This 'College Protester' Isn't Real. It's an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

SCOTUS ruled in Mathews v. United States (1998) and in Jacobson v. United States (1992) that the government cannot induce a person to commit a crime, then arrest that individual for that crime.

Now the government is rolling out fully-automated entrapment bots.

The constitution prohibits search without a warrant, and cruel and unusual punishment, but here we are.

What's "legal" doesn't really matter.

In the US there are boundaries in which law enforcement can perform a sting operation. It happens all the time.

The FBI has been doing a lot of prodding people to say they hate the country, and then telling them to do a bombing, and then providing them with a (fake) bomb, and then telling the public "We caught another terrorist!": https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/07/21/illusion-justice/human...

Also reminds me of the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/gretchen-whitmer...

>Now the government is rolling out fully-automated entrapment bots.

Are we reading the same article? Hand wringing about slippery slopes aside, I skimmed the article and the actual messages that the AI sent are pretty benign. For instance, the "jason" persona seems to be only asking/answering biographical questions. The messages sent by the pimp persona encourages the sex worker to collect what her clients owe her. None of the messages show the AI radicalizing a college student activist into burning down a storefront or whatever.

Another example: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/an-fbi-informant-seduced...

If the new person in your friend group suddenly wants everyone to commit an act of terror, chances are they are an FBI agent.

With protests, the goal isn't even to arrest + charge people - often, just an excuse to shutdown the protest or revoke a permit would suffice

Well, that or they are dumb and the FBI is watching them already.

>None of the messages show the AI radicalizing a college student activist into burning down a storefront or whatever.

Can the system do it is the question.

If yes, then the system will eventually be used that way by people seeking promotions by getting a big bust.

how about if someone xeno just has to get latched into your life, no matter how much of an arsewhole you act like.

in my experience people dont want to socially invest in unknown people, unless a friend, family, social group vouches or introduces you.

when you get a clingon, its almost always no good.

The U.S. is currently disappearing people to foreign prisons, openly and in flagrant defiance of the courts. Trump has signalled he intends to expand this practice to include U.S. citizens (Just the worst convicted criminals currently in prison, of course.). If this administration can get away with all that, disappearing students who were entrapped by police will probably follow. Foreign students first, then Americans.

I like to call this the “dissident loophole”. What they really want to do is round up dissidents to protect the status quo, but punishing thought crime directly is just the right combination of unconstitutional and a bad look (though McCarthyism showed us we’re not always above that). So instead they will use social engineering to drag people over the line into minor acts of terrorism so they can be arrested, thus snuffing out future seeds of dissent.

You see this a lot in policing as well. Where people that seem “demographically criminal” to law enforcement are funneled into drug violations as an excuse to round up people they want to round up anyway.

>Well, that or the feds got them on something else and promised leniency if they become an "informant" and goading you into some bigger bust is part of the deal

Fixed to reflect typical federal government procedure.

Yes, this is why I get frustrated when people eyeroll about the severity of norm violations in our authority figures. Much of the law-in-practice is not the ink on the page, but the cultural norms around enforcement. By the time you get your vindication in court (assuming the court is acting in good faith), your life has already been turned upside down. The corrupt enforcer gets a slap on the wrist, and goes on to continue violating the law as written, knowing full well that they can basically just practice the law that exists in their head and let the court sort out anyone with the resources to fight for their rights.

The lack of due process is a big problem, but what if the court in question issues an order that is impossible to legally comply with?

The United States has no jurisdiction over citizens of El Salvador in El Salvador. What is Trump supposed to do in this case, call up Pete Hegseth and order a commando style raid on the prison he’s being held in?

For El Salvadorian citizens I think you make a good point. But for non-citizens (e.g. Venezuelans)that the US has sent to El Salvadoranean prisons presumably via diplomatic means, it seems reasonable that they could be returned via diplomatic means. [edit] Courts should be able to order a good faith effort to implement those means, but they certainly don’t have any way to guarantee a result.

If it's impossible to legally comply with orders to bring US residents back from El Salvadoran prisons (which I'm skeptical of, but let's grant that it is truly impossible), then that's probably a sign we should stop sending people there, since it'd be impossible to comply with future orders as well.

I imagine asking would likely do the trick. As an escalation, considering we're paying them to hold these people, we could threaten to stop paying them. They're not locking up our detainees out of the goodness of their heart.

