This is remarkable. New Quinnipiac poll finds support for path to legalization for most undocumented immigrants has risen to 64%. Only 31% want most of them deported.
That’s a 14 point net swing for legalization since Trump took office.
On immigration generally, he’s at 41-57!— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 2:07 PM
===
Theres an F=m×a issue.
The 31% really, really want mass deportation, will crawl over broken glass to vote for it, and will sulk if they’re not catered to, or even vote out those who don’t deliver.
How many of the rest are equally motivated? For whom the issue is equally dispositive?— Davis X. Machina (@ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 3:34 PM
===
The thing is, there is a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants now. The problem is the path requires money, a lawyer and a long wait. This could be remedied by allocating more money & resources into our immigration system. Politicians know this. Many have no interest in making it better.
— Oscar Acosta (@oscaracostajd.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 2:59 PM
===
After ICE agents enter 2 Diocesan churches, San Bernardino’s Bishop Rojas adamantly speaks out: “Cease these tactics immediately, in favor of an approach that respects human rights.” www.sbsun.com/2025/06/24/a…
— Rich Raho (@richraho.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 9:37 AM
===
The Trump administration is arresting more and more immigrants with no criminal records. To maintain the illusion that their focus is criminals, they're ginning up charges including by leveraging testimony from criminals who then get leniency.
— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) June 25, 2025 at 3:51 PM
… “Agents are desperate to meet the White House’s high expectations, leading them to leave some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets, and instead look for anyone they can get their hands on at the local Home Depot or bus stop,” the Trump-friendly paper’s Jennie Taer wrote, citing sources inside ICE. Other reports have identified White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as the official pushing for this shift.
We can see it in public data about ICE detentions. At the end of the Biden administration, most of those in ICE detention who’d been arrested by ICE were immigrants with criminal convictions. More than 90 percent were either convicted or accused criminals. Now, nearly one-third of those arrested by ICE are people with no criminal records or charges at all…
When Trump took office in January, there were 10.3 immigrants with criminal convictions arrested and detained by ICE for every one with no record. Now, there are 1.2 criminals detained for every immigrant with no record.
Partly as a result of this aggressive approach, approval for Trump’s handling of immigration has plunged. Among the Republicans who selected him as their 2024 presidential nominee and overwhelmingly backed his candidacy, though, support remains strong. In fact, as PRRI President Robert P. Jones put it last week: “It’s virtually impossible to write a survey question about the treatment of immigrants that is too brutal for Republicans to support.”
He pointed to three PRRI polls (from 2023, March and May) to bolster that point. Less than half of Americans thought in 2023 that potentially deadly deterrents should be put at the border to stop immigrants. Only about one-third thought this year that immigrants should be concentrated in military-run camps before deportation or that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to be sent to overseas prisons without being able to legally challenge those removals.
===
It's not just snowflakes – followers have posted more than once that ICE/CBP retention is in the toilet, they're desperately pulling agents from other agencies (so their morale is now also in the toilet) and ICE internal feelings, from @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social, are apparently awful.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Politics is people, I cry, for the millionth time. It's hard to do a secret police if no one wants to BE the secret police because their life gets destroyed if their neighbors learn what they do
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 5:51 PM
===
Remember when nativists pretended to care about the costs that one city was choosing to incur to house immigrants who were unable to work because their nativist laws? Now they're paying all that and more to arrest, detain, and house people who were working and paying taxes.
— David Bier (@davidjbier.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
===
Immigration is a universal good deserving of a maximal defense. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/…
— The Editorial Board (@editorialboard.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 8:40 AM
What badass investigative reporter is going undercover with one of these ICE goon squads? This is, like, THE story right now. Who trains? What rules of engagement? What propaganda do they consume? How do they recruit, and weed out non-sadists? Would they follow orders to shoot regime enemies?
— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 10:57 PM
comrade scotts agenda of rage
31% is right around the Crazification Factor, hmmm, I wonder why?
