Usa Thread

[buffalo_bill]

Gentlemen, the most lovely woman Marjorie Greene (sp?) who I thought is satan´s own representative on earth seems to have found Jesus or something. Madame now decided that her previous light figure Donald is nothing but a liar depending on ultra rich types donating enormous amounts of cash to please their master. You are right Marjorie, keep on telling us what you know.

First Lady Melanie, may the Lord have mercy, appears somewhere in the Epstein files. Some person testifying under oath explained that the most honorable Mr. Epstein himself indroduced madame to the most honorable Donald. Personally I believe that Melanie met Epstein probably on Sunday morning praying at the local baptist church or at the  synagogue. The latter on Saturday. 

 

PS: Interesting times ahead folks.

[bust]

6 hours ago, zzzz said:

This is a high quality fake. spreading disinformation.  It's AI generated using the face of a respected lawyer.  

There also a moderately convincing one circulating about the senate voting on removing King Pedo from office.

[Coss]

Another point I forgot to make is - Ai Slop will be effective.

Even if we (us here with a modicum of intelligence) can see through a lot of the Slop - in a democracy, a moron majority won't...

[zzzz]

6 hours ago, short-time said:

Are you certain this is an AI fake? If so, I would never have suspected it... It's probably from legacy corporate news which I never watch anyway.. so not a problem. 

I reported the video to YouTube that it is spam. I got a response from them the next day indicating that they have taken it down. 
 

I’ve come across several of these fakes on YouTube, one with Warren Buffet even. There was one just out that claimed that Melania first had sex with Trump on Epstein’s Lolita Express. 

[bust]

There's always a "Silver Lining"

ICE Employees Vent on Reddit, Saying They're Not Getting Paid and Still No Insurance Despite Promises

Staff claim promised bonuses and insurance have failed to materialise, with some reporting they cannot afford medical care for sick children

By Thea Felicity
Published 02 February 2026, 12:01 PM GMT

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ICE in action in Portland WikiMedia Commons

 

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is facing an unusual wave of internal backlash after employees began publicly accusing the agency of failing to pay salaries and activate health insurance weeks after recruitment.

Despite a historic recruitment drive that added 12,000 agents in recently, the agency's administrative backbone appears to be buckling, with employees desperate enough to turn to the Reddit to detail their struggles.

In raw, unfiltered Reddit posts now spreading beyond law-enforcement circles, ICE officers describe going a month or more without a paycheque, struggling to secure medical cover for sick children, and watching promised bonuses quietly stall.

As immigration enforcement intensifies nationally, critics argue the complaints raise uncomfortable questions about how an agency tasked with enforcing the law is allegedly struggling to meet its most basic obligations to its own workforce.

One officer reported being unable to cover medical costs for a sick child due to a coverage gap, while others claim five-figure signing bonuses have not materialised. This benefits breakdown comes at a critical time as the agency ramps up enforcement activity, leaving front-line staff questioning the government's ability to manage the very workforce it spent millions to recruit.

What began as routine onboarding complaints has now snowballed into a viral reckoning about how a major US federal agency manages its workforce while aggressively expanding enforcement operations. As screenshots circulate across social platforms, critics argue the issue is no longer bureaucratic delay but institutional dysfunction, raising uncomfortable questions about morale, accountability and the human cost of America's immigration enforcement machine.

Reddit Becomes an Outlet for ICE Staff

The unofficial private subreddit, r/ICE_ERO, serves as a forum for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) employees to share experiences and advice.

Although not officially affiliated with the agency, the forum attracts hundreds of officers who discuss career concerns and operational challenges.

One post, shared by a new employee, explained that despite being on the job for two months, they still had no health insurance and were struggling to cover medical costs for a sick child.

Other posts also complained about their confusion about bonuses and pay schedules. One officer noted a bonus of around £4,950 ($6,000) after taxes, but complained that deductions reduced the net payout to £4,125 ($5,000), showing frustration with payroll processes.

Another user lamented, 'Monday is four weeks since I started and I haven't been paid yet', emphasising that delayed payments were not an isolated case.

The Promises the US Govt Gave to ICE Applicants

Prospective ICE applicants are recruited with the promise of competitive federal salaries and a comprehensive benefits package.

