Making crossing the US border a capital offence undermines the very basis of the US legal system

The fundamental issue at the bottom of all this nonsense over immigration in the US currently is that, in order to control immigration, it is necessary to treat all immigrants as if they were serial killers guilty of the most heinous crimes possible, because, otherwise, the force necessary to actually remove most of them simply is not justifiable. And, under these circumstances, the cure becomes much worse than the disease. We don't consider it appropriate to shoot people for jaywalking, and, of course, that makes jaywalking rather common. One is unlikely to be ticketed for it, because it generally isn't much of a problem, so, people tend to ignore this particular law all the time. To some extent, that has been traditionally the way we dealt with undocumented immigrants, as well. If they stayed in the country a while, and weren't a problem, there was no reason to deport them. They became part of the community, sometimes much valued members of the community. Now, it is often quite difficult to remove much valued members of the community, from their communities. People will protect them, and sometimes use force to do it. Forces of "law and order" will be in direct conflict with their communities, and, this is very dangerous indeed for both the communities, and for law enfocement, as we are now seeing. Claiming all these much valued immigrants are "criminals", and treating them as very dangerous criminals, will, inevitably, lead to a serious breakdown of law and order for everyone. Justifying extra-legal procedures on the basis of the "emergency" of apprehending these "criminals", will result in the discreditation of both law enforcement, and the law itself, as we are now seeing.

ICE aren't the Nazi SS, however, ICE are the Nazi Gestapo

The Jewish Anti-defamation Legue has made the point that ICE under Donald Trump aren't acting like the Nazi SS -- they aren't operating death camps causing millions of deaths in automated mass genocide. This is quite true, however, most people aren't saying that ICE are like the SS. They're saying that ICE are acting like the Nazi Gestapo, and, this is, actually quite accurate and true. ICE are acting extra-legally, they are terrorizing and brutalizing people regularly, they are killing people occasionally. That is exactly what the Nazi Gestapo did. The Nazi Gestapo had no direct role in the administration of the Nazi death camps, that was the job of the SS. ICE are the Gestapo, they aren't the SS. Yet, anyway. They might get to that level after another few years, of course. Now, to be fair, the Nazi Gestapo didn't really act much different from the secret police of any fairly brutal, authoritarian state, and there have always been plenty of those. It was the Nazi SS that was unique -- the professional masters of mass killing, of true genocide. However, that has no bearing on the fact that ICE, under Donald Trump, is acting very much indeed like the Nazi Gestapo.