join.ice.gov
The TV in the lobby of our credit union was playing a recruiting commercial for ICE. Stock footage shots of decaying urban environments and law enforcement officials arresting people cut between President Trump speaking at a podium:
“In America’s sanctuary cities, dangerous illegals roam free. So true. Join ICE — we love ICE, don’t we, folks? — and get a $50,000 signing bonus and generous benefits, so generous, by helping catch the worst of the worst, the scum of the earth: drug dealers, human traffickers, people pouring in from insane asylums — and do your part to Make America Great Again.”
The last shot was a title card with an American flag behind a bald eagle, which read:
DEFEND THE HOMELAND.
JOIN ICE TODAY.
join.ice.gov.
My wife, Victoria, looked up from her book.
“Can we turn this off?” she whispered to me.
I looked around for a remote, couldn’t find one, and shrugged.
“I guess we’re stuck with it,” I said.
The channel was Fox News, of course, and we both tried to ignore it. I looked for paying gigs on my phone while Victoria sifted through a manila folder of our mortgage papers, paycheck stubs, bills, and the rest of our finances. When I told her we had everything and asked her to stop worrying, she nodded and picked her book back up and began reading again.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“Historical fiction,” she said. “Female heroes of the French resistance.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of that stuff?” I asked in a joking tone.
Before she could answer, the mortgage lender approached us, hand outstretched to shake. His name was Norm and he beckoned us into his corner office.
“So, I have some good news and some bad news,” he said as we sat down. “Which would you like first?”
We looked at each other and shrugged.
“The bad news is your recent credit score change means that your interest rate will be a bit higher than average, but the good news is your income level means you qualify for some really great incentives on your refi. Here, let me show you.”
He turned his computer monitor around and we craned our necks forward to look. On the screen were colorful charts. He droned on with the numbers and the details, but I wasn’t really listening. When he was done, I sat back. Victoria stared at the banker and asked what we were both thinking.
“The main thing I want to know is: are we going to lose the house?”
“We’re going to do everything we can,” he said.
“You have to understand, this is the house my parents grew up in, the house their parents built. I can’t lose this house.”
“I understand how important it is to you, and I want you to know we’re going to work with you,” he said. “Let me look into it and talk to some folks in my department and get back to you later this week, OK?”
“Thank you,” she said. There was an awkward pause, and we all stood up and shook hands.
As we walked out, I could see Victoria gripping all our documents to her chest.
“What just happened in there?” I asked.
“I feel like I’m drowning,” she said.
After their recent renovation, the credit union was now set up like a nightclub, so I went over to the bar area and asked for a water. The DJ took off his headphones and handed me one with a wink. Then he started up the espresso machine.
“Want one?” he asked Victoria, who wasn’t really listening. She shook her head, staring off into the distance.
From the opposite corner office, a man in a black hoodie and a thick beard stormed out the door.
“Are you serious right now?” he asked in a voice that was even louder than the house music pumping through the speakers.
“Sir, please calm down,” pleaded the banker trailing behind him. “If you —“
“No,” said the bearded man. “I don’t appreciate being treated this way.”
“It’s a simple matter of —“
“You told me that already, I’m not stupid!”
We watched as a security guard walked over to the man, grabbing his arm.
“Don’t touch me, man!” The bearded man said as he turned toward the guard, and that’s when I recognized him.
It was Bo.
He was heavier now, his previously groomed beard grown long with flecks of grey in it, his overall demeanor angrier and more menacing than I remembered. We had crewed some shoots together in Atlanta a few years before and had done a lot of drinking at the hotel bars when there was nothing else to do, and I considered him a hard worker and a friend. This was a new side of him though; I normally found him easy-going and friendly to a fault.
The security guard eased him towards the door, and without a word to Victoria, I followed.
“I’ll be back, believe that,” Bo said to the guard.
“Don’t threaten me,” he replied. “I’m this close to calling the cops.”
“I ain’t threatening shit,” Bo said, reaching for his keys.
“He’s cool, he’s cool,” I told the guard as I walked past him. “I know this guy.”
“Well, take care of your friend then,” he said, and walked back in.
I headed towards Bo.
“Bo,” I said.
“What?!” he yelled.