The person in question is not a legal US resident.

You are ignoring the part where we are paying el Salvador to keep them there. If it's a contract we enacted and pet for then yes we have leverage unlike what the government suggests

You’re ignoring the part where he’s not actually a “Maryland man” but instead a citizen of El Salvador that was in this country illegally. Now that he’s back in El Salvador the United States government has no jurisdiction over him. It’s entirely up to El Salvador. Just because a judge issued this order doesn’t make it a lawful order.

He wasn't a citizen, he was granted a work permit and it was directed that he should not be deported to El Salvador back in 2019. That arguably makes him a US resident, legally able to reside and work here.

One source - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-documents-governmen...

> None of the messages show the AI radicalizing a college student activist into burning down a storefront or whatever.

Yeah, I'm sure they're going to put that in their promotional materials...

Indeed.

Also I originally said "resident" and not "legal resident" because I think it's blatantly insane that anyone in the US, with legal recourse to be here or otherwise, is being captured and sent to a prison in a country they may or may not have ever been to, and in a country over which the US claims to have no authority to bring them back when ordered to do so. Kicking someone out of the US is one thing, but sending them to a shitbox supermax prison abroad is another entirely.

That said, it's also true that many of these people are LEGAL residents, which makes matters that much worse.

Yes deporting him to El Salvador without due process was a mistake. We’re in agreement there.

> What's "legal" doesn't really matter.

It does, as much as always. A different thing is that elected politicians think that does not matter and stop enforcing the law.

But it will have consequences. Because just laws that apply to everybody create a very different society with very different capabilities than one that is just a feudal system.

The middle ages were not shitty because we forgot how to innovate but they were bad because feudal system kill innovation and creativity at the same time that increase suffering.

That’s like saying it’s entirely up to the restaurant to give you your food, so you have no control over what the kitchen does. The United States is paying them money for a service and has many other levers of considerable power, so it would be easy for an administration acting in good-faith to show that they made a request at a certain time and will cancel payment or escalate if it’s not honored.

US born citizens are now being held for immigration reasons: https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/04/17/u-s-born-man-held-for-...

https://x.com/LlanosJackie/status/1912908068167221653

I’m sorry but you can’t convince me that people in this country illegally shouldn’t be deported back to their country of origin. Particularly when they are affiliated with violent gangs like MS-13 and commit acts of domestic violence that cause their wife to get a restraining order against them.

I can empathize with why people would want to immigrate to this country, but they need to do so legally.

Absolutely, I was agreeing with you even though my wording was a bit strange.I wanted to try and engage in good faith forum responding to the other commenter but see that might not be productive. There are so many issues with this case and the many others that are popping up and I don't imagine they are going to get better.

I have to say that if someone is far enough gone that they can trivially be convinced to bomb innocent people then I'm fine with this type of entrapment. Great work, go ahead and lock them up for life.

Not only that, he was flown directly to their worst human rights violating prison.

It's like deporting a war refugee straight into a fascist regime's concentration camp.

I'm not trying to convince you that illegal immigrants shouldn't be deported. What I would like to convince you is that any time the government takes action against a person, the government should have to prove their case in open court, and the person should have a fair chance to defend themselves.

Is this particular person MS-13? Did he have a legal right to be here? You don't know. None of us do, not for sure.

10 years ago, the idea that the government could sweep people off the streets and deliver them to a foreign prison with no trial or recourse would have been seen as absurd by every part of the political spectrum.

What is needed is an expedited means of both providing due process and efficient deportation of gang members and other violent criminals that are in this country illegally.

That’s the best way to honor the senseless tragedies of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and several others, and to prevent them from happening in the future.

This is the most ridiculous argument. Trump wants to make Canada the 51st state. He wants to take Greenland by force if necessary. He's going to start trade wars until foreign leaders come and beg him for relief. BUT he's going to cower before the sovereign might of El Salvador.

El Salvador isn't his country of origin.

I think it's also absurd that the media is painting this guy as some innocent victim. He is an MS-13 gang member. He beat his wife, to the point that she filed a restraining order against him. There is evidence that he was engaging in human trafficking. Citizens have rights to trial. Those who have entered the country illegally do not have the same legal rights that citizens do.

