The secret police of ICE know they’re the Bad Guys. That’s why they wear masks and don’t carry badges and refuse to give their names.
And so, I argued yesterday, that it is necessary for us — and for them — to unmask them, to use their names, and to identify them publicly. To make them famous. This is needed to save our freedom and to save their souls.
Before I get into what I have in mind, specifically, for what to do with this information — the names, faces, and yes, addresses of these secret police — let’s look at another recent story about their activities. This is from KFOR television news in Oklahoma City, “‘We’re citizens!’: Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren’t suspects.”
A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were not the suspects the agents were looking for.
The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.
The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier. …
But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door.
Marisa* said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI. …
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
She recognized them as names listed on mail still arriving at the house—likely former residents.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.
“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.
The egregious cruelty here is astonishing, but so is the feckless, inept police work. The “evidence” they collected is a waste of their time. That mail still arriving with the former residents’ names? The mail they completely ignored despite her telling them about it? That was some of the evidence they were looking for, but they left it behind, instead carting off the phones and laptops of people who are unrelated to their case. Everyone reading this story will be appalled by the actions of these dolts — except for the former residents of this home, who will be relieved that the agents pursuing them are so very, very bad at their job.
This isn’t rocket science. If you’re looking for Person A and you track down their last known address only to find that they moved out weeks ago, then it’s still possible you may find evidence related to Person A on the premises, but it will not be in or amongst the possessions of the new residents. And to find it, you’re going to need the cooperation and assistance of those new residents. You’re going to need to ask them about anything the previous residents might have left behind. But none of these off-brand federales thought to do that. They were too busy enjoying the chance to bully and traumatize a frightened woman and her children, forcing them at gunpoint to stand in the rain in their nightclothes.
Disgraceful behavior but also, again, just really, really dumb.
Here again it’s obvious that all of the agents and agencies involved are aware that their actions were shamefully cruel and dumb. That’s why none of their names appear in this story and why all of the agencies involved have refused to comment — except for the U.S. Marshals Service, which reached out to News 4 to clarify that its marshals were not involved in the botched raid.
Marisa told News 4 the agents wouldn’t even leave her a business card.
The woman who was the victim of this home invasion and robbery did not want her name or her face to be shown in KFOR’s report because she is understandably terrified of retaliation from the same lawless, gun-toting goons who already attacked her family once and who are now holding all of her possessions and savings hostage. (“Marisa” is not her real name,* it’s the name KFOR chose to use for her to protect her from those goons and from the MAGA-irregulars who might threaten her and her family.)
But what are the secret police afraid of? Who are they afraid of? Why are they hiding their faces and their names?
They are afraid of us — of the majority of normal, decent people. And they are hiding their faces and their names because they know that what they are doing is wrong and shameful and bad. They know that they are the Bad Guys in this story. That is as obvious to them as it is to you and so they cannot face you. They cannot do what they are doing and save face, so to do what they are doing they must hide their faces.
So let’s see their faces. And their names.
In asking to see those faces and names, some fear I’m also asking thereby to learn their addresses, which seems to imply a hint of violence or, at least, the threat of such. (“We know where you live” almost always seems to be an implicit threat of violence.)
But violence is not at all what I’m suggesting and not at all what I have in mind.
What I have in mind, rather, is Evangelism Explosion. What I have in mind is what I learned and practiced in youth group at my white fundamentalist Christian church growing up — the spiritual practice my white evangelical tradition shares with the Latter Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m talking about door-to-door evangelism.
Most of you reading this have only experienced this from the other side of the door — as the knock-ee rather than as the knock-er. I’ve been on both sides. Neither one is pleasant.
The one positive thing from my experience conducting door-to-door “evangelism” was probably that it made door-to-door political canvassing so much easier for me. Sure, an undecided voter might not welcome a random knock at the door, and, yeah, they might not favor the candidate I’m campaigning for, but even the worst case scenario here isn’t as bad as the essential premise of the conversation you’re trying to have when doing door-to-door evangelism. That involves standing on the front porch of a stranger and saying, “Hi. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I know you’re a sinner who deserves to suffer for eternity in Hell.”
Our “Evangelism Explosion” training taught us more tactful ways of saying that. But still, that’s what we were saying.
I’ve written quite a bit here about how I think this is a terrible model for evangelism (or any attempt at persuasion), and how I think the real function of such “evangelism” isn’t evangelism at all, but rather creating in-group solidarity.
This is not to say that I believe it is a cynical ploy concocted by the leaders of the faith traditions that practice it in order to deliberately manipulate their own followers. I think all of these traditions — white evangelicals, Mormons, Witnesses — are genuinely motivated by the idealistic belief that door-knocking evangelism might someday “work,” producing the converts it has thus far failed to produce for them. But I think the dismal track record of failure from this method would have exhausted that idealism by now if the practice did not also produce the ancillary benefit of creating in-group solidarity against a now-even-more hostile outside world.
Anyway, you can kick the boy out of evangelicalism but you cannot completely kick the evangelicalism out of the boy. And so when I think about these secret police masking themselves in their shame — when I think about a group that already understands that they are sinners in desperate need of repentance and salvation — I can’t help but think it’s worth giving this a try.
Protesting outside of the homes of ICE agents can work. It’s part of what worked for the good people of Sackets Harbor, New York, who massed outside of the home of “border czar” Tom Homan. And I’m certainly in favor of this approach. Don’t trespass, don’t threaten, but bear witness with marching, chanting, sign-waving where they live. Reciprocity is just. This is the social contract they have established. In the same way they harass others, they will be harassed and with the measure they use it will be measured unto them.
But the names and addresses of our secret police should also be treated just as all those Evangelism Explosion training sessions taught us to treat the names and addresses of our “unchurched” neighbors.
We should be knocking on their doors.
We should smile and tell them we’re there with the good news of salvation, because even though they are damnable sinners, repentance and redemption are still available. The repentance and redemption they need are still possible. The salvation they already know they need can still be theirs.
What would happen? Could this ever “work”? Even once.
I dunno. My own history and experience with door-to-door “evangelism” suggests this would be a futile exercise. But then, on the other hand, I’ve also got the voices of umpteen incarnations of The Doctor in my head reminding me that we must always remind the Bad Guys that they have the opportunity and the freedom to simply choose to stop being the Bad Guys, and sometimes that approach actually succeeds in works of escapist fiction.
In any case, regardless of how these no-longer-secret secret policemen choose to respond to this invitation to repentance — even after it has been repeated by visitor after visitor knocking on their door, day after day, after day — the exercise would be clarifying, both for them and for us. The Bad Guys may choose to continue being the Bad Guys, but we cannot allow them to deceive themselves about the fact that that is what they are choosing.
* I’m impressed with the composure and eloquence “Marisa” displays in her interview with KFOR. She’s traumatized and speaking off the cuff, but she goes full Merchant-of-Venice in an eloquent plea that deserves to be repeated widely:
“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”
Might print that up as a “Gospel tract” that we could hand out in my door-to-door “evangelism” scheme.
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