“Bo,” I said, putting my hands up in a friendly manner. “It’s me, Jude.”
He was angrily pressing his car key clicker repeatedly, and once he heard my name, stopped immediately.
Then he wrapped me in a bear hug.
“Jude! Dude! Great to see you.”
“You too,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Fuck man, I was trying to get a bank account here, but they said they needed two pay stubs to prove I was working. I haven’t started yet but I’m good for it, you know, so I was trying to get them to make an exception and they weren’t having it. Total bullshit.”
The credit union was only for entertainment industry workers and was strict, as I remembered from my own account signups. I nodded.
“No, I meant what are you doing here in LA? Aren’t you still an Atlanta local?”
“Yeah,” he said. “but, you know, I thought I’d come out here to see if things had picked up since the new tax credits took effect. Truth is, things have slowed down in Georgia.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” I said.
“Yeah, it's a bitch,” he said. He looked behind me and saw Victoria.
“Oh shit, is this your wife?” he asked.
I beckoned her to join us, introduced them.
“I’ve only seen pictures of you on Instagram and whatnot, but I’ve heard a lot about you,” Bo said.
“All good things, I hope,” she laughed. They shook hands, then Victoria checked her watch.
“I have to go,” she said. “Shift starts in a half hour.”
We kissed goodbye and she got in her car; we watched her drive off.
“She seems great,” he said.
“She’s the best,” I said.
“So, he asked, “what are you up to now? Working?”
“Looking for my next gig. Do you have anything lined up yet?”
“A new thing in the works.”
“Solid?”
“Rock solid,” he said.
“That’s good, because nobody knows what’s going on in this business at the moment. Every time I talk to someone about what they’re up to, they look at me like a deer in the headlights. No body seems to be working. Hollywood is fucked right now.”
“I think it’s like that everywhere,” he said. “Hey, want to go grab a drink?”
“It’s noon!” I said.
“So?” He said. “You got something better to do?”
I didn’t.
We took separate cars to The Roost in Atwater Village and found ourselves at a corner booth in the dark room.
“When was the last time I saw you?” I asked. “Two years ago? Three?”
“It was after Covid lockdowns, that’s for sure.”
“That’s how I think about time now: before Covid, and after covid. March 2020, man.”
“Crazy times.”
We lost all track of time in that dark bar while reminiscing about old shoot we had been on, directors who were in over their heads, producers we had to threaten before they paid us, but mostly we talked about our various money issues and how bad both our finances were at the moment. It was good to see Bo again and the conversation flowed easily.
Tipsy, we decided to go get tacos. The Los Feliz Night Market had just started setting up their tents in the parking lot of the car wash across the street right as their staff was finishing their work for the day.
A convoy of black SUVs pulled up to the food stalls right as we arrived.
The sound of loud whistles pierced the air. People pulled out their phones to record.
“Mira, mira!” someone shouted. “La Migra!”
It was all so eerily familiar. I had seen short social media videos for months now of them doing the mass deportations they had been given billions to do, mostly in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Portland. But now I was actually seeing it in person.
They swarmed the assorted tents and I watched, unsure what to do. They weren’t wearing uniforms and they pulled guns out with no provocation and they had masks on but no badges and they kept white plastic zip ties on their belts like a janitor with a oversized ring of keys. They wore gloves and bullet proof vests over too-tight t-shirts and tactical boots and baseball hats and their unmarked SUVs flew Mexican flags to trick the locals.
It was all wrong and obscene and under false pretenses and we all knew it but were powerless to stop it.
The ICE agents took a few men into the cars and sped away, and we were left there in the wake of their detainment, confused and angry and cursing.
“Shame!” was the most common refrain, alongside Spanish cuss words I didn’t recognize.
“Can you believe that?” I asked Bo.
He just shook his head.
One of the other patrons handed me a whistle. He was carrying a bag of them, filled to the brim.
“Where did you get all these?” I asked.
“I’ll show you,” he said, and beckoned us to follow.
Minutes later, as the sun was going down, we found ourselves at a Craftsman-style house in Frogtown, a neighborhood right between the LA River and Elysian Park, where the Dodgers play. The area got the name due to tadpoles breeding and hopping through the streets and yards years ago after a particularly intense flood, and the too-cute nickname stuck.
