Welcome to the latest episode of the American Administrative Horror Story, a production brought to you by the Department of Veterans Affairs—an organization that has historically struggled to provide basic healthcare to its namesake, yet has somehow found the administrative bandwidth to become a branch of the secret police. According to a report by The Guardian, our dear VA has been diligently gathering data on its “non-citizen” workforce, a collection of individuals who apparently have the audacity to care for wounded veterans while lacking the requisite sacred plastic card from the Department of Homeland Security. This data, as the VA so helpfully admitted, isn’t just for payroll; it’s being packaged for ‘immigration enforcement purposes.’

Naturally, this has sent Senator Adam Schiff into his favorite state of existence: performative alarm. Schiff, a man whose entire political identity is built on a foundation of writing sternly worded letters that achieve exactly nothing, has expressed his ‘alarm’ in a missive to the VA and the DHS. He calls this a ‘thinly veiled effort to instill fear.’ To Schiff, I say: spare us the indignation. The veil isn’t thin; it doesn’t exist. This is the state doing what the state does—inventorying its human capital so it knows exactly which levers to pull when the political winds shift toward mass deportation. Schiff’s alarm is the political equivalent of a smoke detector that only goes off after the house has burned down, been bulldozed, and turned into a luxury condo development.

Let’s look at the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the VA’s priorities. This is an agency that has, for decades, functioned as a bureaucratic black hole where medical files go to die. Veterans wait months for a mental health appointment while the paperwork for their disability claims circulates through the digestive tract of a government printer. Yet, when it comes to identifying which nurse or janitor might be vulnerable to a midnight knock from ICE, the VA suddenly operates with the precision of a Swiss watch. It’s a testament to the fact that the government is never truly incompetent; it is simply selective about where it applies its malice. They can’t find a cure for Agent Orange, but they can certainly find a way to narc on the person cleaning the bedpans.

The DHS, meanwhile, sits waiting like a bloated spider at the center of this web. The VA’s admission that this data could be shared for enforcement is the quiet part being yelled through a megaphone. It tells you everything you need to know about the modern American surveillance state. We have created a system where every interaction with the bureaucracy is a potential trap. You are not a doctor, a nurse, or a human being; you are a data point to be cross-referenced, categorized, and eventually, discarded. The irony of non-citizens working in a facility dedicated to those who 'defended our freedom' is apparently lost on the middle-managers who drafted this memo. The veterans served a country that is now using its administrative might to terrorize the people who keep its hospitals running. It’s a circle of irony so perfect it could be used as a Venn diagram for national decline.

On the Right, we have the usual gaggle of morons who will undoubtedly cheer this move, convinced that purging the VA of anyone without a birth certificate from Ohio will somehow make the wait times for a prosthetic limb shorter. They view the world through a lens of fear and xenophobia, unable to grasp that the same bureaucratic machinery they want to use against 'aliens' will inevitably be turned on them the moment they stop being useful to the donor class. They want a police state, provided it only polices the people they don’t like.

On the Left, we have the Schiffs of the world—the architects of the very system they now claim to despise. They funded these agencies. They expanded the DHS. They voted for the Patriot Act and every subsequent iteration of the surveillance apparatus. They built the cage, and now they want us to be impressed that they’re pointing out the bars are a bit too cold. Their 'alarm' is a fundraising tool, a way to signal to their base that they are the 'moral' choice, while they continue to sign the checks that keep the machinery of deportation and data-mining well-oiled.

The reality is that we are governed by a collection of ghouls and grifters who view the human population as a resource to be managed or a nuisance to be cleared. Whether it’s the VA using its database as a hunting ground or a Senator using the resulting outcry as a press release, no one involved actually cares about the people caught in the middle. We are trapped in a cycle of administrative cruelty and performative outrage, watching as the last vestiges of human dignity are shredded by the gears of a machine that never stops, never sleeps, and never forgets to check your status. God bless America, or whatever is left of it.