Do you believe that shit? We have the highest incarceration numbers in the world. ICE is wandering freely into cities and abusing and jailing people they feel like doing that to. There is no drive toward ending police and prisons. None at all. A few people make remarks about it and you cobble together a movement. That is what is required to keep the right afraid. You should buy rockets and bombs too.
Islam in the news
- Thread starter Diogenes
- Start date
Yes, I do, Nerdsperg.
It's not high enough.
Is it true that "ICE is wandering freely into cities and abusing and jailing people they feel like doing that to"?
No, not in the absolute, unrestricted sense of the claim.
ICE (and sometimes CBP) officers operate under federal authority to enforce immigration law nationwide, including in cities. They do not require local permission and can conduct operations in public spaces, workplaces, and communities. However, they are constrained by constitutional limits (reasonable suspicion/probable cause for stops and arrests, Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches/seizures), statutes, and internal policies—even if critics argue those constraints are frequently violated in practice under the current high-volume approach.
Under the second Trump administration (2025–2026), enforcement has escalated sharply with large funding increases, expanded agent numbers, and a shift toward more “at-large”/community arrests (streets, Home Depot lots, workplaces, check-ins, etc.) rather than primarily jail transfers. Daily arrest numbers rose well above prior norms (peaks around 1,000–1,300+ per day reported in periods, with surges higher in specific operations). Official statements emphasize targeting removable noncitizens, including those with criminal records (“worst of the worst”), and deny racial profiling.
Key documented patterns from reports and data
Advocacy groups (ACLU, Human Rights Watch) and analyses of government data describe widespread issues in multiple states and cities (Minnesota/Twin Cities Operation Metro Surge, Chicago area, Los Angeles, New York, smaller towns, etc.):
- Scale and methods: Thousands of arrests in concentrated surges. Many occur in everyday locations. A significant share involve people with no U.S. criminal convictions (analyses of ICE data put the conviction rate for arrests in the second Trump term around one-third or lower in various periods/snapshots—down from higher shares under prior administrations). Some operations and data show majorities or large pluralities without convictions or even pending charges; violent-crime shares are smaller still. Collateral arrests (people encountered while looking for others) and street stops are common.
- Allegations of abuse and excess force: Reports document hundreds of incidents involving tackling/pinning, chemical irritants, chokeholds or neck restraints, threats with weapons, vehicle stops, and use of force near schools or in residential areas. Specific high-profile cases include fatal shootings of U.S. citizens (e.g., Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis area in early 2026) and others, plus injuries, detentions of bystanders/citizens, and claims of warrantless or poorly justified actions. Detention conditions and medical care issues have also drawn criticism and lawsuits.
- Racial/ethnic profiling claims: Multiple reports and lawsuits cite stops based on appearance, language, accent, location, or work type (e.g., day laborers), with disproportionate impact on Latinos. Some court filings reference agent communications using slurs. DHS has called such claims false and insisted operations are targeted with due diligence.
Independent academic analyses of arrest data confirm the inverse relationship: higher overall arrest volumes correlate with lower shares of people who have prior criminal convictions. Official operations continue (including recent ones highlighting criminal offenders), and some agents/individual cases of misconduct have faced charges historically, but systemic accountability remains contested.
Bottom line
Enforcement is real, expanded, more visible in cities and communities, and frequently involves people without serious criminal records. Credible documentation from rights groups, court cases, videos, and data analyses supports serious concerns about excessive force, profiling, arbitrary detentions, and impacts on citizens and legal residents in multiple locations. It is not accurate to describe agents as simply “wandering freely… abusing and jailing people they feel like” with zero limits—legal and practical constraints exist, and many arrests target individuals believed to be removable under immigration law. The intensity, tactics, volume, and documented misconduct in 2025–2026 go well beyond routine prior practice and have generated widespread protests, lawsuits, state/local pushback, and official responses denying systemic abuse while defending the mission.
Claims should be evaluated against primary data, videos, court records, and official statistics rather than slogans. Situations vary by location, operation, and individual encounter.
Grok
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Is it accurate to claim "There is no drive toward ending police and prisons. None at all"?
No. The claim is not accurate. There is a real, ongoing (if minority and largely unsuccessful) movement advocating the abolition of police and prisons.
Police abolition
- The idea has deep roots in activist and academic circles (tied to critiques of policing’s historical links to slave patrols, labor control, and racial control) and gained mainstream visibility during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
- Explicit calls to “abolish the police” (not merely reform or reduce funding) came from groups and organizers. Examples include Minneapolis activists and city council members who initially pledged to dismantle the police department, and figures associated with Black Visions Collective and related networks.
- Key texts and organizers (e.g., The End of Policing by Alex Vitale; writings and organizing by Mariame Kaba and others) argue that policing is inherently oppressive and cannot be reformed—only ended and replaced by community-based alternatives focused on addressing root causes (poverty, mental health, housing).
- “Defund the police” often functioned as a stepping-stone slogan for abolitionists; some clarified that the end goal was zero police, not just budget cuts. Recent commentary continues to reference the goal in left-activist and some Democratic Socialist circles.
Prison abolition
- This is a longer-standing movement, with roots in the 1970s (post-Attica) and figures such as Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and organizations like Critical Resistance. It seeks to eliminate prisons as an institution in favor of restorative/transformative justice approaches and structural changes that reduce the conditions producing crime.
- Prison and police abolition are frequently treated as linked goals within the same broader framework of dismantling the “prison-industrial complex.”
- The movement remains active in advocacy, scholarship, resource directories for incarcerated people, and campaigns against new prison construction or for closures.
