If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.

It’s not an easy problem to solve and is hard to balance fairly, so I think your painting of the content policy as being crystal clear is a misrepresentation that isn’t properly taking into account the subjectivity of what is viewed as political and what counts as intellectually stimulating to different HN users (as it seems if something is “interesting” then that tends to override the “political” in many instances on the home page, and is entirely subjective).

Your own cited stat (“<9,000/month”) is Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry. CBS is explicit about that, and even gives the recent months: July ~4,600; Aug ~6,300; Sept ~8,400 apprehensions. That’s a major reduction, but it’s not “zero,” and it’s not the same thing as “flow eliminated.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-crossings-immigration-u...

The 249,000 figure you’re comparing it to is typically cited as “encounters” (often BP apprehensions + OFO inadmissibles at ports). That’s a different series than “BP apprehensions between ports.” Apples-to-oranges comparisons are exactly how people accidentally talk themselves into certainty.

“Do you have a better way of estimating?” Not really, that’s the point. Encounters/apprehensions are the best consistently published measure, but they are not total successful entries, and “gotaways” are estimates with their own uncertainty. So the accurate claim is: recorded apprehensions are way down.

On “no headway”: if the unauthorized population fell from 2007 to 2019 (Pew shows that), that’s literally headway, even if it later reversed and is higher now. What you mean is “no net improvement vs 2007,” which is a different claim.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...

If you want to say “huge improvement at the border relative to the peak,” totally reasonable. But “flow largely eliminated” + “big dent in illegal-alien stock” is stronger than what these measurements can support.

“Many hundreds of thousands per month” isn’t what the Border Patrol encounter series shows. Pew’s analysis of CBP data puts the peak at 249,741 encounters in Dec 2023, and 58,038 in Aug 2024 (a 77% drop). That’s “down sharply,” not “eliminated.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/01/migrant-e...

Also, 58k/month annualizes to ~700k/year. You can argue that’s a big improvement, but calling it “largely eliminated” is rhetorical.

Encounters aren’t total entries, agreed, but that cuts against confidently declaring victory, not in favor of it. If you want “better,” the only “better” conceptually is something like encounters + estimated gotaways, but “gotaways” are themselves estimates and not as consistently published/transparent as encounters. So the honest phrasing is: “recorded encounters are way down.”

“No headway for decades” is false on the standard stock estimates. Pew (and others) show the unauthorized population peaked around 2007 and then declined through 2019 before rising again in the early 2020s. That’s headway, then reversal; not “none for decades.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...

It is fair to say: we’re now above 2007 again (Pew estimates ~14M in 2023), so the long-run problem wasn’t solved. But that’s different from “no headway has been made.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-...

On the ABC/Brookings “negative net migration” point: net migration does not equal unauthorized population, and the article itself notes the change is mostly fewer entries, with removals only modestly higher year over year. So it doesn’t support “dutiful removal has made a big dent” as the main story.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-1st-time-50-years-experienced-n...