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Honestly, why the cruelty? I confess, I don't understand it. If some guy, at the age of 16, invaded my very own home and lived in my basement for decades without my knowing, siphoning my electricity and water or whatever, I would not wish this on him.
If you think that prison is cruelty, you are just propagandized. Most people housed in that, or US prisons actually, would historically have already have been executed.
As an excuse for torture, "well, at least we haven't killed them" is not any kind of gotcha. Unless you think torture is never 'cruel' because at least it's not murder, it's a meaningless argument.
Most of the people in that prison deserve a worse fate if half the accusations against them are true.
"Worse" is a confusing term in this context. There is a sense in which being killed is "a worse fate" than being tortured - but torturing someone is a worse thing to do, and a worse thing for a society to condone. I can respect someone who's killed a man, even if I didn't approve of his actions. I couldn't really, fundamentally respect a torturer even if he'd committed torture as part of some trolley-problem with a terrorist and a ticking time-bomb with which I could find no logical fault. By the same logic, I do not want to be part of a society, or indeed, if at all possible, species, which condones torture as punishment, ever, for any reason.
I do not think it wise to empower the state to torture people, but that's not because nobody deserves to be tortured.
My post was intended to be agnostic on the question of whether some people abstractly 'deserve' to be tortured. What I am sayng, what feel in my gut, is that the act of torturing is wrong. Not just "a power we shouldn't give to the state" - wrong. Torture is depraved, an act which stains anyone who commits it. "This sinner deserves Hell", even if it's true, is no excuse to become the Devil yourself.
(I am also against the death penalty for the same reason. But my moral sentiment that killing is wrong is nothing next to my burning certainty than torture is wrong, wrong, WRONG.)
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I think people underestimate the badness of US prisons in comparison to El Salvedoran prisons.
US prisons were and probably still are horrendous: https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html
In other countries prison is bad because the guards are bad and don't care about the prisoners.
In the U.S. the prisons are bad because they are filled with American prisoners. Somehow this is often worse. Additionally in the U.S. guards are frequently prevented from "managing" the prison which can cause unnecessary problems.
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And what if your parents spent your entire childhood making it extremely clear that they love the random basement hobo more than you, because frankly, they hate your guts? And then they change their will so that he gets the house, and tell you that they hope you end up on the street in a cardboard box because that’s what you deserve. How would you feel about the basement hobo then?
NGL I'd still hate the "parents" more, in the "if I only had two bullets, I'd shoot the traitor twice" sense. I don't really get being angry at illegals unless they're a major drain on society.
Think a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment is rightists taking out their anger at blacks, Jews, feminists, and white liberals on illegal immigrants because the latter are a more socially acceptable target.
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I think this has gone a bit beyond what one could claim with a straight face to be a good analogy for the American illegal immigration situation. And even so, I would not wish the basement hobo were sent to a harsh, overcrowded prison for life. I would resent him and my parents for sure, I'll give you that.
I think you’re failing to decouple two separate penalties here.
They are being deported for being illegal; they are being sent to prison in El Salvador for being a member of MS13.
Yes, I agree that it is cruel to imprison an individual in harsh conditions for entering a country illegally, but it is probably both reasonable and necessary, by some measure, to do so if they are a violent gang member.
Yeah, if they are a violent gang member. He hasn't been convicted in a court of law. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. The US shouldn't have sent him straight to a foreign gulag without a conviction.
Actually he was determined by two court rulings to be ms-13
Not true.
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I would expect gang member conviction to carry a higher burden of proof than asylum proceedings, personally...
That is a problem for El Salvador to deal with. If they disagree, they can release him.
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