ICE Headquarters

Deportation and Profanity

On Monday I responded to a request for people to show up outside of the ICE field office in support of a local Guatemalan woman and her children. She, her husband, and their two children had made a life in my town for years. But when her husband had gone for a recent immigration appointment, he had never returned. When his wife was asked to collect his car from the ICE office several days later, they put a GPS tracker on her wrist before handing her the keys. Though her asylum hearing was set for April 2026, she was told to return with her children on August 11th, 2025.

Volunteers were asked to join her there in case filming was necessary and to show solidarity, so I drove down with my son and met the family of three with several other volunteers outside ICE headquarters. When it was the family’s turn to go in, a Latino man opened the door.

“Wait,” my nine year old son said out loud, “he’s Mexican. Why is he working with ICE?” As the door swung shut I shook my head.

“I guess we would have to ask him, but I don’t think we are going to get the chance, they aren’t letting anyone else in.”

He went to wait in our car and drain my data plan playing Roblox’s Grow A Garden on my phone, while I drifted over to where local Rapid Response team members had positioned themselves on the street.

These volunteers share the comings and goings of the vehicles ICE is using in raids throughout our area code. The ICE guys cover their faces, dress in jeans and t-shirts, and use Nissans and Fords. Observing and reporting the make and model of the cars they use becomes invaluable. It means the community at large can track the cars and ugly surprises can be avoided.

We all wondered what might be happening inside with the woman we had accompanied. Would they all be released? Or would just her affidavit be honored and the children returned to drive home with us? Or would they all be detained in separate facilities?

When an ICE agent leaned outside and asked for someone’s phone number so that the Guatemalan woman could make a call, we ran to him, hungry for answers.

When the phone rang, it was her nine year old son who spoke.

“Uhm, hello?” he began.

“Yes?” the woman next to me responded, “We’re here.”

“Uh, my mom wants to know if someone can get our backpacks from our home and bring them here.”

“Did she sign something?” There was a pause as the boy relayed the message to his mother. “Yes,” he replied, “We are all going to Guatemala. If someone can knock on our door and get the things and then deliver them to us here?” He sounded like he was reading from a textbook. Neutral. Polite. Careful. Numb.

After we hung up, texts were exchanged with others and we discovered that the boy’s mother had been presented with several choices: she could continue to wait for her asylum case in a detention center in Texas without her children, who would be taken to a different detention facility, or sign a document saying she and her family would never set foot on US soil again and leave with her children for Guatemala that same day.

Just writing about this now makes my heart beat against my ribs. The family had a hearing date for their asylum case, yet fulfilling ICE quotas trumped following the law.

I passed my own nine year old son on my way to confer with the volunteer who most closely observes the ICE vehicles.

“Well, they’re opting to return rather than be detained. Who can blame them. What happens now?” I asked.

“Most likely they will be transported to the airport in LA in a government van later this afternoon and fly out tonight,” he wagered.

The speed of all these decisions boggled my mind. How had this mother decided what to pack? Which schools would the children not be returning to? How would the landlord deal with their apartment full of furniture? Would the family be leaving behind pets? Which friends would be left hanging? Which jobs? Who would clean out their refrigerator?

“I have to pee, mom,” my son announced and I nodded.

Seeing his tiny body against the backdrop of the ICE building made me wince. He was just beyond the reach of the very people who routinely file the paperwork, then transport the children to detention centers.

“Wait for me in the car, ok?” I responded.

As we drove away from the building my son chirped,

“Can we go back there tomorrow, but with a mega phone?”

“Why?” I asked.

“While you were over by the doors everyone out here started shouting at that car that drove in,” he said, his eyes wide.

“Oh, and now you want to swear up a storm tomorrow, is that it?”

“Well I didn’t today, because you had told me not to, but everyone else was, so -” he started to smile, “tomorrow I could yell, ‘Get out of here you %#&%!& and &^@& you and you #&!^’”

“Ok, ok,” I said interrupting his expletive rich discourse, “You would have to come up with a unique message all your own if you wanted to do that because if you were filmed I would want you to be saying something more substantive. Something more age appropriate, too.” That left us both quiet. What could he possibly say in the face of such slow motion violence? What might actually penetrate these people’s psyches?

We stopped for lunch and he cried when the pizza came out with a shake of parmesan cheese on it and again when the plain bread stick was covered in garlic. Will those children in custody be able to eat their lunch? I wonder, then, Will they even be provided one?

I don’t think the average human nervous system can keep up with the onslaught of ICE and Trump Administrative calamity, and I recognize the toll it is taking. Personally I am hoping that when school picks up again next week I will carve out a more sustainable routine - one that includes exercise and regular eating. Till then I will continue to pinball between the various community needs: Attend this City Council Meeting. Deliver these groceries. Pass out these flyers. Surveil that area. Accompany this person. I am still trying to find my role in the chaos. For now my son and I, like so many, don’t have the words to properly express what we are experiencing and I’m still left wondering, What might get through to an ICE agent? Possibly nothing. Possibly:

Remember your heart.

Today my son shared that, given the chance, he would say, “This isn’t making the world better, it’s making it worse. And you know that.”

Would they hear that? I’ve decided it’s ok that we don’t have all the answers and that it’s more important we just stay involved. Because the best way to survive this inundation of fear and intimidation, is to rise up.