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Watson says that, looking back, he’s not confident that the damage long-term imprisonment did to his mind and body was worth it to remain in the country. “As lovely as America sounds, it’s not everything. It’s okay to start back over and live your life, because sometimes you’re gonna sit there for a long time if you’re fighting,” he says. His advice to other citizens in ICE detention is to remain open to giving up, if deportation means getting out of jail

Only do that if you know you'll actually be deported - rather than imprisoned offshore.

I fully agree with the comments criticizing the ICE and proof of citizenship. The shitty part, the judicial branch is not arresting nor penalizing the business owners hiring illegal labor and a lot of those fuckers voted for this shit.

Only people acting in good-faith care about your "proof"

Not if the people examining my documents are morons, no.

I have a birth certificate, I have a passport and a passport card. None of that is a defense against "It's fake".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/us-citizen-detained-ice-real-id

not if someone expects me to produce documents randomly on the sidewalk.

It's like proving to a Nazi, you don't have Jewish ancestry in 1938.

It's getting to the point very soon that the only way you stop this, is armed community resistance.

No warrant, no entry. The only way you stop the abuse of power, is by confronting it with more power.

They are bullies, they are not brave.

So many things wrong with this headline.

• It is 'nearly impossible to escape' FOR ANYONE, not just US citizens. By design.
• You can be in the US legitimately without being a citizen.
• ANY AND EVERY detainment by ICE is wrongful.
• You are not legally required to provide ID to authorities. In some states you can be compelled to provide your full name and possibly your address, ONLY if there is reasonable suspicion against you.

There is an important and subtle distinction to be made here. A lot of noise is made calling people who are here without authorization "illegals", but that's not always true. Being present in the country without authorization is not automatically a criminal matter. It is true that many of the avenues for being here without authorization (crossing illegally, overstaying a visa) also violate the law, but that is handled as a separate matter.

Since immigration status is mostly a civil matter, ot a criminal one, these immigration courts are not under the Judicial Branch, like criminal courts are. They are actually "administrative courts" which are part of the Department of Justice, under the President, just like ICE is.

So while the courts occasionally provide a check on this Predident's power, the immigration courts never will. They ultimately report to the President through the DoJ, and the President has much more direct influence over it. So it doesn't surprise me that these people are stuck in a Kafkaesque hell, where ICE ignore their pleas that they are citizens and says "tell it to the judge", and when they finally get to the judge they get ignored.

Is it any wonder that Trump was so dead set against the immigration bill last year? He needed the process to stay chaotic, in order to have a better chance of winning.

This does beg the question in my mind: If a person is wrongfully determined to be an illegal immigrant despite only having US citizenship, and is actually deported to some country ICE convinces themselves that person is from rather than "deporting" them to some prison in an unrelated country like El Salvador, they would presumably be in that other country illegally at that point. Would they be liable to be deported back to the US in such a case, by the government of that country?