Dwain Northey (Gen X)

At this point, the American immigration system resembles a government program in the same way a chainsaw resembles a butter knife: technically, yes, but you wouldn’t use one if you cared about the people involved. ICE, meanwhile, continues its touring production of “Cruelty on Ice: Now With Extra Tear Gas!” Masked agents storming neighborhoods like they’re auditioning for a dystopian action movie, tactical gas canisters flying like parade confetti, and—because irony is dead—toddlers coughing in the backseat of family cars.

And presiding over this circus, we have Gov. Kristi Noem, whose policy instincts appear to have been shaped by the question, “What would a cartoon villain do in this situation?” Her ideological spirit animal seems to be a vulture wearing pearls.

But just when you think the whole show couldn’t get more grotesque, ICE unveiled its latest magic trick:

appearing at immigration and naturalization ceremonies—you know, the event where people who have spent years following every rule, filing every document, paying every fee, attending every interview, and practically bending themselves into bureaucratic origami, are finally about to become U.S. citizens.

Imagine it: a room full of immigrants who have done everything by the book—more paperwork than most native-born Americans will ever complete in their entire lives—finally standing on the edge of citizenship. The finish line is literally one oath away.

Enter ICE, stage right.

Agents begin singling out individuals, asking, “Where are you from?”—as if the entire point of the ceremony wasn’t that it doesn’t matter anymore. These folks have gone through security checks, background checks, fingerprinting, more interviews, and more vetting than half the country’s elected officials. And yet here comes ICE treating them like they wandered into the building by accident, like they’re suspiciously well-behaved criminals disguised as future citizens.

And then the punchline: being told to leave.

Imagine the audacity—actually no, “audacity” is too polite. Imagine the galaxy-brained hypocrisy—of a federal agency that never shuts up about “going after people who aren’t following legal processes” turning around and harassing people whose entire existence for the last decade has been nothing BUT following legal processes.

The people at these ceremonies did every single thing ICE insists immigrants ought to do.

And ICE still shows up to say, “Not you. Out. Now.”

It’s like a fire department lecturing people about installing smoke detectors and then setting fire to their houses anyway—for consistency.

But ICE isn’t done. Oh no. This is the same organization that tears up families for sport, tear-gasses children, and masks its agents as if they’re ashamed to be recognized (imagine that!) while insisting they’re defending the nation from the existential threat of… people filling out paperwork too well?

If it weren’t so horrifying, it would be slapstick.

This isn’t “enforcement.”

This isn’t “sovereignty.”

This isn’t “law and order.”

This is just cruelty, dressed up in tactical gear and supported by leaders whose moral compasses have been replaced with spinning novelty magnets from a truck stop.

When a federal agency spends more time harassing people at their citizenship ceremonies than actually focusing on criminals, we’ve officially crossed the line from dysfunction into farce.

And yet we’re supposed to keep a straight face when they insist, “We only go after people who aren’t doing things legally”? Please. They’re literally crashing the ceremony that celebrates legal immigration.

If hypocrisy were a renewable energy source, ICE alone could power the entire Midwest.