orange” election.

    One of the candidates was poison, and has proven to be even more so in office.

  30. 30.

    catclub

    @UncleEbeneezer: Because the article was about counting who voted which way, NOT what motivated them to vote the way they did.

     

    I would suggest they combine the changes in preference by voter type with the population of those voters to determine which voters had the highest impact of their changed preferences.

     

    I suspect a 3% dropoff in some white group might have more impact than a 12% dropoff in another group. Working down to doing this state by state, to determine electoral college impacts would be even more challenging. (How much impact did those changes have on the California result?)

  33. 33.

    Jackie

    This is beyond appalling! What will this judge do about FFOTUS deliberately thumbing his nose with impunity at him? 😡

    The Trump administration has deported at least two immigrants to war-torn South Sudan in defiance of a federal court order, according to attorneys for the immigrants,” Politico reports.

    The two men are originally from Myanmar and Vietnam and were being held in U.S. immigration custody. Their lawyers say they learned of the deportation plan after receiving an abrupt notice Monday evening. By Tuesday morning, the men were already on a plane along with as many as 10 other deportees, the lawyers said.

    The lawyers revealed these details in an emergency motion to a federal judge in Boston who has already forbidden the Trump administration from sending foreign nationals to so-called “third-party countries,” rather than their country of origin, without providing “meaningful” notice and a chance to raise concern about torture.

    That judge, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, has already intervened once before when the Trump administration seemed poised to deport people to Libya, a country that, like South Sudan, is mired in a humanitarian crisis. Murphy declared that summary deportations to Libya would “clearly” violate his earlier order.
    Lawyers for the Burmese man, identified by the initials N.M. in court papers, say he was originally slated to be on one of those flights to Libya, which they say were aborted amid national media and legal scrutiny. They also say the notice to N.M. about the deportation to South Sudan of was provided only in English, apparently violating another requirement of Murphy’s order because N.M. has limited English proficiency.
    The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  34. 34.

    Jay

    theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/20/trump-administration-deported-migrants-south-sudan

    Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.

    Lawyers for the migrants made the request in a court filing on Tuesday directed to US district judge Brian Murphy, who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.

    They said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.

  35. 35.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @catclub: Yeah the article never makes it clear that losing 7% with Black or Latino Men is still probably less damaging than losing 3% of White Men, because the latter group is significantly bigger so each % accounts for more lost votes than the former.

  37. 37.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I’m sorry you will never in a million years be able to convince me that Biden “dropping out earlier” would’ve been able to fix this electorate.

    In the 2024 election, 49% of swing voters believed Kamala had defunding the police as a policy mentioned in her platform, including a good amount that voted for her.

  39. 39.

    RaflW

    @Jay: Yeah, I’ve never used a biometric and the BF stopped about, oh look at that, four months ago. I do need to switch to a six digit screen lock, though.

  40. 40.

    zhena gogolia

    @RaflW: My phone tried to force me into a biometric with the last update, but somehow I circumvented it, despite being an ignoramus. Six-digit passcode.

  42. 42.

    Rusty

    The same rules apply for any interaction any form of law enforcement,  including the FBI, police and homeland security.   I know someone who recent had 4 homeland officers show up at his door.  He asserted his 5th amendment to rights, said they would only speak with a lawyer present, and they went away.  At this point no law enforcement can be considered safe for any kind of conversation.

  43. 43.

    Jay

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Funny how unfounded Rethug accusations turn into Official Democratic Party Policy in the low information voters minds.

    There must be some kind mechanism for that. Somebody should study that.

  44. 44.

    eclare

    @Trivia Man:

    In Nashville some neighbors brought food and drink to an immigrant in his car when ICE showed up.  They then formed a human chain to get him inside his house safely.

    As always, the first rule of talking to law enforcement is never talk to law enforcement.

  47. 47.

    schrodingers_cat

    @zhena gogolia: @dnfree:

    I did a back of the envelope calculation yesterday for Bupalos and this is  what I found.

    I did the math to test your claims.

    This is what I found. 49% of Trump’s vote came just from white men. So your math is not mathing.

    81% of his votes came from white people and only 19% came from other demographics. And only 2 percent of the vote came from Asians.

    So yes white people comfortable with racism was one of the biggest factors why Trump won. The data doesn’t support your rewriting of history.

    White people provided close to 63 million of his vote total of 77 million votes.

    The biggest demographic group voting for Trump is white men

    Second largest is white women. White women gave Trump more votes than all the other non-white Trump voting demographics put together

    white people who are comfortable with racism and all other kinds of bigotry made up over 80 percent of his total vote.

    Here are my sources:

    ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2024

    navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-racial-analysis-of-2024-election-results/

    https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/20

  48. 48.

