WTF are the ICE men doing?

And where TF are their pastors?

By Andy Bichlbaum

Last week I went to NYC immigration court with a coalition of groups (among others, JFREJ) that’s trying to mitigate the harm ICE does to immigrants showing up for their scheduled immigration-court hearings. The immigrants imagine they have a right to due process (which, as it happens, they do), and never imagine they’re going to be kidnapped—and yet they often are, regardless of the outcome of their hearing or any other factors.

My grandfather having been taken away from my father by the Gestapo, forever, I don’t feel the right to stay silent when something analogous is happening here in my country.

The ICE agents I saw last week at the downtown courts seemed entirely different from everyone else—from security guards, immigration court “judges” (actually lawyers), even police. And then I realized why: they’re thinking extremely hard, and that changes the way they look.

What strenuous mental effort it must take for an ICE man (they’re almost always men) to see what he’s doing not as thuggery, not as pointless and cruel attacks on obviously vulnerable human beings, but as patriotism, valor, and helping other “good citizens” like themselves.

They’re not stupid, or no stupider than the rest of us. But they're marshaling their intelligence to support some incredibly stupid conclusions against the evidence of their eyes.

If I were to speak to an ICE agent (and I won't) because I thought there were a chance in hell they would listen (there isn’t), I would say:

“So sorry, Mr./Ms. ICE, that you feel so unmoored, invalidated, worthless. So sorry there's a big ICEy void at your core that can’t be left empty. Your emptiness isn't unusual, but thinking you can possibly fill it with cruelty and violence takes a special kind of intelligence, maybe a whole second brain hovering feet from the first à la Mr. Duffy. Give it a rest, you fucker. Relax and let yourself see what's glaringly obvious to everyone else. Then use that intelligence to actually help yourself and your people instead.”

But again, they wouldn't listen, not to those words. I'd have to translate them first into something they could actually hear, the way only their own trusted pastor or other community member could.

So where are their pastors?

To do the really important (and not just symbolic) work, get inside and see for yourself, with one of the groups (like JFREJ) trying to resist this horrible thing.

Just for fun, for printable versions of the below (and variants), visit www.theyesmen.org/project/ICE/posters. Additional non-secret projects will be posted at www.theyesmen.org/project/ICE as they materialize.