People still think deportation is a human bureaucratic nightmare orchestrated by overworked human bureaucrats making a ton of human mistakes. And yeah, it used to be like that. But today, the deportation machine is software-first, with human agents playing catch-up, when they’re involved at all.

The case of OCG should’ve been a major headline about machine-led due process failure. ICE deported a Guatemalan guy to Mexico citing a fabricated statement that no ICE agent ever recorded. There’s no human origin to the error. 

ICE uses software tools like Hurricane Score and the ENFORCE Alien Removal Module for logging and removing people. When there’s a screw-up, the state blames “errors” on software or they don’t say anything at all, when what’s actually happening is automated governance. The software did what it was supposed to do. It followed its protocol. Yeah, it made an error. But the bigger problem is the lie that there are still humans involved in the loop, doing government. 

ICE couldn’t come up with an officer who asked this guy if he was afraid to go back to Mexico because there wasn’t one. The software filled in the blanks and executed a life-altering decision based on the data it generated from its own hallucination. The judge, who was also duped by that fabricated input, initially refused to reverse the deportation.

Machines make mistakes. And those mistakes are happening with no human oversight. There’s a reason why state officials never know what the hell is happening or who the hell is responsible for what the hell is happening. Nobody knows who to appeal to because there’s no person behind the curtain. Just backend infrastructure, outsourced to private contractors, trained on biased data, optimized for “efficiency.”

In so many ways, we’re already living inside a post-state system. Humans are just reading outputs. When those outputs are wrong, they don’t investigate because there’s nothing to investigate. It’s a black box. They don’t know how it works. So they run PR. ICE’s follow-up was a press release, blaming the tool, distancing the agency, and literally performing “governance” after the fact. 

The truth is, the state no longer governs by ruling. It buffers, by maintaining the illusion that someone, somewhere, is in charge. But in reality, human governance is human history. The state’s job now is to do PR. They’re doing human alignment.

In this particular case, the software deported, the agency denied, and the court reacted to inputs that were never real. When the truth came out, they pretended to be surprised, promised to investigate the system, and did their best to remind the public that mistakes happen. 

You’re being lied to. The mistake is structural, and the lie is procedural. 

Everybody thinks we’re witnessing the breakdown of American government. It’s worse than that. It’s its replacement.