    JaySinWA

    In a world where anyone might be shipped to a foreign prison without a hearing, some advice if approached by ICE:

    1. Don’t say anything.
    2. Don’t sign anything.
    3. Talk to a lawyer ASAP.

    While generally good advice in dealing with police following normal processes, I fail to see how it helps much when ICE is abducting people and working to make sure they can’t get legal advice or protection from courts by shuffling them out of state. These steps may be necessary, but not sufficient to the moment we live in.

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @schrodingers_cat: As usual, confusing the thing with the rate of change of the thing (especially when the latter is expressed percentage-wise) abounds.

    That line from the article “the Obama coalition turned into the Trump coalition” is particularly misleading since it implies that Trump’s base isn’t still white people and particularly white men.

  51. 51.

    ArchTeryx

    @Rusty: It’s a lot tougher when they literally drag you out of bed and interrogate you with flashlights in your face (that old trick). The story is long, but I made some unfortunate statements to my best friend, he got very scared for my safety and called the cops. They thought I intended to murder someone, and cited my own private conversation as proof. Did my best to clam up. It’s just much harder when they have you handcuffed and in custody, and you ain’t used to dealing with cops.

    I managed, however, to avoid incriminating myself, so they hauled me to a psych hospital instead of straight to jail. (There’s not much difference, believe you me). And what was the first thing the crisis counselor did? Quoted my exact conversation to me and basically said that if I didn’t answer her questions, I was staying in there indefinitely until I did.

    So I told her the story of what led up to that mess. I won’t repeat it here. But it gets infinitely harder to keep your mouth shut once they’ve taken away everything, and you aren’t even allowed to contact a lawyer. Emergency psych wards are just solitary confinement jails with crazy people.

    ( Once I got to talk to an actual psychiatrist, I had the mess straightened out immediately and was released the next morning. But talk about the long dark night of the soul… )

    I need a better strategy next time.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The experts compare everything to the last election rather than from a 50/50 baseline for each demo.

    Both ways have their uses, but mixing them up leads to problems.

  54. 54.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ohio Mom: This nation is not ready to VOTE for a woman President. This nation is long past time to HAVE a woman president.

  57. 57.

    Princess

    I confess that I’m confused about what to do at the border, with CBP. They’re allowed to ask you questions; they’re allowed to send you for secondary screening. I see a lot of people saying ( in reaction to that podcaster dude who spilled his guts) that you shouldn’t tell them anything. At what point do you stop talking? I know enough not to offer any info they haven’t asked for, but at what point do you ask, am I being detained? When do you tell them you’ll remain silent until you have a lawyer?

  59. 59.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @schrodingers_cat: I pied that guy.

    He’s the epitome of why white men cannot be trusted.*

    (*until true allyship is demonstrated, like Joe and Tim and Pete)

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: We had a woman Acting President several times over the past four years, while Joe was under for medical procedures and such.

  61. 61.

    Jay

    @JaySinWA:

    ICE needs a judicial warrant from a Immigration Judge to kidnap somebody from Private Property, (cars, houses, restaurants, etc).

    They have been trying to do searches and kidnappings on ICE administrative warrants, and have several times been denied by neighbors, business owners, etc.

    These “advice” articles are probably having an impact and educational value for allies against the actions of the Gestapo.

  62. 62.

    JaySinWA

    @Princess: I confess that I’m confused about what to do at the border, with CBP.

    Good point. I don’t think I’ve seen a good explainer for dealing safely with border crossings, while reading several about how things went wrong.

  63. 63.

    Matt McIrvin

    @zhena gogolia: My phone forces a passcode login on boot, so just turning it off effectively works as a one-time disabling of the biometric unlock, if I’m in a situation where I don’t need it and I suspect the possibility of trouble.

  64. 64.

    Jay

    @Princess:

    They can ask you about drugs, fruit and veg, the purpose of your trip, where you will be staying, will you be working, money, etc.

    The moment they start to want to search your devices, politics, opinions,

    Shut up except for “lawyer”.

  67. 67.

    ArchTeryx

    @JaySinWA: Ultimately there is no safe way to deal with border crossings. Once you’re in the border zone, you are effectively stateless, and there is little they can’t get away with. The best I can suggest to people is pick your crossing carefully. Some crossings are a whole lot nastier than others, and especially, try not to cross alone. Harder to imprison a whole train or plane full of people at an ordinary border crossing, so they tend to give you more slack there.

  68. 68.

    Princess

    @Jay: I’m sorry Jay but I’m not going to trust a Canadian to tell me what CBP is and is not allowed to ask as the border.

  69. 69.