We were beckoned into a backyard full of people partying, where they had a Spotify playlist blasting from a portable speaker with songs with having the word ICE in it: “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice, “Cold As Ice” by Foreigner, “Fire and Ice" by Pat Benatar.
There was a piñata with Trump’s face on it and when they busted it open out came a bunch of chocolates and tamarind candies.
All the drinks in the blue portable coolers were Mexican: Modelos and Pacificos, tequilas and Kahlua.
Some guy with a big black mustache was alternating between spray painting the concrete brick walls and igniting fireballs with a Bic lighter.
A college-aged woman was in a back room screen printing Anti-ICE posters, a group of denim-clad guys were fixing up old bikes outside the garage, and a grandma was making tamales in the kitchen. She offered offered us a plate. I ate as I watched the guy who brought us from the market make the plastic whistles on a 3D printer located on a table in the dining room. Bo stood mesmerized, staring at the man while he chewed his food.
The backyard went right onto the LA River, where some of the party was spilling out. It was dark now, and the conversations became more heated and louder as everyone continued to drink.
“We can’t keep going like this,” a female voice said. “This is unsustainable.”
“But what are we supposed to do?” a young man replied. “They have the money, the resources, the weapons.”
“But we have the numbers,” someone else said, and there were some murmurs of agreement.
“We’re doing what we can,” said the first person, “But we can all do more. And we have to be creative about it, think outside the box.”
“Exactly!” someone else said. “Like, my cousin in Chicago, he has a snow plow, right? He plows the snow right over the ICE cars, burying them so they can’t get out.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! That’s the kind of stuff we need to be doing.”
“Flaco,” another said to the guy next to me. “What are you going to start doing to fight ICE?”
“My uncle has a tow truck. We can start towing their cars when they jump out to kidnap people.”
More murmurs of approval.
“I’m going to organize some of my filmmaker friends to videotape them any time they are on a raid, rapid-response-style,” one of the others chimed in.
“Who else? Anyone else have an idea?”
There was silence for a moment. A bottle of tequila was being passed around. It got to me and I took a sip. Then I passed it to Bo.
Out of the darkness, he said, “I’m going to join ICE.”
There were more murmurs, but this time of a different variety.
“Let me elaborate,” he said. “I’m going to join ICE to bring them down from the inside.”
The tequila must have gotten in me quick, because I said, before even thinking about it, “I’ll join you.”
Bo looked at me, smiled, and took a long swig from the bottle before passing it to the next person.
**
Everything tasted dry like rock salt. My head hurt. My back hurt. Weirdly, my knees hurt too.
I woke up hungover. I don’t remember coming home. I checked my phone, and there was a text from Victoria: “Hope you had fun last night. Remember to hydrate — and I don’t mean hair of the dog!”
I slinked into the kitchen to find Bo already sitting at the table, head in his hands.
“Coffee?” I asked.
He nodded, said nothing.
“Black?”
He nodded again, looked around the room. I started the machine, which bubbled.
“I shouldn’t have drank tequila,” he said. “Why did I drink tequila? I hate tequila!”
“When in Rome,” I said. He just shook his head, then continued scanning the room. I poured him a cup, which he took with both hands.
“You’re living the dream, man,” he said, sipping his coffee.
“Thanks,” I said, pouring myself a cup and sitting across from him.
“No, really,” he continued. “I envy you. I wish I was married, had a house, a family. And I wish I could still get work in this business.”
“When do you start, anyway?”
“Start what?”
“The new gig you came out here for.”
He took another sip.
“Ah shit, I didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Turns out the gig fell through.”
“What? When?”
“Last night, I got an email while we were at the party saying they had to shut production down.”
“That sucks.” I said. “You’ll get something else.” I meant it — he was the best below-the-line guy I knew. He could do anything on a set, and I hated how this town pigeonholed people.
“Well, I won’t have to.”
“No?” I asked. “Going back to Atlanta?”
He looked at me funny, shook his head.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
“You don’t remember what we talked about last night? At the party?”
“I guess not,” I said. “What is it?”
He set his cup down.
“We’re going to join ICE, remember?” he said, and let out a bellowing laugh.