Scale and outcomes
These positions are held by a vocal activist/academic minority, not majority public opinion or mainstream Democratic policy. Most Americans and many progressive politicians reject full abolition (Bernie Sanders, for instance, has explicitly opposed abolishing police departments). “Defund” experiments after 2020 were limited, often reversed amid crime concerns, and the broader abolition demand has not translated into lasting institutional elimination of police or prisons.
Some advocates distinguish “strong” abolition (complete elimination) from more gradual “defund/dismantle/rebuild” approaches, but the explicit drive to end these institutions exists, is documented in organizing, literature, and political statements, and continues to appear in radical left discourse. Claiming there is “none at all” is therefore false.
Grok
Grok is an AI assistant built by SpaceXAI. Chat, create images, write code, and get real-time answers from the web and X.
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It's called pattern recognition, Nerdsperg. I'm not afraid. I want leftists to abolish police and prisons so criminals will be free to murder people like you with impunity. I look forward to it in hope.
I don't think that'll be necessary, Nerdsperg.
Will Tanner's a special kind of idiot if he thinks the near East and North Africa were once populated with white people.
Is that so?
Is he wrong?
Hop to it! Hi ho, Search Assist!
Is Will Tanner claiming that "the Near East and North Africa were once populated by white people", and were they?
No, Will Tanner is not claiming the Near East and North Africa were once populated by “white people” in those exact words. His post describes pre-Islamic Christian populations there as looking “essentially Greek or Roman,” and contrasts that with modern Arabic and Turkish appearances after centuries of conquest, violence, and demographic change. He frames the Islamic expansions as involving mass rape and murder of those Christian populations, with lasting effects on looks and demographics, plus later examples of violence against Christians.
“Greek or Roman” phenotype is not the same as modern Northern European “white,” but in popular racial categories it often falls under Caucasian/European-adjacent Mediterranean types (olive to fairer skin, various hair/eye colors). Ancient sources, art (Fayum portraits, frescoes, mosaics), and genetics show diversity across the Roman Mediterranean—not a uniform Northern European look.
Were the pre-Islamic Near East and North Africa populated by people who looked “essentially Greek or Roman”?
Partially overlapping in the Roman/Byzantine era for some urban/coastal/Christian groups, but not a full or simple replacement story, and genetics show substantial continuity rather than total erasure.
- Genetic continuity is strong: Present-day Levantine populations (e.g., Lebanese) derive the large majority (~90% or more in some models) of their ancestry from local Bronze Age/Canaanite-related groups. Iron Age to Roman-period samples show some Anatolian/Southeast European admixture, but Roman rule itself had limited population-level genetic impact. Later Ottoman-era Caucasus input occurred, but core local ancestry persists.
- Ancient Egyptians (New Kingdom through Roman periods) clustered genetically closer to ancient Near Eastern/Levantine groups than modern Egyptians do. Modern Egyptians show additional sub-Saharan ancestry (roughly 8% more in some analyses) that increased mainly in the last ~2,000 years. Phenotypic SNPs in some ancient samples indicate intermediate-to-lighter pigmentation alleles were present.
- North Africa (Maghreb): Pre-Islamic populations had a strong autochthonous Maghrebi component (linked to back-migration from Eurasia thousands of years earlier), plus earlier Levantine and some European input. Roman-era and earlier groups already carried mixed Mediterranean ancestry. The Arab conquests (7th century onward) added Middle Eastern ancestry and contributed to Arabization (language/culture), with further sub-Saharan input over time via trade/slavery, but local continuity remains. Berber-speaking groups often retain more of the older Maghrebi signal.
Roman North Africa and the Levant were multi-ethnic under empire: local Phoenician/Punic, Berber/Libyan, Egyptian, Levantine, Greek settlers, Roman colonists, and others. Christianization (late Roman/Byzantine) occurred across these groups. Coastal cities and elite/Christian communities could appear more “Greek/Roman” due to Hellenization, urbanization, and Mediterranean gene flow. Inland and rural populations were often more local. Art (Fayum mummy portraits from Roman Egypt) shows a range of Mediterranean complexions and features—not uniformly light Northern European, nor uniformly modern “Arab.”
Demographic and phenotypic change after the Islamic conquests
Conquests from the 7th century onward brought Arab armies, settlers, and later Turkish groups (especially Anatolia). Language, religion, and culture shifted dramatically (Arabization and Islamization). There was violence, enslavement, jizya pressures, and conversion incentives that reduced Christian populations over centuries (Armenians, Assyrians/Chaldeans, Copts, Levantine Christians, North African Christians all declined sharply). Genetic studies detect Middle Eastern/Arab-related admixture pulses associated with these periods, plus later movements, but do not support wholesale population replacement by outsiders. Local converts and residual continuity explain much of the modern gene pool. Appearance shifts reflect admixture + cultural/religious sorting + later Ottoman-era inputs, not a pure “rape and murder replaced everyone” model.
Tanner’s post is polemical and selective—it accurately notes historical Islamic conquests, slave-raiding (including Barbary Corsairs), and episodes of anti-Christian violence, but overstates genetic/phenotypic transformation as near-total and driven primarily by sexual violence while underplaying continuity, conversion, and pre-existing Mediterranean diversity. Pre-Islamic populations were already diverse West Eurasian/Mediterranean groups, not a uniform “white Greek/Roman” stock that was erased.
Ancient Mediterranean Populations' Genetic Continuity | Shared Grok Conversation
Is Will Tanner claiming that "the Near East and North Africa were once populated by white people", a
grok.com
I already did because I wanted to have my ducks in a row before you came for me over that comment.Is that so?
Is he wrong?
Hop to it! Hi ho, Search Assist!
Beat you to it.
