We all know the ICE situation has been horrible around the country. Whether we face undercover agents, officers barging into homes without warrants, and worse, things are not looking great. Beyond that, there are some people using the fear of ICE to their advantage, acting as fake agents. The most recent case occurred at Highland, Illinois, where a group of seemingly fake ICE agents approached citizens with the excuse of performing “wellness checks.” However, the one who recorded the situation quickly noticed it was just a bunch of people trying to coerce a woman and probably scam her.
The original post comes from X (formerly known as Twitter) user WuTangKids. In the short clip, the user recorded a group of men wearing what look like law enforcement uniforms, ranging from PD, FBI, ERO, and more. They were knocking on doors, allegedly performing wellness checks on citizens. Yet, these were all red flags, and people caught up quickly to the strange happening.
A Redditor by the name of CantStopPoppin shared the video on the r/EyesOnIce Subreddit and provided some context and indicators of why this was likely a group of false ICE agents, or rather, fake law enforcement officers. For starters, the disguised police elements never showed a badge or any form of ID. Two, they told the woman who opened the door she had “two warnings.” This is strange to hear during a supposedly wellness check. Three, all members were wearing a lot of tactical gear, which should happen during these “checks.”
So far, many assume these people only wanted to scare the woman and those in the neighborhood by posing as LEOs. If they were fake officers, which seems likely, it will make actual law enforcement officers look bad. Right now, trust levels towards ICE, police departments, and other authorities are at an all-time low. And this doesn’t do anything to remedy the matter.
Many Redditors were angry at the situation and shared their thoughts:
“Imagine wearing an American flag to hide your face while you act like a fascist. Pathetic.” – quirkygirl123 via Reddit.
“Well, now that ICE is wearing masks during most of their arrests, I bet we will see a lot more of this.” – jpotion88 via Reddit.
Since many people are trying to impersonate ICE and other officers, citizens should be conscientious. You don’t need to open the door to anyone and should only do so if there’s a warrant. If not, stay in your house and ignore these impersonators.
