I needed a break even though I didn’t know it. After two months straight of court accompaniments – and an ICE agent actively trying to recruit me – fate finally gave me one.
“Why don’t you help us? Join us”
I was really over ICE.
Out of shape and out of uniform – these modern day self-styled ‘bounty hunters’ camp out in hallways tracking down their prey…..outside lawful court appointments.
Even the few big enforcers didn’t earn their presence of fear – telltale signs of heavy steroid use, overgrown traps and enlarged jaws and temples poking through their Amazon bought masks.
Then he tried shaming me. “You’re paid to be here also.”
Then there were the new ones.
These broke my heart because they were usually people of color – too many being latino. Young, small, poorly dressed, they’d been patently bought to overlook their own immigrant origins.
We keep being told we don’t have money for teachers or healthcare, but we do have $45B earmarked for the President’s personal army.
I have a couple of conservative latin friends in the U.S. who steadfastly repeat how they’re against ‘open borders’.
They both entered and found legal ways to stay in the US in some clearly superior way than the people getting detained are attempting to that I apparently can’t appreciate. I remind them they had certain means and conditions that these asylum seekers don’t, or can’t, have but that’s the core of exceptionalism - being satisfied considering yourself the exception.
I’m sure that’s what these new fresh faced latino agents also tell themselves.
at least one unlucky father was pulled away from his infant daughter and detained.
I was accompanying a young woman with a toddler that day.
When one of the new latino agents walked past me doing his best to blend in, wearing a pre-distressed True Religion cap with the word RELIGION in all caps on it, I just lost it.
I got chatty.
“How can you wear that word doing what you do?”
He immediately got flushed, this was probably his first verbal challenge on the job.
“I’m catching criminals”. A young idealist.
“You kidnap children” I shot back. I had let my attention divert from my escortee.
“We don’t take children” he said self-comfortingly.
“You take their parents. You separate families in front of them and traumatize children for life”.
Silence. To this he had no answer, so I took the opening.
“Take that off” pointing at his hat. “What you do is the opposite of religion” hoping he actually considered himself christian like so many conservative latinos define themselves as.
He smiled nervously, hoping none of his buddies were close enough to see. I had half a foot over him and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to intimidate me by himself.
Then he tried shaming me back. “You’re paid to be here also.”
That was the first time I ever laughed in a federal courthouse.
It’s all adrenaline when you’re accompanying and I had been doing it for weeks.
“I’m getting paid?? By who…..wait, SOROS? Are you still watching Fox News from 2016??” It was full on mockery at that point.
He could tell my surprise reaction was honest. It even shocked me.
“So why are you here? Who are you?” he asked, visibly taken aback and actually curious.
“A concerned citizen. Nobody here is paid.” I gestured at my veteran co-escort telling her he thought we were paid, and we both laughed viscerally.
It was interesting seeing him realize in real time that concerned citizens actually do exist, and people do this kind of thing voluntarily.
The guy had been thoroughly programmed.
“How can you spend all day here then, how do you pay bills?” There was an unsettling honesty behind this question.
“Morning court hearings wrap up by noon. We come whenever we can.” He was definitely new here.
I could see him processing what he was hearing versus everything he had been told about us. Money was clearly on his mind, obviously a major factor in his decision to become an ICE agent.
So I pounced.
None of this had to do with my respondent who was right there, but there I was, still being chatty.
“You don’t care what a judge decides, you detain people and break up families regardless of what they decide. That’s not justice.”
The processing continued. This newcomer was stuck in a logic trap and isolated from his ICE trainers.
"But they didn’t come in the right way, they’re criminals” He tried to assure himself.
“That’s not up to me or you to decide. That’s a judge’s call. The judge gives them a chance, and you take it away from them". I said, thinking I just landed the knockout.
“Ok you have some points.” He finally allowed.
I had won, I thought. I got through to a young new latino ICE agent.
“Why aren’t you outside catching real criminals tough guy. Instead of terrorizing these families”, thinking I was kicking him while he was down.
Then he shocked me.
“Why don’t you help us? Join us.”
Silence on my part.
I didn’t laugh. After everything I said – and thought I represented – that truly was the last thing I had expected to hear.
He got me processing now. So he pounced back.