Oh yeah, I figured you and I were in agreement! I meant that as an addition aimed at anyone reading this thread, not in a combative shot at you, so apologies if it came off as such :P

Everything I've read says that he was born in El Salvador and his citizenship is El Salvadoran. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

> in this country illegally

His status as far as staying in the country and not deported to El Salvador in particular was legal.

That's a terrible idea. Everyone needs trials or the government can make up a quick lie about anyone (or make a mistake about anyone) and then their rights disappear.

And in general, bad people still deserve trials. There is no crime you can point to someone doing that changes that.

>He is an MS-13 gang member. He beat his wife, to the point that she filed a restraining order against him. There is evidence that he was engaging in human trafficking.

Again, these are EXACTLY the sorts of allegations that should be adjudicated in court. Citizens and non-citizens all have the right to a fair trial before imprisonment.

If all this is true, why couldn't the government try and convict him of a crime?

Because they couldn't, of course. The evidence is made up and parroted by useful idiots to justify the end of the rule of law.

I'm not saying they don't deserve some form of due process, but they are not entitled to full on trials that citizens get.

Due process could be as simple as can you prove that you have a legal right to be in this country? If yes, you can stay, if no, then you get deported. He absolutely should have had due process prior to being deported. I am not arguing against that.

From everything I've been able to gather on this story, the issue isn't really whether he should have been deported, it's that there was a legal order preventing him from being deported to the country of El Salvador specifically because a rival gang in the country would kill him for being a member of MS-13.

I’m not trying to convince you that they shouldn’t deport anyone. I’m saying that the government should always follow the law when doing so. For example, if we’re being told that someone is a violent terrorist they should easily be able to prove that in court.

If the accusation is as simple as "you don't have a right to be in the country" what makes proving it different from a real trial?

> From everything I've been able to gather on this story, the issue isn't really whether he should have been deported, it's that there was a legal order preventing him from being deported to the country of El Salvador specifically because a rival gang in the country would kill him for being a member of MS-13.

If there's only one place you could reasonably be deported to, and there's an order saying you can't be deported there, then you can't be deported and you effectively have legal residency.

None of the things you are talking so confidently about are factual. A police officer filled out a form saying he believed he was in a gang but that was never tested in court and there’s a long history of that sort of assertion turning out not to be true, which seems plausible in this case because the officer was suspended for professional misconduct on a different case a few months later.

Similarly, you’re claiming that he’s a wife beater but she’s advocating for his return:

> “After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement Wednesday. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.

> “No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation,” she added.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-documents-governmen...

Again, nobody is saying he can’t ever be deported. All we’re saying is that he deserves the due process of law the constitution guarantees for everyone - not just citizens - and humane treatment, as the heavily Republican Supreme Court just affirmed is a legal requirement. If he is as bad as you claim, that can be established in court just as we’ve done for millions of criminals over hundreds of years.

I honestly don't care what the Post or any other newspaper has to say about him. If there's so much evidence why didn't they present it in court?

The US has been kidnapping and putting people in torture centres willy-nilly for decades. That this would somehow get better under an openly fascist or fascism-adjacent regime is not a sound expectation.

One might suspect that a reason for the acceptance of takfiri thugs coming to power in Syria has to do with their disinterest in the rule of law and the low likelihood that they will do robust investigations of Sednaya and other prisons.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/collateraldamage/post-91...

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/torture-prisons-syri...

They are banking on precisely this kind of “common sense” rationalizing of removing civil rights.

The civil right to be willing but currently unable to commit terrorism?

The civil right not to be led by the nose by a government agent to commit a crime. They are relying on people doing exactly what you're doing here - convincing themselves that if it was possible to lead them into it then they deserved it so the ends justify the means.

Where I get a bit confused is the part where the US supposedly has no ability to retrieve him yet he's also supposedly being held on our behalf. If it isn't on our behalf then why are they keeping him there? Did he commit a crime according to them?

Yeah I get your point, and I generally agree for minor offenses like buying drugs or prostitution or whatever. But if someone can trivially be convinced to murder a bunch of people then the world is better off with them locked away.

I do see what you're saying. However this debate isn't unique to this specific scenario. The exact same reasoning can be applied to other violations of due process. Historically that was viewed as a particularly dangerous slippery slope and thus we have the concept of fruit of the poisonous tree, despite that this can easily result in (for example) a mob boss walking free. Perhaps caution is warranted when considering abandoning well established principles?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

They should have properly convicted him in court then.