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> My uncle worked for ICE for about 15 years before he retired last year. Family dinners got... complicated.
> Here's the thing nobody really talks about: the job attracts two very different types of people. There are folks who genuinely believe they're protecting communities and following the law as written, and then there are people who were probably looking for any job where they could exercise authority over vulnerable populations. My uncle was the former, but he'd come home with stories about the latter that made his stomach turn.
> He told me once about a case where they picked up a guy who'd been in the country for 20 years, owned a small restaurant, employed like a dozen people, had kids in college. No criminal record beyond the immigration violation. The guy's daughter showed up at the detention center and my uncle said watching her beg to see her dad through the glass was one of the worst moments of his career. He processed the paperwork because that was his job, but he stopped sleeping well after that.
> The cognitive dissonance was real. He'd justify it by saying "I don't make the laws, I just enforce them," but you could see it eating at him. He'd talk about actual dangerous people they'd caught—gang members, people with violent records—and feel good about that work. Then in the next breath he'd mention a grandmother getting picked up at a routine check-in after 30 years here, and he'd just... go quiet.
> What really got to me was how the job changed him. He used to be this warm, joking guy who'd give anyone the shirt off his back. By year 12 or 13, he'd become harder. More suspicious. Started talking about people as "illegals" instead of using their names. My aunt said he'd have nightmares and wouldn't talk about them.
> He retired early. Didn't even make it to his full pension. Last Thanksgiving he'd had a few drinks and admitted he wasn't sure anymore if he'd done more harm than good. Said the hardest part wasn't the job itself—it was realizing that following orders doesn't absolve you of responsibility for the outcomes.
> I don't have a clean answer here. I love my uncle. I also think the system he was part of is fundamentally broken and causes immense suffering. Both things are true, and I've had to learn to hold that tension without resolving it neatly.
> My uncle worked for ICE for about 15 years before he retired last year. Family dinners got... complicated.
> Here's the thing nobody really talks about: the job attracts two very different types of people. There are folks who genuinely believe they're protecting communities and following the law as written, and then there are people who were probably looking for any job where they could exercise authority over vulnerable populations. My uncle was the former, but he'd come home with stories about the latter that made his stomach turn.
> He told me once about a case where they picked up a guy who'd been in the country for 20 years, owned a small restaurant, employed like a dozen people, had kids in college. No criminal record beyond the immigration violation. The guy's daughter showed up at the detention center and my uncle said watching her beg to see her dad through the glass was one of the worst moments of his career. He processed the paperwork because that was his job, but he stopped sleeping well after that.
> The cognitive dissonance was real. He'd justify it by saying "I don't make the laws, I just enforce them," but you could see it eating at him. He'd talk about actual dangerous people they'd caught—gang members, people with violent records—and feel good about that work. Then in the next breath he'd mention a grandmother getting picked up at a routine check-in after 30 years here, and he'd just... go quiet.
> What really got to me was how the job changed him. He used to be this warm, joking guy who'd give anyone the shirt off his back. By year 12 or 13, he'd become harder. More suspicious. Started talking about people as "illegals" instead of using their names. My aunt said he'd have nightmares and wouldn't talk about them.
> He retired early. Didn't even make it to his full pension. Last Thanksgiving he'd had a few drinks and admitted he wasn't sure anymore if he'd done more harm than good. Said the hardest part wasn't the job itself—it was realizing that following orders doesn't absolve you of responsibility for the outcomes.
> I don't have a clean answer here. I love my uncle. I also think the system he was part of is fundamentally broken and causes immense suffering. Both things are true, and I've had to learn to hold that tension without resolving it neatly.
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