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David J. Bier Profile picture
David J. Bier
@David_J_Bier
@CatoInstitute Director of Immigration Studies, The Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy at Cato, not CATO. "Beer," not Buyer. Libertarian. 🇺🇸🇺🇸
7 subscribers
Oct 16 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Trial shows that ICE agents lied, concealed evidence in an illegal effort to convict the "libtard" who filmed them. Image Missing surveillance footage suddenly reappeared after prosecutors claimed it didn't exist. Indeed, that the camera in question didn't even work. wusa9.com/article/news/l…Image
Oct 1 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
ICE lied about the person it shot, claiming he was a "criminal," but NBC finds that he had no criminal history whatsoever. Not even traffic tickets in 12 years! It also lied about the extent of the injuries to its agents.... ICE initially claimed that the officer was "seriously injured" and in "serious condition" but actual body cam footage of the ICE agents now shows that they LIED. The officer himself says it was "nothing major" via the Chicago Sun times: chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdogs/…
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Sep 30 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Today: District Court rules against the Trump administration on deportations based on political speech. The start of the opinion includes an anonymous postcard to the judge.... Image The court rules that the government cannot deport people based on First Amendment-protected speech storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…Image
Sep 20 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Indian H1Bs contributed an unfathomable amount to America: 100s of billions in taxes, 10s of billions more in fees, trillions in services. Among the most peaceful, intelligent, interesting people to grace our shores. And what do we give back? Demonization & discrimination... We have a set of laws mandating discriminatory treatment at every stage of the legal immigration process, particularly for Indians. They've been barred from adjusting to permanent residence for decades based on nothing more than their birthplace....
Sep 3 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I have obtained new data showing that ICE has diverted at least **25,000 officers** into its mass deportation efforts, including at least 14,498 federal law enforcement officers. This is the lower-bound b/c many Border Patrol agents are independently engaged in interior arrests Image These numbers represent staggering shares of federal law enforcement agents, being shifted from criminal law enforcement to minor civil immigration offenses cato.org/blog/ice-has-d…Image
Aug 20 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Trump's immigration policy will increase deficits by nearly $1 trillion, says Penn Budget lab budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/7/…Image Taxes will need to go up to pay for the lost revenue, $180 per household, just to make up for the deportations. budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/6/…Image
Jul 27 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Bill said I should read the affidavit. And WOW it shows that everything ICE has said publicly (and Fox and Bill have dutifully regurgitated as fact) about this surgical center case was a LIE. This was not a "targeted" operation, but a racial profiling incident gone bad! DHS initially claimed that the officers were engaged in a "targeted" enforcement operation--that is, this was not a random racial profiling incident, but the affidavit repudiates this directly, saying the agents were on a roving patrol Image
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Jul 18 • 47 tweets • 20 min read
It appears that an order went out on January 28 of this year that resulted in the proliferation of ICE masking. Image The irony is that the way this order is portrayed that it is about disclosing their identity, but perhaps this is not how it was interpreted on the ground or there was resistance on the ground to it. cnn.com/2025/01/27/pol…Image
Jul 9 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Every American should read this ACLU lawsuit about what is happening in California. It is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. This is not immigration enforcement. It is positively stuffed with videos and articles documenting racial profiling on a scale unseen since Jim Crow. Image Fixing the link: Citizens being assaulted, arrested, and sent to jails. Military-style sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods. This is what Congress just gave President Trump $150 billion to do to Americans in every state. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Jun 20 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
I have obtained new nonpublic data from ICE that shows that 2/3 of the people it had booked into detention facilities this fiscal year had no criminal convictions at all. Less than 7% have violent convictions. Most convictions were for immigration, traffic, and vice offenses. Image Every time you hear DHS say that anyone who objects to ICE's mass deportation campaign is pro-violent felons, understand that those violent convicts are less than 7% of its work for this year. It's misleading the public about what ICE actually does. cato.org/blog/65-people…Image
Jun 6 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Contrary to claims made by its proponents, the mass deportations' components of the Big Beautiful Bill will not improve its CBO score. Indeed, it will make it much worse. Accounting for lost net revenue from immigrants adds nearly $1 trillion in additional cost. Image Adopting HR 1's flawed assumptions, mass deportations will likely account for 1/4 of the bill's total deficit. This is far more than many other hotly debated costs in the bill. Congressional Republicans didn't let the CBO account for deportations cato.org/blog/deportati…Image
Jun 5 • 34 tweets • 10 min read
The immigration dictatorship just announced a ban on immigration for 12 nationalities with 7 more facing draconian discrimination as well. Horrible policies with no justification Image Here are the 19 disfavored nationalities, which have produced many Americans of great character who have benefited our country enormously. In 1965, Congress attempted to rid American immigration law of this rank nonsensically national origins discrimination. It should again. Image
May 19 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
Cato published my review of the ~240 Venezuelans the US government renditioned 2 months ago to Salvador’s notorious prison. We identified FIFTY who came legally, never violated any immigration law, but are imprisoned at the US government’s request and at US taxpayer expense. Image When I started researching their methods of an entry, I thought finding 4 such cases would be an unbelievable crime and scandal. In the end, it’s apparent that at least four DOZEN were legal immigrants who came with advanced permission. cato.org/blog/50-venezu…
May 9 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
🚨Your US government has kidnapped this child. Not family separation. Kidnapping. It took a 2-year-old child from her parents, deported the mom to Venezuela, and have imprisoned the dad in a Salvadoran torture prison without charge or trial. Every day, new evil level reached Image THEY ARE INVENTING CONVICTIONS. The White House says the father was convicted of prostitution offenses but it's impossible: he was never even inside the US. Criminal checks reveal no such crimes in both the US and Venezuela. The mom isn't even alleged to have convictions Image
Apr 18 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
What explains Trump's immigration agenda? It's not about legal immigration. He is the most anti-legal immigrant president ever. He is stripping legal immigrants of their status, arresting them, detaining them and deporting them.... It's also not about... citizenship or nationality. He wants to strip citizenship and nationality from Americans, and he wants to foreclose citizens' rights to associate with immigrants. He wants to be able to intentionally arrest and deport citizens....
