Disney trip turned into immigration detention
49 points
1 hour ago
| 4 comments
| propublica.org
| HN
ornornor
14 minutes ago
[-]
This is absolutely insane. I cannot comprehend how the self-called land of the free can do this. Adults are one thing. But children? Children?? And be allowed to separate them for their parents from 10 years old??? This is vicious.
reply
ExoticPearTree
3 minutes ago
[-]
> This is vicious.

Deterrence.

I guess it is to make parents less likely to try to bring children with them.

reply
iJohnDoe
21 minutes ago
[-]
This is just insane to treat children and people like this.

It has always been nearly impossible to comprehend how the Nazis could put children on trains and send them to concentration camps. How could those actions be tolerated by the world and how could the Nazis be so cold and heartless. It's hard to wrap you mind around how it all happened. Well, you're seeing it happen before your eyes right now.

You have a president that is ordering this to be done. You have people that have been put into positions with unlimited power and no repercussions. You have elected officials that blatantly lie (propaganda system). You have a fear based system that prevents people from resisting. You have people of power and wealth (e.g. Tim Cook) that benefit from what's taking place, which further supports and enables the president's actions.

reply
ViktorRay
18 minutes ago
[-]
No this isn’t what the Nazis did. Comparisons like that are ridiculous.

The Nazi took members of ethnic minorities and put them into death camps and massacred them in horrible ways.

Comparing the deportation of illegal immigrants (illegals immigrants can be of any ethnic or religious background) with the industrial mass murder of entire ethnic groups? That’s an absurd comparison.

I agree that what happened to the young girl in the article was messed up but your comparison is still ridiculous.

reply
wan23
12 minutes ago
[-]
So basically you're okay with the trains and the camps, just not the showers and incinerators?
reply
kelseyfrog
4 minutes ago
[-]
No one is disputing the severity of Nazi brutality. However, there were several other types of camps we can compare the Dilly TX center to: Internierungslager, Durchgangslager, and Schutzhaftlager.

These are not concentration nor death camps, but Nazi camps all the same. It's important to be familiar with all of history and not dismiss a comparison because it doesn't fit the most extreme version that we know. How close do you think the Dilly TX center is in it's operation to these other types of Nazi camps? In which ways are they similar or different? Does that change anything?

reply
ornornor
16 minutes ago
[-]
The nazis didn’t start doing that right away. It happened gradually.
reply
stvltvs
11 minutes ago
[-]
> The Nazi took members of ethnic minorities and put them into death camps and massacred them in horrible ways.

That's not how it started. It started with labor camps for political enemies and other undesirables. They became death camps step by step, over time.

We have to nip them in the bud before they have a chance to become death camps. People are already dying of neglect.

reply
iJohnDoe
11 minutes ago
[-]
It's not an unfair comparison. They are building concentration camps. We hope they don't turn into death camps. If you read other investigations you'll find that people are dying in these detention centers (concentration camps).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46896823

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/10/us/ice-detain-irish-man-five-...

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0209/1557514-seamus-cul...

> Then it was 42 hours of waiting in the airport holding rooms. Eventually they were put on a plane — then a minivan — to the facility in Texas. Maria Antonia said she didn’t really understand where they were going until they saw the center out the window.

> they had been detained for nearly four months.

reply
generj
9 minutes ago
[-]
The Nazis didn’t start by massacring ethnic (and political, sexual, and religious) minorities. They started by massacring mentally handicapped people.

But then they made noises about getting rid of undesirable people by shipping them out of the country. Prior to that plenty of dehumanizing rhetoric that Trump and others eerily echo. It was only after the forced deportations didn’t pan out that ghettos started. Then detention camps. And finally extermination centers.

It’s very reasonable to look events which appear similar to the start of genocides and decry them.

reply
AlexandrB
59 minutes ago
[-]
This sounds like an awful experience and I feel bad for the little girl that had to go through that.

Having said that, what should the penalty for overstaying a visa by ~7 years[1] be? Nothing? I'd love to see the Democrats propose an alternative approach here, but all I seem to hear is thought terminating cliches like "no one is illegal". Is the proposed alternative just open borders?

[1] > She lived in Colombia with her grandmother and regularly traveled back and forth to the United States to visit her mother, who had been in the U.S. since 2018. (Maria Alejandra had overstayed a visa but since married a U.S. citizen and was applying for a green card.)

reply
catapart
19 minutes ago
[-]
Asking the wrong question, friend. What should the penalty be for failing to process an immigrant through your system for ~7 years? Where does the fucking buck stop? The US immigration system is broken, and has been, so where are the penalties for this mismanagement? I'd love to see Republicans propose a punitive approach here, but all I seem to hear is though terminating cliches like "should we just have open borders?"

But, absolutely - after we fix the broken system and start processing immigration in a reasonable and timely manner, then we can start asking what the penalties should be for people who abuse our immigration system. But I don't have an ounce of energy to spare on that deflection until the former is done.

reply
cdrnsf
23 minutes ago
[-]
I'd like to see an amnesty, immigration reform to make the entire system possible to navigate and humane treatment of all involved.

The current administration approach is to unleash a masked, unaccountable paramilitary to hold people in warehouses converted into concentration camps.

reply
stvltvs
18 minutes ago
[-]
There are lots of options between the extremes of open borders and putting children in internment camps in inhumane and dangerous conditions.
reply
generj
22 minutes ago
[-]
Regardless of if there ought to be some sort of consequences for a civil (not criminal) infraction, the consequences shouldn’t fall on a 9 yo girl. I have no idea how the operators of the for profit detention center sleep at night.

Usually receiving a green card forgives any visa overstays. Because she married a US Citizen she would almost assuredly have received the green card. The months of suffering of a little girl are just due to a delay in a bureaucracy approving some paperwork.

reply
1attice
1 hour ago
[-]
Looking forward to the inevitable flagging by ThielBot Eschatron 3000
reply