Adam Serwer

At least in some cases, they did not give me their actual names.

And they, you know, they go around a neighborhood looking for ICE vehicles.

When they find an ICE vehicle, they report it back to the dispatcher or they follow the ICE vehicle and they make noise to let everybody else in the neighborhood know that ICE exists.

is around.

Everybody knows that it's both ICE and the Border Patrol and maybe some other federal agents.

Everybody's masked.

It's not like they're telling you who they are.

Everybody just simply refers to ICE, which may be a source of frustration for ICE people who feel like the Border Patrol are the real yahoos here.

The fact is that everybody just sort of refers colloquially to federal agents as ICE, whatever agency they may be a part of.

Yeah.

So what I would say is that they go around and sometimes these lead to confrontations, right?

Sometimes the agents will get out of the car, they'll box somebody in, they'll threaten them.

You know, I was told of incidents where they sprayed pepper spray into the heat vents in order to get the pepper spray into the car, especially if someone doesn't want to roll down the window.

A couple of the people that I spoke to had actually been followed home or had their plates run by federal agents who came and said, you know, stop fucking following us.

You know, there are lots of viral videos of federal agents saying things like, you know, did you see what happened to unrepeatable language, which is, you know, a death threat.

And obviously, you know, they're willing to kill people, even people who are not posing a threat to them.

So, you know, the thing that I was struck by was the tremendous courage of the people who are following ICE around because they know that if they get killed, you know, the federal government will refuse to investigate.

They won't allow local authorities access to the scene.

And then, you know, the president and the vice president and their advisors will all say that they were a terrorist and murderers and trying to kill federal agents, right?

So they know that they might be killed and that whoever kills them will not be held accountable for their death and that they will be smeared by their own government.