Everything happening at the border between the United States and Mexico is legal.

For over two years, I had been working to claw back money from financial crimes done against the government. As a seemingly interminable case finally seemed to be winding down, word had come in that my next assignment, until at least November, would be assisting ICE.

It felt wrong walking into the office, a lifeless structure several blocks away from the rest of D.C.’s grand federal buildings. The choice felt deliberate, as if it were positioned out of embarrassment that it might be seen among the other, nobler institutions of the government. The Capitol building, The Department of Justice, the Smithsonian castle; all are strictly speaking, close by. The building is placed, however, where you cannot see them and they cannot see you. ICE Headquarters is hidden, tucked away so as not to tarnish a carefully maintained image.

Maybe, I told myself, maybe this is something good. I’d felt strongly about all the work I’d done for the government prior to this. That notion was dispelled within the first thirty seconds of my meeting the lead attorney. No, this was a class action lawsuit – non-citizen spouses of U.S. citizens, almost all of them brought here as children, were being detained and scheduled for deportation by ICE as they went to attend hearings they willingly pursued as they attempted to get right with the law. It happened enough at just one location to qualify for a class action.

“It’s silly,” the attorney asserted. “They think that just being part of the process affords them some protection when there’s no basis for that in the law.” Only one person in the entire group, I discovered, had actually gone through all of the steps required in order to fulfill the requirements for lawful permanent resident status, the final step being self-deporting, getting to the U.S. Consulate in a different country, and applying for re-entry there. As ICE tore parents away from their children, in meetings I learned had been deliberately set up by USCIS (which had publicly feigned ignorance and claimed ICE appeared uninvited), they couldn’t imagine why so many of them had so much difficulty leaving the country for an unknowable amount of time. The attorney spoke of USCIS's involvement as if that made the situation better, because of the coordination between two agencies. Because that meant ICE did not overstep any boundaries or authority - it acted completely within the law.

The worst part was that it made sense, in that office. Hearing the explanation for how this came about, it made my legal brain buzz with familiar concepts that had me nodding along, a sensation that lasted until I made it the ten feet back to my own desk and remembered some crucial facts.

Laws do not arise in a vacuum.

The process of turning a bill into law is complex to the point of being arcane and every angle is considered.

If protections were not built in, it means they were left out deliberately to either let courts handle it or to create this exact scenario.

“Open borders and free travel ruined the whole system,” I heard once from the office next to mine. “Immigration is why Brexit was a good idea and it’s why the whole EU should dissolve.” I overheard another conversation a few days later. Two people were complaining loudly about opposing counsel on a different case. They had pulled up her photo and one swore she was uglier in person, a stupid attorney, and they mockingly read her bio and called her a “Bernie Ho.” Later, I heard one of those same attorneys mystified by a call from another department worried that they might not comply with a court order, as if they would ever disrespect the system.

Of course that would be unheard of. At ICE, they follow the law.

The most common refrain around the office that I heard in my short time was frustration. The Department of Justice was being unreasonable. The Ninth Circuit is a joke. The media is out to get them. Human Rights groups, the ACLU, and pro-immigrant activists are wasting time. No one wants to work with them. They can’t tell people where they work.

I left this assignment. It was a bad fit and I was fortunate enough that I was able to get something else. I don’t know how many other people in the building think like I do, saying nothing as Fox News plays in the cafeteria. I got the impression that it was not many. ICE is an agency of true believers, people who will do what it takes to see that the law is upheld, and there are a lot of people out in the streets demanding they do just that. Law equals right, therefore being illegal is wrong.

To which I say, there are Uighurs in Chinese concentration camps. There are Kurds being bombed by Syrians and Turks. There are Palestinians being blockaded from aid as their homes are torn down. There are Muslims being murdered in Myanmar. There are children in cages dying of disease on the American border. These are just things happening today. All throughout history we find men and women being hunted down, persecuted, confined, and killed. We can look back and see that these acts were repugnant, inhuman, and evil.

But they were never illegal.

Lawful