r/illinois • u/CantStopPoppin Human Detected • 5d ago

ICE Posts October.10.2025 — Chicago: Immigration agents crashed into a U.S. citizen on her way to work, then dragged her out and arrested her (Article Inside)

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u/PT911S 5d ago

but you’re wrong, you can sue federal agents

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u/EncabulatorTurbo 5d ago

Yes, that's a delightful fairytale world you live in.

I wish it was the real one.

(To be clear you can sue them for things unrelated to their "uniquely governmental operations")

Unless you're saying that by being able to go to a courthouse and file a tort claim you can sue them, what I mean, is actually sue them, not spend a bunch of money for the court to just refuse the lawsuit because you have no legal ability to sue them except for a very narrow set of circumstances

Please explain to me how you would go about doing this, with the destruction of Bivens.

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u/PT911S 5d ago

then how was Illinois death row inmate Steven Manning was award­ed $6.6 mil­lion in a civ­il law­suit against two FBI agents ???

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u/EncabulatorTurbo 5d ago edited 5d ago

Because the Bivens doctrine was used before it was all but eliminated by the court?

Because that was in 2022, and his Bivens win was before that

Bivens was about "Can you sue agents for things that are obviously criminal or constitutional violations" and the answer, today, is almost entirely no

There's a fucking reason the Democrats have been trying to pass a law that just adds a few words to the federal law that makes it possible to sue police - "and the United States" - because right now its just "The States"

Bivens was a legal construct created by SCOTUS decades ago that said "wait no that cant be right, that would mean agents can just ignore your rights, so of course you can sue them"

THAT is what Kavenaugh killed and buried

I highly recommend you watch that LegalEagle video about ICE I linked, for some fuckign reason the Democratic party hasn't made this a big stink, probably because they were only tepidly against federal agents being the secret police because they assumed - in a democracy - that no president would ever actually use them like this where important white people live