The hope here is maybe, just maybe, the brown shirt ICE raid tactics will do to the immigration issue nationally the way Prop 187 did in CA.
opiejeanne
So WaPo’s editorial board comes out in for of immigrants/immigration, but couldn’t be arsed to override Bezos and endorse Kamala.
lowtechcyclist
If this is true, then all that money in the Big ‘Bominable Bill to hire far more ICE agents isn’t likely to make much difference.
FlyingToaster
This is a Heads! Up! about the Bluesky Feed.
The Balloon Juice Jackals Feed at Bluesky had to be moved, as BlueskyFeeds.com is going the way of the Dodo, alas.
I just moved it to a different service (BlueskyFeedsCreator.com), which is a little larger and did not get _as_ hammered as the previous service did when Bsky.app made an unannounced fix-that-broke-the-feeds-again.
The new link to the feed is Balloon Juice Jackals .
👋
lowtechcyclist
Good question! There were plenty of reporters that embedded with the troops in Iraq, and this would be in the much less risky territory of the U.S. Nobody’s shot at ICE yet, which certainly wasn’t the case for our Iraq troops.
ColoradoGuy
No doubt the 31% would be happy with many, many Auschwitz’s spread across the country, with the juicy bits edited for reality TV.
rikyrah
THEY ARE SNATCHING UP PEOPLE AT IMMIGRATION COURT. THE PEOPLE TRYING TO DO IT THE LEGAL WAY.
Jay
Oscar Acosta is full of crap.
Unless you are rich and white, there is no legal path to citizenship in the US.
In the past, people died of old age long before they completed the expensive process and one tiny error on the tons of form and it’s a do over, go to the end of the line.
If there was a functional path to citizenship you wouldn’t have Dreamers still.
Now of course, follow the path, go to your hearing, have the ICE Lawyer drop your case, judge rubber stamps it, great, you are now in a Kafka loophole, as you no longer have an immigration case you are an “illegal” ICE kidnaps you, disappears you to a Concentration Camp where you spend 100 days rotting in an over crowded cell, with one cheese sandwich and 1 bottle of water per day, with the lights on day and night. Then you get sold into slavery to El Salvador, Libya, Rwanda, Sudan, places you have never been to.
And Core Civic and all their House and Senate Investors laugh all the way to the bank.
rikyrah
Tim![]()
(@trouble_man90) posted at 2:28 PM on Fri, Jun 27, 2025:
We have a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court precisely because leftists hated liberals more than fascists. They literally told us so and then proved it in the election. It’s quite literally a proven and documented fact.
(https://x.com/trouble_man90/status/1938680874930725253?t=jtWncLHoFGe0B63do8WTCQ&s=03)
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist: The difference is, those reporters were friendly embeds. I remember there was one guy who was a “unilateral” (I think it was called) reporter there. One. Think of the literal physical danger an undercover reporter would face trying to report on ICE. it isn’t surprising we haven’t heard of any.
rikyrah
Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) posted at 0:20 PM on Fri, Jun 27, 2025:
UVA President Jim Ryan has resigned under pressure from Trump’s White House and DOJ & some Youngkin appointees on UVA BOV. https://t.co/hssVtjlaSM
(https://x.com/LarrySabato/status/1938648635798868130?t=K3gwGWiPwQ3afCTCsbSBcw&s=03)
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
Apparently Dr. Phil embedded on several slave hunts.
rikyrah
The 31% who support it are PHUCKING GHOULS and need to be called out as such. They don’t deserve respect for their support of UNRELENTING EVIL.
cain
@lowtechcyclist: Who wants a job that literally seeing you destroy lives repeatedly. Some who could be your own circle of friends. Unless they pull from rural areas – even there, those areas need immigrants to work. You’re destroying lives, businesses of your area.
You won’t be very popular.
Captain C
@rikyrah: Their response is no doubt like that of Smokey from Friday in this scene.
(note that what is referenced here happened in-movie less than an hour earlier)
cain
@Jay:
yes, but they are going to destroy our corporations and businesses. Especially hwen you’re also destroying education at the same time. Nobody is going to come here especially if you can’t even get citizenship or anything. The population is going to decline precipitously.