I looked up to the ceiling and thought about it, and that’s when it came back to me.
Shit.
He was right. LA River bike path. Tequila from the bottle. Snow plows, tow trucks, rapid response video crews, joining ICE to take them down from the inside.
I looked at him, and he was still grinning.
“You’re not really going to do that, though, are you?”
He nodded.
“You’re crazy, man.”
“You’re doing it, too,” he said.
“Like hell!” I said, and stood up to pour myself another cup.
“I dare you!” he said.
“You dare me?” I said. “What are you, 12?”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?”
“You hate ICE, right?” he asked.
“I do.”
“You want to do something against it, right?”
“I do.”
“You’re not working otherwise, right?”
“I’m not.”
“You could use the $50,000 signing bonus, couldn’t you?”
“I could.”
“And most importantly,” he said, “I’m going to do it, so you have to. You don’t want to let your old buddy Bo down, do you?”
I had always believed that, as difficult as it was to sweat out a hangover, it was one of the more effective ways as well. I had also read recently on social media that the federal government had lowered their standards for new ICE recruits because so many of them were out of shape and couldn’t meet the standards.
So after our coffee and some cajoling, I changed into workout clothes and lent Bo a pair of my old shorts, and we went outside. I limbered up, stretching against a palm tree in my front yard while Bo pulled up the fitness test on his phone. He read it aloud:
“Selectees must complete the following events based on strict protocols:
Sit ups: 32 sit-ups in 1 minute or less
Push Ups: 22 push-ups in 1 minute or less
Sprint: 220-yard sprint in 47.73 seconds or less
Run: 1.5-mile run in 14 minutes 25 seconds or less
Selectees must meet or exceed each event's minimum standards.
These events assess muscular strength and endurance, anaerobic and aerobic power and cardiovascular endurance. Events must be performed correctly and in sequence with no more than five minutes between exercises.”
“That sounds do-able,” I said.
Bo put his phone in his pocket.
“Do we really have to do this right now?” he asked. “Can’t we do it later when my brain isn’t slamming into my skull?”
“You want to infiltrate ICE, don’t you?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Then lets start with sit ups,” I said, and we got on the ground.
Just about 25 minutes later, we were done. Covered in sweat, we came back into the house and took showers, content that we were fit enough to be admitted as ICE agents.
We took naps, me in my bedroom, and him on the couch, and when I woke up, my wife was home from work, reading a new book while drinking tea in the kitchen.
“What are you reading now?” I asked.
“A book about the OSS,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Precursor to the CIA. They did espionage, sabotage, and intelligence gathering during World War II.”
“Spy shit,” I said. “James Bond-style.”
“Exactly,” she said, putting a book mark in and setting in down.
“Is Bo still here?”
“He left right when I arrived, said he’d call you later about the new job.”
“Ah, OK,” I said.
“Does he have work for you on a new movie?” She asked.
“Um, not exactly,” I said.
“Oh?” she asked. “What is it? One of those new vertical video things for the apps?”
“No, it’s not that either. Something not show business related.”
“Really? I didn’t know you were interested in anything else. We hadn’t talked about that.”
“Well, it’s a little…outside the box,” I said.
“That sounds exciting. What is it? Don’t leave me hanging.”
I took a deep breath.
“We’re going to apply to be ICE agents.”
She looked at me for a second, then burst out laughing.
“Oh my God, can you imagine?” she said, still laughing.
“Totally,” I said. “It’s crazy, right?”
“My husband the tough guy, throwing tear gas at protestors in a bullet-proof vest!” She kept laughing.
I forced myself to laugh too. Then she stopped.
“It’s actually not funny — I saw a video from last night of them busting up and arresting some guys at the Los Feliz Night Market.”
“Oh my God, we were there!”
“Really?”
“Yeah, we were about to get some drunk tacos when they came in and raided the place.”
“Seriously? I can’t believe you were there!”
“It was nuts, I can’t believe what they’re doing. Makes me want to do something about it.”
“Me too,” she said. “But I’m so busy at work and you’ve been looking for new gigs, it’s hard to know what to do, and how to find the time.”
“Well,” I said, “we’ll figure out something.”
