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ICE Proves Literacy is Optional in the Pursuit of National Security

Buck Valor
Written by
Buck ValorPersiflating Non-Journalist
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
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A satirical, high-contrast digital painting of a confused man holding a large, glowing U.S. passport while being surrounded by faceless ICE agents in heavy tactical gear. The agents are holding a 'Wanted' poster that shows a generic silhouette with a question mark. The background is a drab, bureaucratic hallway filled with stacks of overflowing paperwork and a 'Mission Accomplished' banner hanging crookedly.
(Original Image Source: nytimes.com)

There is a particular brand of American exceptionalism that manifests not in our space programs or our crumbling infrastructure, but in the sheer, unadulterated confidence of our federal agencies to be catastrophically wrong. Enter Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an organization that approaches its mission with the same intellectual rigor a golden retriever applies to a sliding glass door. Their latest masterstroke involves the detention of ChongLy Scott Thao, a man whose primary crime appears to have been existing within the tactical periphery of a group of bored men in windbreakers. Thao is a Hmong immigrant, which in the eyes of the American right, makes him a permanent guest, and in the eyes of the American left, makes him a political prop. To the federal government, however, he was simply an administrative error waiting to happen.

The facts of the case are as delicious as they are depressing. Thao is a U.S. citizen. Let that sink in for a moment—not because it makes his detention more tragic, but because it highlights the utter uselessness of the very 'papers' we are told will save us from the leviathan. Federal officials were reportedly in the midst of a sweep targeting sex offenders. One might assume that a federal agency tasked with hunting down predators would have, at the very least, a rudimentary grasp of who they were actually looking for. Perhaps a photograph? A name? A basic understanding of how to read a passport? No, such requirements are far too taxing for the bureaucratic meat-puppets who populate our 'homeland security' apparatus. Instead, they opted for the 'grab first, ask questions eventually' approach, leading to Thao being detained for an hour before some genius realized that being a citizen is generally a disqualifier for being deported by the very country you belong to.

The comedy of the situation is buried in the official excuse. They were looking for sex offenders. Imagine the internal logic at play: 'We are looking for a specific criminal. Here is a man. Is he the criminal? Who knows. Let’s throw him in the van and let the paperwork gods sort it out.' This is the inevitable conclusion of a society that prioritizes the appearance of security over the actual practice of it. The Right will undoubtedly hand-wave this away as a 'minor clerical hiccup' necessary to protect our borders from the shadowy 'others' they see in their fever dreams. They worship the boot until it’s on their own neck, at which point they rediscover the concept of civil liberties with the fervor of a deathbed conversion. They want a police state that only polices the people they don’t like, failing to realize that a state empowered to ignore the rights of one is empowered to ignore the rights of all.

Meanwhile, the Left will perform their scheduled outrage, tweeting furiously from their artisanal coffee shops about 'systemic failures' while carefully avoiding the reality that they’ve done nothing to dismantle the machinery of these agencies when they held the levers of power. To the professional activist class, Thao is a gift—a fresh data point to be plugged into a fundraising email or a performative floor speech that will change exactly nothing. They love the victim, but they’ve become quite comfortable with the system that creates them; after all, without the villain, the hero has no script. They will talk about 'reform' as if you can reform a woodchipper into a toaster. You cannot fix an agency whose foundational premise is that everyone is a suspect until proven otherwise, especially when the people doing the suspecting can’t tell the difference between a naturalization certificate and a grocery list.

We are living in a Kafkaesque slapstick routine. The 'Land of the Free' has become a giant DMV with guns, where the person behind the counter has the power to disappear you because they didn’t have their morning cruller. Thao was released after an hour, a fact the government likely views as a testament to their efficiency. 'See?' they will say, 'The system works! We only kidnapped a citizen for sixty minutes!' It is the logic of a kidnapper who expects a thank-you note for not killing the hostage. We are expected to be grateful for the brevity of our own mistreatment. This incident isn't an anomaly; it is the natural byproduct of a culture that has traded its dignity for the illusion of safety, managed by a class of bureaucrats who are as incompetent as they are arrogant.

Ultimately, the detention of ChongLy Scott Thao serves as a grim reminder that in the eyes of the State, we are all just uncollated data. Your citizenship is not a shield; it’s a temporary reprieve. Whether you are a Hmong immigrant who played by all the rules or a descendant of the Mayflower, you are only one tired federal agent away from a windowless room. The machinery doesn't care about your story, your rights, or your reality. It only cares about the quota. We have built a world where the people in charge of 'protecting' us can't be bothered to perform a Google search before initiating an arrest. If this is the apex of our civilization, perhaps we deserve the inevitable collapse. At least in the ruins, there won't be any ICE agents around to ask for our papers while they ignore the actual criminals standing right behind them.

This story is an interpreted work of social commentary based on real events. Source: NY Times

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