If their plan is to deport/exile millions of americans and/or hold them in prison – that’s going to be very very expensive. Plus, you’re removing people who will pay your taxes. So, their revenue is also going to trend downwards. SO where will their tax dollars come from.
They are destroying America and we’ll deserve it. I I give this administration another year or so before it completely collapses.
But the democratic party better realize that we’re all expecting grounds up change in a way that is no longer the status quo. The status quo is dead. I also know that the Dems have taken advantage of Trump’s actions to help their own rich donors.
Jharp
So Trump’s act has exactly the opposite effect of what he intended.
He has only strengthened the immigrants case for a path to citizenship.
Steve LaBonne
It’s good to know we’re not quite as depraved as we might have thought, but that’s not helping us much at the moment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Next time Kalakal is around ask him about his citizenship ceremony this past week and how many people getting sworn in were rich and white. The real situation is bad enough without exaggerating it.
Steve LaBonne
@cain: Seconded. There is no going back to the status quo ante.
Steve LaBonne
@Jharp: Watch the polls swing back as soon as the Democrats try to provide that, if they ever can and do.
trollhattan
Friday is TACO time.
cain
@Steve LaBonne: one thing Dems could do is force feds to force businesses to use e-verify and that they must be compliant. This will force the GOP to back up their rhetoric on immigration. If they are such an existential threat – let’s also make sure that businesses can’t hire them.
We know it would be dead on arrival but let’s force tha debate. Everything Trump has done has shown the American public that he only cares about the rich.
TheOtherHank
ICE
agentsassholes have low morale becuase their job sucks?Oh no…
If only there was a way for them not to have a job that sucks and makes everyone hate them.
dc
Diego Luna has been guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel all week and he’s been on a tear against ICE, anti-immigrant sentiment, authoritarianism, etc. Here’s an example, also see the “Gring-Go” sketch he does with Guillermo at around 10:40:
https://youtu.be/fvliWaIobho?si=7QtnFXXvJ7MRZtkC
“The U.S. is going south, so why shouldn’t you?”
Matt
@rikyrah:
We had the presidency for four years and watched those 6 do crimes constantly and in public view, but we didn’t do anything about it because liberals love “norms” more than they hate fascism.
If “Tim” is a real person and not a propaganda bot, he’s a piece of shit who loves punching left more than he fears fascism.
Suzanne
@TheOtherHank:
Right?! My heart bleeds for the goons.
princess leia
@rikyrah:
This, exactly. I was at a prayer vigil outside an immigration court today. We were there to pray and let people know that they are seen and not alone in this as they were coming in to the court building. They were carrying portfolios filled with paperwork, and everyone seemed to expect to do the ordinary check-ins. Various ethnicities, ages. People with their kids, younger folks with an oldster- all looked like they would be good neighbors. One was a lovely Haitian man, who was not worried because he had “protected status.” He was detained.
It was so heartbreaking to know that many of them were not going home.
jowriter
@rikyrah: This makes a depressing day even more so.
laura
@Matt: Tell me you’ve never accessed Black Twitter without telling me you’ve never accessed Black Twitter.
Bill Arnold
The (German NAZI) Gestapo provided evidence that they were Gestapo, in the form of a warrant disc, which is more than ICE does.
mayim
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Approaching 27% immediately jumped out at me as well.
I’m hoping that, in addition to being the crazification fact, that it’s also the not sustainable point ~ where support action with below 30% approval makes politicians unwilling to uphold policies/actions that unpopular unless they are themselves that crazy. I’m cynical enough to believe there’s a a nice percentage of politicians who think the most important part of their job is their own job security. If so, they make decisions based on how it impacts their reelection chances ~ and a below 30% approval on something will make retaining their position tough (I hope).
EireIAm
Saw a post today from an America whose non-American spouse was denied a green card. They moved out of the US in 2023. Spouse is now being called to court in the US for a deportation hearing. In a letter sent to their foreign address. They’re trying to decide if they should go back to the hearing or not.
Steve LaBonne
@EireIAm: NO NO NO FUCK NO
dc
@EireIAm:
NOOOOOO!
cain
@EireIAm: I would tell them to fuck off. That the spouse has already “self deported”.
burritoboy
“If “Tim” is a real person and not a propaganda bot, he’s a piece of shit who loves punching left more than he fears fascism.”