Salaries vary by role and experience but generally follow the federal General Schedule (GS) scale, with entry‑level Deportation Officers typically in the £40,000–£70,000 range ($51,600–$84,000) and opportunities to rise significantly with seniority and locality adjustments.

Officers can also receive Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime pay, which adds approximately 25% to base pay for law enforcement duties.

In addition to pay, recruits are offered extensive benefits including health, dental, vision, and life insurance, a retirement plan under the Federal Employees Retirement System, a Thrift Savings Plan similar to a 401(k), paid leave and federal holidays.

Recent incentive packages also include signing bonuses of up to £40,000 ($50,000), student loan repayment incentives up to £48,000 ($60,000), and retention bonuses for continuing service, aimed at boosting recruitment and retention.

Critics Question How ICE Employees Stomach Their Job

Commenters on the posts chimed in on the discussions, asking how ICE employees weren't aware they were being duped by the federal agency into hiring more people: 'how stupid do you have to be to think you're actually going to get paid by this administration lmao'.

One user quipped that agents 'do it for the violence, not the money', implying that their motivations were more about power than pay, implying that they deserve what they tolerate. Others in the thread also labelled ICE personnel with hostile language and attacked the organisation as a 'criminal mob'.

Many users expressed disdain for the agency's mission or tactics, with responses ranging from accusations of cruelty to calls for accountability and frustration over their 'ignorance'.

One commenter described their situation as deserving, saying the job is 'breaking into people's houses and kidnapp[ing] people from school and their workplace as standard operating procedure'.

Another critic wrote that it was 'like working for the Gestapo for a month without pay', using a historical analogy to Nazi secret police to emphasise the violence carried out by ICE operations. The comment also mocks the idea of performing such violent and stressful duties without reliable compensation, 'selling out your fellow man to the ruling class will never pay off, and these idiots are learning that the hard way'.

An X user summed up the whole thread, saying, 'No one's getting that bonus. It's not gonna happen'.

Despite the vitriol, the operational impact is a serious concern for the government. With net migration projected to hit record lows in 2026, the reliance on these 12,000 new agents is absolute. If the agency cannot resolve the payroll and health insurance crisis immediately, it faces a massive retention failure that could derail national enforcement targets.

As the posts continue to circulate on social media, pressure is likely to grow for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to clarify whether the problems stem from administrative bottlenecks or broader mismanagement.

[bust]

Guy sets up Fake ICE Hotline 😀

 

[buffalo_bill]

The artificial "intelligence" is a fundamental desaster. Although extremely helpful on many accounts it makes virtually everything that is being published in writing or picture potentially fake. I am very happy for myself that I feel no desire to participate in any of the "social" media commercial companies and therefore feel immune. I only watch Facebook because it is entertaining and I do not publish anything there. Currently they want me to buy a Hyundai but there is no chance at all and for some reason spend my holidays in Abu Dhabi. I would rather stay home. I watch motorboats, girls at the beach in bikinis, fancy cars and Turkish dogs: Kangals. If for entirely scientific reasons I decide to enter the diabolic sphere of naked women I use Qwant for finding them. They do not follow you or sell your data elsewhere.

 

Addition: I watch Youtube, mostly Elvis and Joe Bonamassa

[Coss]

12 hours ago, bust said:

There's always a "Silver Lining"

ICE Employees Vent on Reddit, Saying They're Not Getting Paid and Still No Insurance Despite Promises

Staff claim promised bonuses and insurance have failed to materialise, with some reporting they cannot afford medical care for sick children

... etc

 

Trump never pays and ALWAYS STIFFS HIS SUBCONTRACTORS.

When the MAGA base hear him say, no I don't and I'm the most honest.... etc, they will now find out the hard way.

[Coss]

12 hours ago, bust said:

Guy sets up Fake ICE Hotline 😀

 

Very good - -

almost too good,  and quietly destroys the "Karen", the complainant. I wonder if this guy is related to Mr Newburger.

___ 

[Coss]

I tender the following, for the reasons:

a/. what happens in 'merica does really affect what happens in the Western World. I have Lawyers and Judges in my family and the content that is referenced, has similar roots in the Western Democratic World's legal systems.

b/. some amusement is to be found here, if you find the text is not too voluminous, for casual thumb scrolling.

c/. I find the NYT amongst the most sane, of commentary on the current Orange Mess that is the USA.

d/. get a coffee

_____

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE

A.O. Scott 

Feb 4, 2026

One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat, standing in the January cold with the hand of a federal officer gripping his Spider-Man backpack.

Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio. Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient judicial principle forbidding the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so. On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition, freeing them.

That’s the boilerplate. But Judge Biery’s decision — which has gotten a lot of attention in legal circles and beyond — is much more than a dry specimen of judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite and at times mischievous piece of prose.

That may not have surprised some Texas court watchers. Judge Biery, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, is known for his wit and writerly flair. His judicial order in a 2013 case involving San Antonio strip clubs is famous for its literary allusions (“to bare, or not to bare”) and its cheeky double entendres. A 2023 profile in San Antonio Lawyer magazine called him “a judge with a little extra to say.”

The extra in this case transforms what might have been a routine decision into a thorough scourging of the Trump administration’s approach to governance. This text isn’t much longer than one of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts. In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.

It’s worth looking at how he does it.

OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT

Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ1 of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.

He starts by juxtaposing the grandeur of habeas corpus with the modesty of the father and son’s claims, implying that what makes the writ “Great” is precisely its ability to protect the basic right of ordinary people not to be locked up arbitrarily. It does this by requiring that the government either provide reasons for holding them in custody or else let them go.

1. Ex parte Bollman, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75 (1807); Sir William W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769); see also Magna Carta, Article 39.

Judge Biery’s footnote directing readers to Blackstone’s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration. His larger point, though, is that to flout the guarantee of habeas corpus — as he insists the current deportation policy has done — is to threaten the integrity of the American constitutional order itself.

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

He calls attention to the grandiosity and sloppiness of the administration’s position while suggesting that its overreach reflects a more sinister intention.

Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”

2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”

3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”

4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”

As the 250th birthday of American independence approaches, the president is being cast as King George III. The federal government’s indifference to habeas claims places it on the wrong side of the historical divide between individual liberty and unchecked state power, and thus at odds with the founding documents of the Republic.

“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.

U.S. CONST. amend. IV. 

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.

In constitutional terms, the judge finds that the administration has defied the Fourth Amendment and disregarded the separation of powers.

That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

A barnyard metaphor puts the matter in plainer language: Because executive authority has the potential to be predatory, it needs to be checked by the judiciary branch. Judge Biery might also be sending a sly message to his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, who have looked favorably on many of Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of executive branch power.

Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.

The language in which the judge renders his decision also sends a message, in this case to the president himself. Capitalization is a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s style, as it is of American legalese. The paragraph granting the petition bristles with uppercase nouns, which makes it all the more striking that the president’s name, otherwise absent from the ruling, is rendered in lowercase, as a card-table verb.

This may be a subtextual swipe at the president’s ego, but it’s consistent with the decision’s fundamental argument, which is that the president — any president — is ultimately smaller than the law.

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.

For Judge Biery, the case involves procedure, and morality too. When he allows himself to express his disapproval — to write judgmentally, rather than judicially — he is in effect arguing that these principles can’t be separated. Due process and human decency are two sides of the same coin.

Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.

Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “A republic, if you can keep it.”

With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,

It is so ORDERED.

Benjamin Franklin famously (and perhaps apocryphally) pointed out the fragility of orderly self-government, while the Dutch boy immortalized in the 19th-century novel “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates” did what he could to protect his neighbors from the fury of the unchecked sea.

That Judge Biery puts himself in their company suggests that he sees this decision less as a final judgment than as a warning.

SIGNED this 31st day of January, 2026.

FRED BIERY

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Credit: Bystander

After his cautionary conclusion, the judge still has something extra to say, something that shifts the focus away from the rational, secular domain of jurisprudence.

Below his signature, he attaches the widely seen photograph of Liam. Underneath that — after an eloquently anonymous photo credit — are references to two verses from the New Testament. The judge doesn’t quote them, but they speak for him all the same.

Matthew 19:14

The Matthew verse — “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of heaven” — is a well-known statement of compassion and care.

John 11:35

So, in its way, is John 11:35, the shortest verse in the English Bible. It is often quoted when things are so terrible that all other words fail:

“Jesus wept.”

_____

 

'nuff said