What Will You Do When ICE Shows Up On Your Street?

It's not a matter of if they will, it's a matter of when they will...

Photo by Alex Brandon | AP

You’re heading out to run errands or go to work. You’re in a hurry, perhaps you forgot your keys or your travel coffee mug, the one you can’t travel without on your commute, and while it’s early, you’re still running late—it’s one of those shitty Monday mornings when everything’s going fucking wrong (Mondays be damned!). The dog is angrily and desperately barking at you, sad and befuddled that you’re deserting him or her for the day or maybe for that 20-minutes at the grocery store (what a betrayal to a canine!), so it’s not easy to get out the front door. You’re stumbling over your canine friend, or maybe it’s your feline friend, who's usually estranged from you and aloof as fuck, yet suddenly she or he wants to have a love session, so s/he’s swirling around you, purring and demanding your undivided attention.

Once you do manage to get outside and away from your stalkerish pets, you try to regain your composure, still reeling from the chaos behind the locked door of your house, perhaps you’re also groggy from a bad night’s sleep because it couldn’t be any other way on a Sunday night before the week begins. (Insomnia always has you on speed dial on a Sunday night, amirite?)

That’s when it happens, and things get really bad, and you wish you were just annoyed with your pet. As soon as you look out across your parking lot or street, there they are: six to eight agents, mostly white middle-aged men, wannabe tough guys with buzz cuts, either sitting or standing outside of nondescript trucks and black SUVs with black-tinted windows, with walkie-talkies and guns in holsters attached to their hips. And even though it’s not warm out, the air gets sucked out of your lungs like you’re trapped in a suffocating furnace, and your body’s being incinerated, but you don’t recoil. Instead, an inferno of rage overcomes you. It’s ICE. They’re in your fucking neighborhood! And all you can think in that moment is: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

So, what do you do now? (Perhaps some of you reading this short essay have already experienced this moment, and you know what happens next, but for many, like I was, we’ve been insulated from these mafioso thugs. Until now.)

Last Thursday, I came up against these circumstances when I was off to get my hair done, a nice, classic bun, for my wedding license (I thought I was getting fully married, as it turned out that was not the case, but I’ll table that for now). In any event, I was with my bestest friend. We were excited, and both of us were happy—it was a day to celebrate. My friend had just returned from a trip to Ireland, so she gave me several gifts from her trip. I was wearing a white, peasant-like, Bohemian dress, and she was already in an evening gown for our wedding event. We were heading out after I had gotten my Hollywood-style makeup done for my wedding day.

Wedding makeup was on for the day, and when I confronted ICE.

Needless to say, I wasn’t in a mindset to be on the alert for state-sanctioned terrorists to be on my block.

“We better get going to my hair appointment,” I said to my friend.

She nodded in the long entryway to my home, and we left. I went first, and she followed me.

I locked the door to my house after she came out, then turned around and suddenly noticed nondescript cars and SUVs with small police-like lights flashing, which struck me as odd. Then I honed in on the six to eight agents milling about the street, and noticed one right in front of me with “Homeland Security” emblazoned on the back of his black shirt. They were all wearing bulletproof vests, too. That’s when my friend and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, “ICE.”

I glanced down the block and saw another truck filled with two men. The truck’s lights were flashing as well. (Incidentally, none of them were wearing masks.)

We were surrounded. But at no point did I feel scared; instead, I was enraged and sick to my stomach. How dare they come to my city, to my neighborhood, to my street, to harass someone, to try and terrorize one of my neighbors? Even worse, how dare they come here to attempt to disappear an innocent person or people, as they have been doing all over the country?

My nervous system didn’t go into flight mode. It went into fight mode. These state-sanctioned wannabe mafiosos got into their respective vehicles, as did I, since I was still gaining my bearings with the fact that they had invaded my safe space, my neighborhood, and were directly outside my home. (The sense of your space being invaded by threatening, toxic, violent, terrible people was palpable, yet, as I said already, I did not fear them in the least.)

I immediately rolled down my window and yelled with everything I had inside of me, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! WE DO NOT WANT YOU HERE IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD! GET THE FUCK OUT, AND FUCK OFF!”

The ICE agents in a large SUV were right next to me as I yelled profanities at them and told them to leave. They heard me clear as day, which was obviously the intention. One of them smiled smugly at me. I don’t care that he did that. I don’t care that he thinks he has power over me, this city, or this neighborhood, because he’s wrong. He does not. It’s a false sense of power. We the people hold the power. And I want these ghouls, who parade around in human skin, to know that if they ever show up on this street again, I will make it clear again that they are pariahs, trash, and absolutely not welcome here.

That’s the right thing to do when you are up against fascism and its servants. You do not back down. You do not falter. You do not allow it or its sychophants any space to proceed and terrorize others around you. The more oxygen it receives, the more it spreads. But I don’t want it here in my space, in my lovely neighborhood, or in my beautiful city. I’m fucking over it.

I’m glad I did what I did. And, as I said, I will do it again when they reappear here, these bags of reeking fascistic putrescence, and I know they will, but they need to know they are reviled. Because if I’m not there to do it, who will be there to do it? Who will stand up to them, who will denounce them if I don’t? It’s my patriotic duty to democracy to tell them to fuck off and to get the fuck out of this beloved space, where birds cheerfully chirp, my community garden grows, and lovely people care for one another.

Indeed, these thugs need to be put in their place. They need to know that they are despised and thought of as being the cockroaches that they are—and we have weedkiller and insect spray for a reason, so my voice is similar to those sprays. I shoot it off as a remedy to the poison they seek to spread here in this lovely part of the city, and I will have no part in allowing them to do that. They need to be publicly shamed, booed, and demoralized at every turn. After all, they are criminals, murderers, who kill on our streets in broad daylight and get away with it (see here, here, and here), sex traffickers (see here, here, here, and here), and cowardly commandants of concentration camps where suffering, inhumane treatment, and death are all pervasive.

So, why would I be anything but defensive and alarmed when I saw them a few inches from my door and my neighbors’ doors? And why won’t I be anything but the same when I see them again? These are threatening, violent, abusive people, people you don’t want to be near, and you certainly don’t want your lovely neighbors near either.

In short, we need to be looking out for one another. That’s why I instinctively told them to get the fuck out of my neighborhood, and—as is obvious—I’ll proudly do it again. They have no business being here. They have no business roaming around any street in the U.S., and it’s high time we all told them that.

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