Unfortunately, numerous people have seen with their own eyes pretend man-bro leftists actively attacking liberals, women, people of color, older people and numerous others on many occasions. My chapter of DSA was attacked and undermined by a self-declared “Maoist” cadre of man-bro hairy “leftists” who screamed violent threats against people and filled any critics’ communication channels with rape threats. People here literally themselves witnessed others of these pretend “leftists” throwing chairs at primary voting events. At elderly voters, by the way. Who decided that, on more than one occasion to my personal knowledge, that anybody over whatever age they decided upon was a Zionist and should be kicked out of DSA. (The people they wanted to purge, by the way, had been among the founders of the entire organization and had kept the organization alive for decades.)
Omnes Omnibus
@EireIAm: Why would they? Send a letter back saying that they have already left the US and that any deportation action is, therefore, moot. I would do that to avoid any future negative consequences from being deported as opposed to leaving on their own.
brantl
@lowtechcyclist: what makes you think I wouldn’t shoot them if they saw something they weren’t supposed to see?
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne: Yeah.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I will, but he’s not around much anymore.
Do you know how long it took him, how much it cost him and if he had an immigration lawyer.
lowtechcyclist
@brantl: Who would you be shooting, ICE or a reporter? I presume ‘I’ means you, and not somebody else.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/adamkeiper.com/post/3lsmbzyduzk2f
gene108
Biggest problem in U.S. society right now.
For all the things people say they like, there’s a dedicated minority that does not want it and will crawl over broken glass to make sure it does not happen, while the majority is “meh…why can’t politicians do things I want”.
VFX Lurker
Anecdotal: I knew an American who married a Kiwi. They waited for years for her green card to go through. When they moved to New Zealand, they had no intention of returning to the USA, so the Kiwi said she was leaving for good on the way out. This cancelled her green card.
Then the husband’s diabetes manifested as renal failure, he went blind, she became his caretaker.
New Zealand executed its right to deny him NZ citizenship (and access to expensive dialysis treatment).
He qualified for Social Security and Medicare due to his renal failure. He could collect his Social Security in New Zealand, but his Medicare was only good for treatment in the USA.
However, his wife (and caretaker) could not reenter the USA without her green card.
He stayed in New Zealand. I forget the circumstances, but NZ eventually made an exception for him, and he could get dialysis. However, he was in bad shape by then. He died in 2012.
TLDR: make sure the American living abroad has health insurance.
Weapon X
@EireIAm: your friends should have an attorney write a letter telling them to eat a bag of dicks and include a bill for a processing fee (preferably in an obscure foreign currency).
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lsmdfp2obk2u
Ring doorbell clip at the link.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lskiqvllos23
Video at link.
gene108
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Not enough immigrants to impact most Americans daily lives in North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, and other solidly Republican states that had Democratic Senators at some point this century.
Plus, people adjust to new normals all the time, until memory of what used to be fades away.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lsm3vbj6uk2d
One stroke of the Vile Felon’s sharpie and Temu Gobbels get’s another half million to kidnap, brutalize and sell into slavery.
Leto
@lowtechcyclist: what might happen is the same thing that happened to the Army during the surge, and a few years after: lowering of standards, accepting criminals. Would they do that? Idk. There’s already white supremacists in there, but how many more are going to join? They’d have to leave their cushy cop jobs first…
Jeffg166
The hard core 30% hate everyone. Always have always will.
Suzanne
@Leto: How are we gonna get more Americans to volunteer to work for ICE when they’re enjoying their new factory assembly line jobs so much?!?!
Jay
@Leto:
ICE is already contracting Bounty Hunters.
Slave Patrols are back.
Jay
@Suzanne:
Not everybody want’s to assemble bananas.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/davidjbier.bsky.social/post/3lsmhdqpm6s2s
trollhattan
Do go on.
Hordes I tell you, hordes. And flags, furrin’ flags! Cats and dogs, sleepin’ together. Chaos.