    JaySinWA

    @Jay: Yes, I understand about private property issues can prevent being taken from those locations (although I don’t have confidence in their continued restraint), but you probably can’t remain there forever. The current trend of taking people off the streets or when appearing for hearings in public buildings presents new challenges. ICE collaboration with FBI and local LEO’s as observers is a new wrinkle, perhaps because of the perception of risk from self defense or defense of others that the masked kidnapper techniques exposed ICE to.

    At least for the moment they are paying lip service to due process. I am just not sure what the new best practices are once you are in custody. Maybe this is all we get, and just luck if you don’t end up in a gulag.

  71. 71.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Princess: On the contrary, Canadians are the people most likely to know these things for what should be really obvious reasons.

  72. 72.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: Or a “prostitute,” as I heard second-hand was the reason certain Russian emigres of my acquaintance just couldn’t vote for her.

  74. 74.

    zhena gogolia

    From Heaney:

    Northern reticence, the tight gag of place

    And times: yes, yes. Of the ‘wee six’ I sing

    Where to be saved you only must save face

    And whatever you say, you say nothing.

    Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:

    Manoeuvrings to find out name and school,

    Subtle discrimination by addresses

    With hardly an exception to the rule

    That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod

    And Seamus (Call me Sean) was sure-fired Pape.

    O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,

    Of open minds as open as a trap,

    Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,

    Where half of us, as in a wooden horse

    Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,

    Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

  75. 75.

    Dangerman

    File under strange but true.

    George Wendt passed on 5/20. Cheers last episode was same date.

    Not that strange I suppose. 1 in 365. Same number the Orange One plans to work this year.

  76. 76.

    Jay

    @Princess:

    It’s not a case of what they are not allowed to ask you, or do.

    It is basically a place that is lawless.

    It’s you letting the Gestapo know that as the kids say, “they are stitching you up”.

    They then have 3 choices.

    Let you in.

    Refuse to let you in, (paperwork).

    Kidnap you, (lot’s of paperwork, bad press, possible consequences at some point in time).

  80. 80.

    West of the Rockies

    @zhena gogolia:

    Seemed more the Latino shift that jumped out at me.  Plus a lot of Biden voters who just stayed home (misogyny & racism).

  82. 82.

    David Collier-Brown

    @JaySinWA: If you have the option, always travel to the US via a “preclearance centre” in a non-US country. For example, Canada has nine, and while you can be blocked by ICE, you can only be arrested by Canadian police. If ICE tries to force you onto a plane, they’re committing a crime in Canada, and you can scream “kidnapping” to the airport police.

    That would also be an international incident, as you might imagine.

    A list of preclearance centres is at cbp.gov/travel/preclearance

  83. 83.

    Baud

    Sad

    RIP to Mexican Navy sailors América Yamilet Sánchez and Adal Jair Marcos, both killed when their ship, the ARM Cuauhtémoc, crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge. Rest your oars.

  85. 85.

    Jay

    @David Collier-Brown:

    And with preclearance, after TSA, the line is really short, as it is it’s  own line, often a single desk, single CBP Officer, a couple of quick questions, because a CBP Officer has already pre-cleared you.

    That would have been really handy a couple of decades ago when I was crossing the border into the US, once a month for 10 years, on an HB-1.

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @Glory b:

    That post is right after election day, it seems. I would think updated numbers are more accurate.

    ETA: I see you said there’s another source.

  89. 89.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Matt McIrvin: I learned that at least for iOS, you can turn off biometric unlocking for the main Lock Screen while leaving it on for other stuff. That way, if you lock your phone, they can’t get into it without the passcode.

  91. 91.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Glory b: This is good.  It may be hard for people to do.  They may feel uncomfortable. If they do this, they give their lawyer something to work when they get there.  The cops are

    not your friends.  They are looking to clear cases.  Don’t give them an opportunity to do so at your expense.  And don’t put your lawyer in the position of having to work miracles for you.  They are people like Baud.

  92. 92.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    And don’t put your lawyer in the position of having to work miracles for you. They are people like Baud. 

    All lawyers are pantsless?  You sure?

  95. 95.

    Lyrebird

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Have you looked at any coloring books by Melpomeni Chatzipanagiotou ?  (I think that link takes you to her Amazon page.)

    I haven’t bought any, because I prefer the “looks simple enough for small children but is at least printed on decent paper” level to things this intricate, but I thought of you when one of her coloring books got suggested based on past buying etc.

  98. 98.

    Lyrebird

    @schrodingers_cat: Cool!  (ETA: love the Enchanted Forest cover.  Not a scale that’s good for crayons – yes I love crayons – but cool to look at.) ETA again, Rita Berman’s Hidden Oceans might push me to try watercolor pencils, though!

    And my previous comment was supposed to include this:

    Love what you did with coloring the necklace!

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