“We will,” she said. “Now, tell me for real: what is this new gig Bo was going to get you on again?”
“You were right the first time,” I said, getting a beer from the fridge. “It’s a new movie shooting in town.”
“That’s so great, honey,” she said. “It will be nice to have you working again.”
When I saw Bo that night, again at The Roost, I told him about my conversation with Victoria and how I didn’t have the balls to admit to her our idea about joining ICE and if I couldn’t even admit to her what I was planning to do then how could I expect to have the confidence to infiltrate an entire government agency and take it down from the inside and even if I had that confidence how would I do it anyway I knew nothing about sabotage my wife was the one who read about that stuff that happened during WW2 and I’d never shot a gun or even liked weapons and I think it’s a good idea even an admirable one Bo but I just don’t think it’s for me and I think if you want to do it you should go ahead but I have to back out and I hope you’ll understand but that’s where I’m at I’m sorry man I just can’t do it.
Silence.
Bo leaned back in the booth after listening to me go on and on with my excuses and my backing out of our agreement. He took out his phone from his pocket and showed me a screenshot on his phone, which was an image of a man in a tactical vest in front of the Hollywood sign that read:
ICE Recruiting Event
Jan 31
LA Convention Center
“That’s this weekend,” I said.
“That’s right. You don’t have to join if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m not going to force you. But just come with me to the event, all right? I don’t want to do this by myself. Deal?”
We shook on it, and he went to join.ice.gov and registered right there on the spot.
**
I came home drunk, and my wife was still awake. She was drinking tea and reading her book again, but this time she was in bed, her glasses on, a mud mask on her face, a scented candle on her night table.
“Hey you,” she said as I stumbled in.
“Hey Vic,” I said, taking off my shoes.
“Out with Bo again?” she asked.
“Yep, me and Bo, the dynamic duo.”
“You’ve been seeing a lot of him lately, huh?” She said. “I knew you were friends, but not that good friends.”
“Well, I’ll be seeing even more of him soon,” I said.
“Yeah, on the new movie shoot,” she said, putting her book down. “That’s exciting! Tell me more.”
“I’ll tell you more tomorrow,” I said. “I’m tired.”
“Oh, OK,” she said. “I’m just curious, that’s all. You can’t tell me one little thing?”
I took off my shirt and my pants to stall a bit while I waited for the lies to come. But then I realized I couldn’t like to Victoria, and I felt hot guilt on my face for having done so earlier in the day. Maybe that’s why I ended up so drunk tonight.
“I have to be honest about something,” I said.
“What? Is everything OK?”
“Yeah, it’s just — “
“What? Tell me.”
“You know how I was joking about me and Bo joining ICE earlier?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, it wasn’t a joke.”
She sat up in bed, pulled her bathrobe tightly around herself, leaned forward.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Listen, here’s the thing: that first night we went out, right? When we saw the market get raided? We ended up at a house party and everyone was drinking, talking about what they were going to do to fight against ICE. And Bo and I told each other we were going to join ICE.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
“It was like a dare. Besides, it’s like your World War 2 book, the spy stuff. That’s the kind of stuff I would be doing, taking them on from the inside, you know?”
“This isn’t a book, this is real life, this is really happening right now in our country, in our city.”
“Yeah, but those books, those are based on real life.”
“And everyone in those books died doing that work, Jude!”
She was yelling now, she stood up and started pacing around the room.
“I’m not going to get killed, I just — “
“That’s what Renee Good and Alex Pretti probably thought too!”
“This is different,” I said. “I’ll be one of them, or that’s what they’ll think anyway.”
“But you’re not one of them,” she said. “For one thing, you’re married to me, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m brown.”
“I know, that’s what — “
“You know what?” she said. “I’m not having this conversation. Get out. I don’t want to talk to you, if you’re really thinking about doing this.”
“Let me just say one thing: there a $50,000 signing bonus, and the pay is great. This could be the way we keep the house.”
She stopped pacing and looked at me.
“If you think this is in any way about money, you don’t know me at all. Get the hell out. Now.”
So I put my pants and shirt and shoes back on as she stood there staring at me, and I left the house.
