Inside the Mind of an ICE Agent
Is this what she signed up for?
Quick update: Yesterday it was reported Cory Booker is joining Chris Van Hollen in going to El Salvador. John Lewis would be proud. This is good trouble; necessary trouble.
1. Choices
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this woman:
She’s one of the agents who arrested Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk last month. The raid was headed by ICE, but it’s unclear what agency this woman works for.
If you watch the video, this female agent comes in the second wave. The first agent to make contact with Öztürk is a man who bumps her, as if by accident, and then grabs her phone out of her hands. It’s clear that, initially, Öztürk thinks she’s being mugged. But then another man comes in behind her. She is quickly surrounded and they begin to pull off her backpack. Eventually they handcuff her and lead her to an unmarked vehicle.
If this happened in Oaxaca, you’d assume it was a cartel kidnapping.
But that woman . . .
She’s wearing a mask to hide her identity. She does not appear to be wearing a badge. She seems to be making direct verbal and visual contact with Öztürk shortly before the student is led away.
What agency does this woman work for?
Was this sort of enforcement action a new experience for her? Öztürk committed no crime and was in the country legally up until the moment the secretary of state personally revoked her visa—but he did so without informing Öztürk. She had no way of knowing that her legal status had changed. The government made a change to target her, without her knowledge, and then had her arrested.
Is that the kind of job this agent signed up for?
Does she think that it is proper for the government to create conditions to change an individual’s legal status without informing them? Does she think it is morally acceptable to accost a law-abiding person on the street? Does she think Öztürk needed to be handcuffed?
To be a woman walking the streets alone is to be vulnerable. Did this agent have any problem being part of a group of men who ambushed a young woman walking the streets by herself?
Would she agree to participate in such an enforcement action again?
Law enforcement officers do not get to choose the cases they are assigned. But they do get to choose where they work.
Did this woman go to work the next day? Is she still employed by whatever agency she worked for on March 25?
The economy may be slowing, but unemployment is still low. There are a lot of jobs out there. A lot of choices people can make . . .