“When we’re out there catching gang members y’all don’t help us. You get in the way.”
Too many thoughts.
“What are you talking about?” I asked honestly. We’ve accompanied hundreds of asylum seekers, not one questionable tattoo among them, much less any gangsters. They don’t come to court hearings.
“Seriously, we could use you”. He insisted.
Except he wasn't counter-punching, he was honestly holding out his hand.
I didn’t know what to feel.
Of course outright anger was the reflex, but primarily it was wondering what it was about me that made it even fathomable for him to ask me to join ICE.
What was I giving off that made him ask me that?
Was there something about my aggression he approved of? Were my spanish skills and physicality something he knew they were seeking and he thought he could bring into this unjust machine?
He had me reeling.
In doing this so consistently over the summer, had I somehow embodied everything I was against?
It got existential for a minute.
I was putting them at risk.
“Fuck off. I wouldn’t join ICE for a million dollars.” Knowing he was offered up to 50k to sign up.
I had taken my attention off my escortee and was having a full on conversations with ICE. I needed a break.
Scoffing at the proposal, I disengaged with the young wayward idealist and went back to our neighbor and her child.
I was still staggered by it though.
It’s all adrenaline when you’re accompanying and I had been doing it for weeks. Maybe it had changed me, or maybe I was getting off on it somehow.
I needed time to think, adrenaline dump, and think.
The young woman and child we were escorting got her asylum application time extended. Most of them got extensions that day, but at least one unlucky father was pulled away from his crying infant daughter and detained.
I focused back on them and escorted her to the elevators. Pressing the button for her, getting in between her and two ICE agents, a burly man and another new, fresh faced, thoroughly unintimidating latino agent being trained - waiting like vultures.
The elevator took forever as it always does.
They hadn’t liked me taking pictures and the burly man said recording devices were prohibited.
“Not in hallways." I barked.
“Yep, look here” he said pointing at a new sign that wasn’t there before, and crucially, still not federal law.
“Thank you for your service.” I said mockingly, still raw from having to talk to ICE.
None of this had to do with my respondent who was right there, but there I was, still being chatty.
Then the young latino trainee opened his mouth and I lost it again.
I honestly don’t remember what he said, but he was trying to act tough in front of his trainer while weighing 135lbs and I had long lost my patience with these fake latino tough guys.
I just railed on him in spanish.
Told him to call his tia, to tell her what he’s doing and how proud she’d be. Pretty sure the words race traitor came up a few times which doesn’t even really make sense - vendepatria - would’ve made more sense, since that’s exactly what he was doing – literally selling off his own people.
But the respondent and her child were right there.
I was putting them at risk.
My own machista latino pride was getting in the way of her and her child’s safety.
Something about these new guys was saying something to me – about me – and I had to find out what it was.
The elevator finally came and we hustled inside.
I was still mouthing off to the young new recruit in spanish - realizing there’s more than a good chance his tia – his aunt – that I was using to shame him was also likely conservative and agreed with everything he was doing.
All of that for nothing, putting my court escortee at risk.
It was dumb, and a sign I had to stop – even if only for a bit.
In the weeks that followed I recanted this story at a group accompaniment training, going over positionality – the crucial physical and social dynamic we form in any social interaction, but especially in this accompanying context.
For better or worse, I was more of a racial and physical peer to these new ICE agents, and at least that day, it may have put the respondent I was escorting in greater risk of detainment.
Perhaps fatefully, As news and images of what’s been happening in NYC courtrooms has spread, so has the natural resistance with dozens more volunteers signing up. By the time I’d check in with our autonomous group to go on more accompaniments, 3 or 4 people had already signed up.
There is such a thing as too many volunteers when it comes to letting citizens packing into small courtrooms and we can’t allow them to stop letting observers of the court inside – especially now that nothing is constitutionally guaranteed anymore.
So I took that break and focused on other, less aggressive, community based activities.
It’s been disheartening to see young people that look like me joining the fight against people who look like us. To say the least.
As a result of the increasing detentions, inevitably, respondents have stopped showing up – justifiably choosing personal safety over politically compromised legality.
Nobody can blame them – too many have had their families broken up in spite what a federal judge decides.
And now, too many are being sold out by their own people.
