This morning at about 9:45 am I encountered what seemed to be an ICE action in Huntington Beach, on Yorktown near Newland. I saw three black SUVs with heavily tinted windows and blinking lights (like a police cruiser) surround a white pickup truck with a cap on its bed. They were arranged cockeyed on the right side of the street, forcing traffic to swerve around them. I passed quickly, but my wife noticed that the men were wearing masks.
This is a purely residential neighborhood. There are no commercial stores or factories in sight. There’s a lot of street traffic, and perhaps an occasional bicycle. There is virtually no pedestrian traffic on that street.
I made a quick u-turn to go back and check it out, but all of the vehicles were already leaving the scene. Whatever happened went down very quickly.
The incident caused me to wonder what happened:
- Were the ICE agents targeting someone?
- Did the ICE agents merely spot a dark-skinned person driving the pickup, and accost them? If so, did they take them away? And if so, how did that vehicle leave, too? Did an ICE agent take the vehicle?
- Were these guys a bunch of phonies, impersonating ICE agents?
- The most likely explanation was that the driver of the white pickup had been stopped, interrogated, and allowed to leave. In other words, just another fraught confrontation with armed government goons with itchy trigger fingers. If so, are we supposed to consider that to be good encounter, because the person wasn’t arrested or killed?
The incident passed in seconds, but it had a visceral effect on me. We’ve all seen ICE on TV, but it is sickening to see even a glimpse of it in your own backyard (figuratively speaking - that’s not my neighborhood). God save us if we all become accustomed to such incidents…