By Carlos Sanchez
From Los Angeles to Chicago to Charlotte, North Carolina, and beyond, stories of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to raise the profile of an agency that few Americans knew about before January, when President Trump took office again.
But it took a recent personal and threatening encounter with ICE for me to realize that this is an agency that is bathing in the arrogance of power and is soon to be out of control.
I was returning by plane from a funeral of a sister in my hometown of El Paso headed for South Texas via the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — with 87 million passengers annually making it the third busiest airport in the world. Some estimates suggest roughly two out of every three passengers use the airport the way I was using that day, connecting to another flight for a final destination.
The sadness of the funeral was slightly offset by my securing an upgrade to first class seating on American Airlines. I was in the very first row, aisle seat, when our plane landed in DFW. I knew I had a quick turnaround of about 35 minutes to get to my connecting flight and the American Airlines app also told me that it would take 23 minutes to walk from the terminal where I landed to the terminal of the next flight.
So, I was relieved that I was the very first in line as soon as the “fasten seat belt” light went off and the planeload of people jumped into the aisle to exit. I crept up closer to the flight attendant waiting for the jetway to reach the plane so that the door could be opened and the passengers could exit.
It was from that vantage point that I saw the surprise of the flight attendant’s face when he was greeted by four agents wearing ICE uniforms. The lead agent immediately ordered the flight attendant to announce that everyone on the plane was to return to their seats because four immigration detainees were on board and they would be the first to exit the plane.
The flight attendant admitted that he had never encountered ICE agents before and explained futilely that the aisle was already jammed with passengers waiting to exit the plane. The agent was unmoved with the explanation and ordered once again for the passengers to return to their seats.
The flight manifest listed where three of the detainees were seated; the fourth detainee was being escorted by an undercover ICE agent, I could hear from my proximity to the front. As the flight attendant made the announcement ordering passengers to their seats, a slight uproar of confusion began until I loudly declared, “ICE,” as I made my way back to my front-row seat.
It took the flight attendant several announcements to get people back to their seats and another announcement to get people to clear their luggage from the aisle. Meanwhile, I watched as the minutes ticked away to my connecting flight.
Finally, three of the detainees were escorted to the front by a flight attendant who told the ICE agents that the undercover agent was refusing to identify himself. With the three men in custody, the lead ICE agent said they would wait on the jetway for the fourth detainee and the undercover agent — a suggestion one of the flight attendants had made earlier, noting there was only one exit off the plane.
As the retinue of agents crept up the jetway, I quickly fell in behind them so that I could rush to my connecting flight. Midway through the jetway, the lead agent turned and ordered me to stay behind another agent who was following the trio of detainees.
They kept creeping up the jetway, stopping every few steps to stare me down as I followed closely behind. At one point, I said loudly that many of us needed to catch a connecting flight; could they please hurry.
Finally, as the jetway turned right, they gathered the detainees near a service door and turned to await the fourth person.
As I passed them, the lead agent locked eyes with me and said, “I don’t care about your connecting flights.”
Those who know me would describe me as laid back, not confrontational. But the arrogance of this agent and his declaration that he didn’t care that he was inconveniencing possibly two-thirds of this plane triggered something in me.
With our eyes still locked, I said, “Fuck you.”
And I know he heard me because he responded, “Fuck you, too.”
A brief encounter certainly, and not the tragic or life-changing encounters that others have had when crossing paths with ICE agents. But it had a profound effect on me. Beyond the anger of this agent’s arrogance, beyond the raw display of power when such a display wasn’t necessary, that encounter provoked in me a level of disdain for this law enforcement agency that I have never had before.
I worked nearly four decades as a journalist and I have worked closely with law enforcement throughout my career. I covered the Los Angeles riots in 1992, I have covered massive demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and I have even covered immigration raids by an agency that was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
And I always treated them with respect and received equal respect from law enforcement agencies across the country. Never have I felt such disdain for a law enforcement agency as I did that moment with that agent.
It has been less than a year since President Trump was sworn into office for his second term and unleashed ICE on this country. The display of hate, the exercise of power and the height of arrogance are quickly becoming the legacy of this agency. And for a president who considers himself law and order, the antipathy toward law enforcement itself is becoming a part of this legacy.
Instead of feeling safer as this administration attacks those foreign invaders, this unexpected encounter with this agency in an unanticipated location has altered my philosophical fear of an abuse of power by this agency into a sad reality.
Something must be done to rein in this agency before it’s too late. And since elected officials have shown a general lack of courage to fend off this threat, perhaps it was a blessing that the arrogance of this action demonstrated to a plane full of passengers headed to all parts of the country what a dangerous charade this enforcement effort truly is.
Carlos Sanchez is a retired journalist who has worked in 10 different newsrooms, including The Washington Post and Texas Monthly. His flight was boarding when he reached his gate, but he made his connecting flight.
The post Opinion: My airport run-in with ICE revealed a dangerous arrogance taking hold in America appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More