Chico not sending their best. Last time I said that it was WRT Aaron Rogers.
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: They never went away (cops).
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: ICE grabs some immigrants off the street, gives them the choice of getting disappeared to a torture cell or joining ICE to grab their own neighbors. Most may say no. Some fraction will say yes. They may already be doing this.
Baud
Working class hero.
Gin & Tonic
@Jay: The non-rich and non-white mother of my newest grand-daughter is in the process of applying for US citizenship. Yes, of course she has a lawyer. The process is time-consuming and expensive. Luckily my son’s employer provides legal assistance.
It’s always so easy to tell – here, on “social media,” on Twitter, in various other fora – who has never had a close personal interaction with the US immigration system.
Jay
@Steve LaBonne:
while the roots of Policing in the US is the Slave Catchers, in the US Bounty Hunters can only lawfully go after people who have skipped out on their bail bond and are limited in the force and weapons they can use.
That Bounty Hunters are going after immigrants who have no bail, no contract with a Bail Bondsman, and turning them over to ICE, goes back to the days when slave catchers went after run away slaves for the bounty.
They have no legal authority to seize anyone, other than people who have skipped on bail. It’s out and out kidnapping.
Steve LaBonne
@Gin & Tonic: It was an infuriating shithouse 40 years ago when I married my Mumbai Parsi first wife. It was mostly the green card process that was excruciating, getting citizenship was not too bad (except for helping her study for the test). I can hardly imagine how much worse it is now.
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: Indeed. And I believe the rumors that some of them are immigrants with criminal tendencies who were given the choice of being deported or signing up.
Harrison Wesley
@Matt McIrvin: ICE – the new work/release initiative!
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
I hope her Lawyer attends every hearing with her and has their 4th and 5th Amendment arguments teed up in case the ICE Lawyer dismisses her case.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/nyccomptroller.bsky.social/post/3lsm4lkhu7c2k
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lsksadh64s22
mayim
@FlyingToaster:
Thanks for doing the feed ~ it’s very helpful when I’m standing in line somewhere and just want to check in quickly.
Gvg
@Jay: I spent the day with an immigrant citizen who is not rich and made it in about 5 years. He is an engineering postdoctoral who married an American, but he did manage it. Also his older sister, non citizen in some research field had been here for years ahead of him, working here, so that may have helped. They are from India.
I just met him so I don’t know him well enough to ask details. He just accepted a job offer from MIT, some kind of lab work.
Bupalos
I think we should think long and hard about how and why attitudes on immigration are shifting so radically. I mean, these numbers are basically as fast as anything ever changes in politics.
I think it’s basically about the administration’s cruelty and stupidity, but in 2 very different ways. One is the thing you’d hope for, that people just find this gross and stupid, that they don’t like this kind of wanton cruelty when they see it, and that some of the realities of the way that immigrants help our economy are sinking in as the deportation action threatens these things.
The other is related, but much more complicated and icky. Basically, border crossings are down massively, because this administration has made it well known that they are more than ready to torture anyone who shows up there. They’ve changed the calculus for potential refugees. Basically Trump’s cruelty has effectively caught up to the current effects of global warming and related state collapse that creates the refugee flow. To put it in Millerian terms, the cruelty has worked.
But there’s a flip side: this new stasis creates the room for more people to return to a more traditionally positive view of immigration, and allows them to hear correct arguments about positive economic effects. Of course, the darker side of this is that global warming is not being addressed really at all, and is progressing, for the most part faster than the most pessimistic models. So the current stasis where American cruelty has caught up to cartel cruelty and state collapse is unlikely to hold.
Jay
Video at link.
https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lsj5bg57c22e
Bupalos
@opiejeanne: I’ll take “Things that Make Jeff Bezos More Powerfull,” for $100
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@mayim: When feed services started up at Bluesky, I started the feed to mimic the Jackals list I had had at Twitter.
And it kinda cascaded from there.
Enjoy!
The Unmitigated Gaul
Watching from a distance, admittedly, so I may be missing something – but the ICE kidnappings seem to be picking up possible illegals by the what? Tens? So how is Trump going to expel millions?