Apr 17 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Recall that Kristi Noem deliberately deported eight WOMEN to a MALE prison in El Salvador. It was only the conscience of Salvadoran officials (reporting to THE DICTATOR) who corrected this monstrous evil. Noem should be immediately impeached and removed from office.Image Recall further that Kristi Noem "accidentally" deported a Nicaraguan woman to El Salvador, despite the Salvadorans only agreeing to accept Venezuelans. Again, it was only corrected by "THE DICTATOR." No one cared. No one still cares. They'd do it again in a minute. Image
Feb 20 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
39% of the detainees disappeared to the Guantanamo offshore prison were deemed "low threat" by the Trump administration. Some of the individuals being detained at Guantanamo did not cross illegally, legally requesting asylum at a port of entry.Image For over 2 weeks, people were being detained with no way to reach a lawyer. It was only yesterday in response to this lawsuit any effort was made to protect their rights. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…Image
Feb 15 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Among the most commonly accepted and yet utterly baseless political theories out there is the idea that you can "satisfy" nativist urges by giving into some of their demands. How much history do you need to refute this? Did the Chinese Exclusion Act satisfy nativism?
The Japanese Gentlemen's Agreement?
The Asiatic Bar Zone?
The literacy act?
The 2-year Emergency Quota Act?
The Permanent National Origins Quota Act?
1930 public charge visa ban?
Deporting Mexicans?
Blocking Jews?
Feb 14 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Here are some funny exchanges from @bryan_caplan & @DanielDiMartino at @sfliberty.
-Caplan: "Why don't you restrict childbirth based on projected net fiscal burden like you want to do with immigration?"
-DiMartino: "It's immoral. I'd never support deporting even homeless Americans if it saves govt money."
-Caplan: "Oh, now it's immoral. Why?"
-DiMartino: "It's different. You're assuming everyone has a right to come like everyone born here has a right to be here."
-Caplan: "Why assume that everyone born here has a right to be here?"
-DiMartino: "Well, some people, I guess, do want us to change that..."
-Caplan: "Uh, yeah..." [chuckle]
-DiMartino: "But I'm not making a moral argument."
Wait, weren't you? DiMartino: One of our first restrictions was ideological. We banned anarchists!
Caplan: So you'd ban much of this audience?
DiMartino: There were different kinds of anarchists.
Caplan: So you trust the govt to decide the good anarchists from the bad anarchists? [laughter]
Note: DiMartino would ban the only libertarian head of state: Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist (who he supports)
Feb 3 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
NBC: Trump's admin is releasing immigrants arrested into the US. After 4 years of nonstop lies about Biden, Trump does exactly what Biden is doing. MAGA will have all the excuses about how it's really the Democrats' fault. But the facts will remain the facts! Image NBC reports that they are releasing people but not anyone "convicted of a serious crime." Hilarious! On the one hand, Noem's out there insulting our intelligence by saying that they're only arresting "dirtbags." On the other hand, they aren't releasing any "serious" criminals! Image
Feb 3 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Wow! The DHS notice to terminate TPS for 300,000 Venezuelans claims Venezuelan TPS holders cost the US government "billions of dollars". The citation is to testimony from a hearing at which I testified and where I point-by-point dismantled the testimony being cited...Image You can watch me shred the testimony here. You can watch the whole hearing. There was never any response. The chairman of the committee ended up asking CBO to research the issue because he had lost confidence in his own witness's testimony.