This video does not present enough information to ascertain the truth, and there are two possibilities: (1) The woman recording this video is lying, or (2) The woman recording this video is telling the truth. Both are interesting possibilities.

1. This woman is lying.

She and two other undercover ICE agents were casing this neighborhood, driving around for a noticeable amount of time—she says, “for over an hour”—in a truck with plates that are confirmed to be on a citizens’ ICE database. They were using phones with software created by Palantir to gather information on a neighborhood full of citizens who are organizing against ICE’s presence there. The neighbors ran their plates, which they obviously assumed were clean, and three undercover ICE agents got caught behind enemy lines.

They start filming for procedural and recordkeeping purposes, with the mind that, if done right, this could also serve as anti-anti-ICE propaganda. Note that one of the men says, “I’m showing my face. I’m not ICE,” but that the video, shot from their perspective with numerous significant cuts, never once shows one of their faces or identifies them.

The woman filming, an ICE agent, has zero intention of showing the neighborhood watch any identification—no driver’s license, no library card, not even some verbal acknowledgement of local geography or lore—that would prove she’s from around the neighborhood. Oh, the irony! So, she reverts to what victims of this regime say to her: “We’re American citizens.” Well, duh, lady, you’re ICE.

She plays dumb on every topic except the database.

She starts fishing for it:

“Confirmed ICE? Through who?”

“Yeah, this truck, and they’re saying we’re popping up in an ICE database. Wh-what’s the database?”

“I’m curious about— I’m curious, I guess, how you get into an ICE database?”

These aren’t the kinds of questions you ask, out of genuine curiosity, to people who are angrily yelling at you in the street. These are the kinds of questions you ask an in-group when you are the out-group and you want privileged information. Their undercover surveillance mission was foiled by the resistance being one step ahead of them in one specific area of information, so it became an attempt to film anti-anti-ICE propaganda and conduct some reconnaissance on the instrument of their failure. They filmed some basic community protection tactics and edited the video, keeping segments of the anti-ICE resistance that could be presented with bad optics while cutting out anything that makes them look suspicious or identifies them, then they posted it anonymously on the internet as an attempt to make anti-ICE protesters look like an unorganized rabble.

None of this is controversial. Undercover police have historically been used for espionage, propaganda, and to instigate the conditions for unlawful assembly.

2. This woman and her idiot friends are telling the truth, but not much of it.

They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and somehow through no fault of their own, they’re driving a truck with plates that multiple people stated were on a citizens’ ICE database.

Such databases can be poisoned with false information by counterintelligence, sure, that’s true. But in such a case of misidentification wouldn’t you want to quickly identify yourself to prove you’re not what the fault in the database says that you are?

They never say what their names are or where they are from. Sure, maybe it’s scary to be followed and confronted with a misidentification of ICE, but if you really were Madison McMinnestotaface and these are your two brothers from ‘round here, wouldn’t you want to quickly show identification that proves you’re not Karen K. Krabapple on assignment from Schitt’s Platte, Texas? Wouldn’t you want to mention your nephew’s hockey victory when Neal Broten Middle School beat the skates off of Coen Brothers Junior High? Wouldn’t you show your local library card? Instead they simply keep repeating, “I’m/We’re not ICE.”

The community made it clear that they didn’t care about her insistence that she isn’t ICE. Without identification and an explanation of why the plate came up confirmed as ICE—maybe it’s rented?—she and her buddies have one other option, and it was made crystal clear: Leave. It was made clear that the consequences of not identifying themselves were that they would be followed as long as they remained in public and in the neighborhood and it remains legal to follow them. The demand, the reason, and the procedure for enforcement were all repeatedly and clearly stated to her. They never stopped her car, broke it open, and dragged her out of it. They followed her until she stopped and exited her own vehicle and began the extravehicular confrontation herself.

Let’s check in on the other side. What happens when you are asked for ID by ICE and you refuse to show it, or merely can’t retrieve it fast enough? That’s right! Everybody gets a point. You disappear or you die.

Even if we assume that this woman and her two buddies aren’t ICE, and that they really are just unlucky idiots, there’s absolutely zero chance that they are unaware of the distinction between those two requests for identification.

She stopped filming and left at some point later. Then, before posting her video to the internet, she cut multiple significant portions out at the following moments:

• when she exited their truck to confront the SUV that was following them,
• when neighborhood watch confronts her from behind an SUV door, after she crossed to the other side of the vehicle,
• after crossing back to the original side of the vehicle,
• and immediately after a man with neighborhood watch said, “Prove it! Let me see your IDs and where you live.”

If you give her the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is that she’s an anonymous person telling an unwhole truth.

There’s propaganda fucking everywhere.

I have some thoughts on smartphones that automatically “enhance” images with A.I., and how they’ve been used on blurry, low-resolution screengrabs of the slaying of Alex Pretti in ways that call into question all of the People’s evidence and benefits the state. I may share those next. I may not.

Be vigilant. Stay vigilant.