No. of Recommendations: 5
The point is, that those people are here *legally*, until they have had their legal due process wrt their asylum claim. Grabbing them as they show up for their hearing, is, in that sense, grabbing people who are here legally.
True. But it's also perfectly legal to do that. Lawful, but awful. Filing a claim of asylum means you have a right to remain within the country, but it doesn't mean you have a right to be at liberty within the country. ICE is allowed to detain you until your claim is heard.
MAGA will love the visuals of brown people being yanked out of line at the polls. The fact that they will all be found to be US citizens, and released, after the polls close, will not matter to MAGA. The important thing, in their eyes, would be that they were prevented voting.
Perhaps, but they would hate what happened next when those elections got thrown out and the GOP lost seats because of it. By definition, any election that's close enough for this to be practical is a winnable election for the GOP. If you send federal agents to yank people out of line and not let them vote you're going to have the election invalidated (even people in jail are allowed to vote!), and you're going to end up getting crushed in the follow-up.
It doesn't matter whether MAGA will like the visuals or not. It's a fundamentally stupid move in a tight election. And even if MAGA likes watching those images, Trump's enormously saavy when it comes to TV and media impacts - and he's going to know that most people won't like seeing that on their TV screens over and over again. Witness Minnesota. Trump knows that what happened makes ICE look bad on TV. He knows it's bad to look bad on TV. Even if MAGA liked seeing some of those hippie AWFL protestors get what's coming to them, it's a bad look among everyone else.
