The Weekly Screed (#700)

Diary of a wetback skip tracer
by David Benjamin

“ICE deported almost 393,000 people from the U.S. in 2010. At $12,500 per person the cost to remove them was almost $5 billion.”
                                                           — Associated Press

This is the city. Los Angeles. I work here. I’m a dick. Private. My name is Biff Borders. I do immigration enforcement for Uncle Sam.

It was Tuesday, November 25th. It was raining in America. I was tracking a fugitive wetback named Raoul Wong-Li McFadden, whose street monicker was “Pegleg.” Despite getting his leg shot to hell by a crazed drug gang who’d invaded his house, killed his parents, raped his sisters and ate his dog, Señor Fluffy, McFadden had hiked all the way to Texas from Tegucigalpa at the age of nine. He had a lot of moxie, but he was illegal and that was against the law.

My job: Find him, cuff him, send him back.

McFadden had been in the country 42 years. He’d sired six anchor babies. The oldest was in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. His wife was from El Salvador. She’d told a sob story about how her village was rounded up by a government death squad and roasted to death in a burning church. For that, the softhearted pansies at Immigration gave her political asylum and a green card.

My job: Break up the family.

I’d been on his trail 17 days when I found McFadden hiding in plain sight. In Chicago. Working days as a landscaper in Lake Forest. Nights at a burger joint. He asked if I wanted to super-size my fries and I yanked my gat. “Hands up, Pegleg.”

“You a cop?”

I told him, “What do you think, amigo?”

“If you are, where’s your badge, cabron?”

“I don’t need no stinking badge,” I snapped. “I’m a government contractor.”

I went on to explain that there are 11 million illegals and only a few thousand ICE agents. McFadden did the math. He wasn’t dumb. Knew the jig was up. Came quietly. I flew him to L.A., called the feds. The said they’d be by. Meanwhile, I locked him in the john. Slipped tortillas under the door. Used the neighbors’ toilet.

Weeks passed. I didn’t mind. I was billing Uncle Sam two hundred a day plus expenses.

My job: Put Pegleg on ice. Keep the meter running.

After a month of peeing nextdoor, I cuffed McFadden to the living-room radiator. Let him watch TV. He begged to call his wife. Pregnant. “In a pig’s eye,” I said. I knew they talk in code. Aliens. Can’t trust them. Can’t kill them.

My job: Head ‘em up. Move ‘em out.

McFadden asked why.

I told him it’s not my job to ask why. I’m a dick. The Republicans are in charge. They don’t like wetbacks. That’s how it is. What’s to ask?

I said, “Just the facts, man.”

Raoul said facts or not, this whole hunting expedition, for people like him, was a colossal waste. “Look, gringo,” he said, “I bet your great grandmother came to America in the 19th century, right?”

I said Great-Nana’s parents arrived in the 1870’s, from Europe. “So, what makes me illegal and your granny’s granny legit?” he asked. “All she had to do was hit Ellis Island before 1906. ‘Til then, America was an open door — to anyone. Thieves, murderers, Communists, alchemists, Irishmen, physicists, Jews! No laws, no quotas. She just walked off the boat and headed for the Lower East Side.”

“That’s different,” I said. “My great great granny was white. You’re not.”

“So! You’re a bigot.”

“No, I’m a dick.”

“Listen,” said Raoul. “Before you caught me, I didn’t bother a soul for 40 years. I was invisible. We all are. Eleven million ghosts. If a few blowhards in Congress weren’t hollering that we’re a problem, we wouldn’t be a problem. At all. We’d go on doing all the nastiest jobs in America, at minimum wage, or worse, without overtime, sometimes without getting paid. We spend all our earnings, contribute to the economy and pay taxes but we’re not eligible for social services and we’re afraid to go to the hospital. We’re the closest thing you have to slaves, and you have to admit it, Sarge. Slavery’s as American as apple pie.”

“I’m not a sarge. I’m a dick.”

“I can see that,” said Raoul. “Look, if you catch us all and ship us back, along with our kids, then who’ll flip your burgers, pull your onions and pick your peaches? Who’ll bus your tables, mop your floors, blow your leaves, nanny your brats, empty your bedpans, make up your room and put candy on your pillow? Where will you go to fill all those crappy jobs? Monaco? Switzerland? Canada?”

I know a rhetorical question when I hear one. So I kept my peace.

“Why not spare yourselves all this stupid effort? You’re wasting billions chasing hard-working, innocent people.” Raoul went on. “Why not just keep us? You don’t have to legalize us, or approve of us, or even see us. Just leave us alone — invisible, miserable and scorned. We’ll keep on doing the ugly jobs. We’ll keep cleaning up the messes you leave. All you have to do is let me go. Let all of us go.”

“That’s not my job.”

“I know,” he said. “You’re a dick.”

After two more months and a lot of conversations like this, the feds finally came and took McFadden He ended up back in Tegucigalpa — after only six months in solitary at a detention facility in Rectal Itch, Utah.

Me? I did my job: One down. Ten million, nine hundred ninety-nine to go.