I stayed on the couch at Bo’s apartment in the old Oakwood Apartments, now called The Ava, in Toluca Lake. The place was furnished and sparse and since we were both pretty drunk, he basically just let me in and we both went right to sleep.
In the morning, I was woken up by a call from Victoria, which surprised me. She was usually one to let a fight stew until I groveled my way back into her good graces.
“Hi honey,” I said. “Listen, sorry about last night — “
“Can you come home?” she asked. “Something happened and I’m freaking out.”
She sounded frantic, out of breath.
“Is everything OK? What happened?” I asked.
“I’m fine, just come home. Right now. Please.”
I didn’t wake Bo up, just raced right over to my house to find my wife still in her scrubs, wiping away tears.
We hugged immediately and she sobbed in my arms and I stroked her hair, felt more in love with her than ever, knew I couldn’t go through with my stupid plan. I was drunk, I wasn’t thinking, it was peer pressure. I would back out, I had to.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” I said in a soft voice.
“I’ll show you,” she said. “I filmed it on my dash cam.”
She brought the camera out from her purse and pressed play.
On the video, Victoria pulls over to the side of the road on Riverside Drive. She grabs her license from her purse and registration from her glove box.
The ICE agent comes up to her door, wearing a black balaclava.
“Hey, how you doing today? Do you know why I stopped you?”
“No, officer, I actually don’t.”
“You rolled through that stop sign when you were coming off the freeway.”
“Did I? OK.”
“Sure did. Can I see your license and registration?”
“It’s right here, I’m going to reach for it, OK?”
“Go ahead.”
She hands it to him.
“Victoria? That’s you?”
“Yes.”
“Victoria, do you have anything in the car you’re not supposed to? Any drugs? Guns? Knives, brass knuckles, hand grenades, bazookas, anything like that?”
She laughs a little.
“No, nothing.”
“You sure? Honesty goes a long way with me.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Are you on parole or probation?”
“No, never.”
“OK, I’ll be right back.”
She sits in her car for a long time while he checks on her.
When he comes back, he asks her to get out of the car.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Are you sure you don’t have any narcotics in this car?”
“No, I don’t do drugs.”
“Show me your hands and exit the car right now.”
“What is this all about?”
She undoes her seatbelt, opens the door, and the pinging sound starts, interrupting their conversation.
“Is your real name Victoria, or is that an alias?”
“Mexican people can’t be named Victoria?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, my real name is Victoria Martinez, that’s my maiden name.”
“Well, Victoria Martinez, I’m going to detain you, for my safety and yours.”
He pulls out his handcuffs grabbed her arm.
“Is this really necessary?”
“Do not resist me!” he says, too loudly.
“I’m not resisting!” she says back in the same tone.
She turns her around and cuffs her:
“Turn around real quick and clasp your hands together like you’re praying,” he says.
She does.
“Like I said, you’re not being arrested right now, you’re just being detained until I can figure out what’s going on.”
“What’s going on is you’re getting a power trip over me rolling through a stop sign.”
I was proud of her in that moment.
“No, what’s going on is I suspect you are a drug trafficker. Now, our President and Supreme Court have given me the authority to conduct sweeps of suspected drug dealers. As I told you, honesty goes a long way with me, and at this point I have probable cause for a search. So before I bring the K-9 unit, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“What I want to tell you is that I am an American citizen, I’m a nurse, I have never done any drugs, much less trafficked or sold them, and what I really want to tell you is that you are wasting your time and you’re only stopping me because of the color of my skin.”
“That’s the way you want to play it?”
She nods.
“Come back here and sit in the back of my patrol car.”
He leads her back to his car and sits her inside, slamming the door. He radios for a K-9 unit, and they come.
She fast-forwards to the important part: the dog does not alert.
He writes her a ticket for the stop sign violation. She signs for it.
“Now, just so you know, if you had cooperated fully, I would have just let you off with a warning.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, and I think you should apologize.” she says.
“Me, apologize to you? No, I don’t think so.”
“I want your name and badge number.” she says. “Also, why are you wearing a mask?”
“Have a good day, Ms. Martinez.” he says, and walks back to his patrol car.
She pressed stop. And then she cried. I hugged her, tried to console her, but realized there wasn’t much he could do.
