Totally unrelated, but this case was mentioned in the article:

In July, for example, he sentenced a father to 24 years in prison for leaving a gun unattended in his apartment; his 5-year-old son had found the gun and fatally shot his 1-year-old brother.

I understand the outrage, but I don’t think I understand the point in this punishment.

The father won’t do it again, and no other parents want to do it, so it’s not deterrence. Plus, I’d prefer 24 years in prison to the death of my child, even without going into the damage this will cause his other child, so he’s already faced worse consequences.

Now there’s a five year old who will grow up without his brother or his father, and will probably think it’s his fault. I really hope his mother’s around, but what a punishment for her as well (although I can certainly imagine her wanting a divorce a not necessarily wanting him to have unsupervised access to/shared custody of the child(ren). In that case it would definitely be an emotional reaction, but that’s how people operate in our personal lives most of the time- I expect an agent of the government to be more impartial).

The father was negligent, reckless, and should never have been allowed to be responsible for firearms, but his remaining family is harmed by his imprisonment.

Can anyone think of a tangible (non-punitive) benefit that arises from this?

That, and you’re basically asking a Jew in Nazi Germany to not serve an SS troop. I don’t expect that level of courage from myself. So I won’t expect that from anyone else.

Fair enough, I don’t know what I’d do in the same place. My sister is a (white, American-born) restaurant manager in LA and she sends everyone to the back whenever ICE/border patrol has come by (at one point her restaurant was handing out bilingual cards listing your rights and a legal advice phone number, so they came several times to ask about them), then lets out 25 years of customer service frustration at them. My sister is a special case in meanness, but they’ve tucked their tails between their legs and left every time.

Obviously not every restaurant has a mean white lady who hates ICE, but it might be a good idea to hire one. Actually, I know a bunch of frustrated, furious white women who feel helpless right now and would love to do it. Maybe this is a matchmaking opportunity.

I guess there’s absolutely no reason to allow ICE into your establishment, then. They should have thought about this beforehand.