And yet, they don't discriminate - much less define - "serious" vs. "not serious".

Sure - because, again, that's not the only variable. Most people in the jail haven't been convicted, may not even have been formally charged - and even those that are, and may even be charged for serious crimes, will have their charges dropped.

Sure. They can avoid arresting *anyone* for a federal crime if they want to. They can avoid helping the feds track down terrorists, money launderers, drug runners, child traffickers, any of it.

But they never frame it that way, do they?

Because those are all informal decisions. If the feds called up your local police force and said, "hey, we're putting together a task force to rigorously crack down on people sharing their Netflix passwords, and want a bunch of your officers to be assigned to that...." there's a pretty good chance they might be told, "no."

This playing games with words, sorry. There's no law that says Illinois authorities have to arrest an Al Capone either but they would have if J. Edgar Hoover had asked them to. If Osama Bin Laden had been spotted in Chicago ca2002 CPD would have been happy to slap the cuffs on him.

But because of their emotional decisions, they've passed these statutes in an attempt to impose their (very much not agreed to by the general population) views on national immigration policy on the rest of us.

Yes, because those are serious hardened criminals.

This isn't about "emotional decisions." Proportionality and justice are serious moral and ethical concerns with any system that involves the use of force by the state. It underlies all criminal justice systems and many civil enforcement processes as well. It is important that whatever processes you have do not punish the person who has shared a Netflix password or stolen cable or made unauthorized copies of the latest Taylor Swift album with the same severity as someone who commits a murder. That's not an "emotional decision," it's one of the (many) core competing interests at play.

Most conservatives strongly prioritize order, security, and enforcement of rules over other interests. That's fine - different people have different ways of prioritizing things about the world. That doesn't mean that interests like "proportional fairness" and "avoiding harm to those who don't serve the harm" aren't important as well.