I went to the kitchen to take a few deep breaths and pour her a glass of water, and after she thanked me and drank it, she said, “I want you to join ICE, and I want you to take them down from the inside.”
“You know that’s crazy, right?”
“Well, what else are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we have to do something, and I’m all out of ideas.”
“I have an idea,” she said, and picked up her book from the coffee table.
She flipped through a few pages until she got to a section in the middle, and handed it to me.
I took it from her, and it read:
SIMPLE SABOTAGE
FIELD MANUAL
STRATEGIC SERVICES
(PROVISIONAL)
UNCLASSIFIED
The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present
suggestions for inciting and executing it.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s an excerpt of a real, actual document they used to use in World War 2 to sabotage the enemy.”
“Can we find that document?” I asked. “The full version?”
“I’m sure we can,” she said. “And you can do that, you can sabotage them, just like they did back then. That’s what you’re going to do against ICE.”
I looked up from the book to her face, her beautiful, innocent face. And I knew she was right.
**
The next morning, Bo picked me up in his Jeep and we drove to the convention center, downtown. Traffic was backed up on the 110, and was at a standstill where it met the 101. Bored, I scrolled on social media on my phone and stopped when I saw a video.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Look at this.”
I put the phone close to Bo so he could see it. It was ICE agents storming the house in Frogtown we had partied at just a few days prior, arresting the occupants: the 3D whistle guy, the silk screener, the abuela making tamales. We watched them cuffed and carried out and I felt rage inside of me.
“Can you fucking believe that?”
“Actually,” Bo said. “I can.”
“I know, right. Fucking scumbags.”
“No,” Bo said. “I mean, I was the one who tipped them off.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I reported that house to the authorities, Jude.”
“What?” I said, looking right at him. “Are you serious? Why would you do that?”
“Because those people are illegals.”
“No one is illegal, man. They’re just trying to find a better life.”
“No, they’re trying to take advantage of our system.”
“What system? No public healthcare, no public transit, mass shootings every single day?”
“You really hate this country, don’t you?” he said.
“I don’t hate it, I’m disappointed in it. I think this could be a great country, but I think we have our priorities out of whack. I think we’re going crazy.”
“This country is going crazy, but not for the reasons you think. I guess now is the time to come clean about something.”
“About why you reported those people?”
“No, about why I’m here,” he said. “I came to LA to join ICE. I didn’t need to be dared to do it.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, thinking about that night at the party. “You said you had a grip job.”
“It was bullshit. I mean, I had something lined up, but it fell through before I arrived. I decided to come anyway, and in the airport, I saw the ICE recruitment stand and felt like I got hit by a bolt of lightning. I knew what I had to do.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I didn’t realize how woke you were, I totally forgot your wife was even Mexican, man. Anyway, I hope we can still be friends.”
I scoffed.
“Let me out of the car,” I said.
“We’re in the middle of the freeway.”
“Let me out,” I said again.
“Are you still going to go through with it?”
“I don’t know. Let me out.”
“You still need the money, right?”
“Yes. Let me out.”
“Diversity is not our strength, that’s the biggest lie in America today. You know that, right?”
“Tell the Dodgers that.”
Finally, he switched lanes and let me out on the side of the freeway.
I got out to the sound of honking horns and the sight of raised middle fingers from passers by.
I slammed the door behind me.
“If you do go through with it,” Bo yelled out the window, “I won’t rat you out. For old time’s sake!”
Now it was my turn to raise my middle finger, and I did so without looking back.
Bo merged back into traffic and drove towards the convention center as I walked to a hill near the 7th Street bridge.
I was shaken by what Bo told me, by his lies, by seeing that video of people I had met arrested, and by the reality of what I was about to get myself into. I had a choice to make.
I walked the rest of the way to the convention center.
The parking lot had an inordinate amount of Cybertrucks in it. Signs were on the side of the building with a that old portrait of Uncle Sam with his whiskers and top hat and his big finger pointed towards us, and the caption read “AMERICA NEEDS YOU” and the ICE logo. A banner read: 50k recruitment incentive! There was already a line, even though it was hot and sunny already and the doors hadn’t opened yet.
Across the street were protestors with anti-ICE signs, a drum circle, people blowing whistles.
I stood in line, looking around to see if I could spot Bo. I didn’t see him, but I was surprised at the variety of people there: men and women both, white, black, latino, a lot of south asian men.
The doors opened at 9AM on the dot, and when we filed in, it felt less like job recruitment and more like a conservative festival of some sort. Here was a circle of vehicles, from standard cop car to armored tank; here was a kiosk demonstrating less lethal ammunition; here was a robot dog walking around that agents are supposed to use as support when doings raids. And there was a Charlie Kirk memorial table with a picture of the slain podcaster and conservative activist, selling Turning Point merchandise and AI-generated pictures of Charlie embraced by Jesus in heaven. That table had one of the longest lines I’d seen all day.
I made my way to a table to apply for a position, and they first made me do a urinalysis and a quick background check, which came back instantaneously.
Then they escorted me to a little condoned off area behind a blue curtain where I was to be interviewed, and I sat and waited in an uncomfortable metal chair in front of a desk messy with paperwork. After a few minutes, a man with a grey-flecked beard in an ICE uniform arrived and shook my hand.
“Jude?” he asked, looking at my paperwork.
“That’s me,” I said.
“I’m Agent Barrett. Something to drink?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Coffee, water? We even have tea, Starbucks Mint Majesty with two pumps of honey — lot of us have gotten a taste for it lately.”
“I’m fine.”
“Nervous?”
“Not really, just…” I hesitated then. I wasn’t sure I could go through with it. It was one thing to imagine this moment, but now I was here, and I had to go through with it.
I thought about my wife, how hurt she felt. How much she wanted to keep our house.
I didn’t think Bo would rat me out, but of course, you never really know.
I thought of the raid on the night market, the raid on the house, all the anger I’ve felt about not being able to do anything solid to help fight against what our country was becoming.
But this was something I could do. And I knew I could do it.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You can tell me.”
“I have to admit,” I said, taking a deep breath and going into my pre-rehearsed pitch, “I’m more of an office guy. I’m more of a pencil-pusher, I guess you’d say. I support the mission, but I wonder if I could do it in a support role, if you get my meaning.”
“You don’t want to get dirty?” He asked.
“It’s not exactly that, I just think my previous work experience and skill set could be used in a more effective manner.”
“Let me ask you something,” he said, taking a sip of his Starbucks. “Did you serve?”
“In the military?”
He nodded.
“No,” I said. “Is that a deal-breaker?” For a second, I was almost relieved.
“Not at all,” he said. “But did you know most wars are only fought in the field by about 15% of the entire military?”
“I didn’t,” I said, which was true.
“It’s true,” he said. “The rest consists of support roles: mechanics, logistics, etc. If you support our mission — to take this fight with military tactics and precision to the streets of America to rid our country of illegal criminal aliens and most importantly, to Make America Great Again — well then, I’m sure we can find a place for you in it.” He smiled, stood, threw away his cup of tea and extended his hand to me.
I shook it. My hand felt cold and clammy.
“Sorry to keep things short,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of applications to get through.”
I walked out with an offer, on the spot. His assistant told me they were trying to staff several thousand new recruits that day, so speed was of the essence. I went to another curtained area to be finger-printed, then I was taken outside into a waiting van to be brought to my office. And there was Bo, being given a gun, and a vest, and a mask with about a dozen other recruits. I stared at him, hoping he would see me, but he was too bust suiting up.
As we exited the parking lot, I saw the protestors again, and this time they were yelling at me. They didn’t know I was a spy, and when I heard them shout “Shame!” I felt a hot bolt of it go through me, if only briefly.
We pulled out onto the street, and I saw Victoria with a megaphone, yelling in Spanish. I smiled at her and tried to get her attention, but she couldn’t see me through the tinted windows.
The van took us to Glendale, to a nondescript office building near the courthouse. There was a picture of Trump’s face, glowering towards the camera on one wall, and Kristi Noem smiling on the opposite wall.
The assistant walked me to my cubicle and put a freshly-printed name plate at the entrance, told me training would start after lunch, and welcome to the team.
I sat at my desk and pulled out the only thing in my messenger bag. It was a bound copy of the Sabotage Manual that Victoria had found on the internet and printed out for me that morning.
I got to work.