Following Orders
Immigration
The plaza concrete threw heat back at Maya Chen’s face. She’d left her car running in the parking garage, AC on, when the text came through: They’re taking the Ortegas. Federal building. Now.
She’d grabbed the client intake file off her passenger seat and run.
Now she stood at the security checkpoint of the uptown Immigration Processing Facility, watching through the glass doors as three CBP officers processed a family in the lobby. Miguel Ortega held his daughter’s hand. The girl was maybe seven, wearing a backpack with cartoon characters on it. Miguel’s wife stood very still beside them, her arms wrapped around herself.
Maya held up her bar card to the guard. “I’m their attorney. You have to let me—”
“No access during intake processing.” The guard didn’t look at her card.
“That’s not—there’s no regulation that—” Maya’s throat tightened. Through the glass, she watched one of the officers gesture toward a hallway. Miguel didn’t move. His daughter’s grip on his hand had gone white-knuckled.
Behind Maya, the protesters were setting up, maybe twenty of them now. Signs, chants starting. Someone had brought a megaphone. She barely heard them.
One of the CBP officers came through the doors. His uniform still looked pressed despite the heat. His nametag said Moss. He stopped when he saw the crowd, then noticed Maya standing at the checkpoint.
“You need to step back from the entrance.”
Maya’s hands were shaking. She pressed them against her sides. “I’m counsel for the Ortega family. You’re detaining them without—”
“We’re exercising border enforcement authority.”
“On what grounds? We’re two hundred miles from the coast and a thousand miles from a border.”
Moss glanced back through the glass. Inside, another officer was speaking to Miguel, pointing at papers on a clipboard. “Lake Norman is a navigable waterway under federal jurisdiction.”
“Lake Norman is a reservoir.” Maya heard her voice rising. “It was created by Duke Energy in 1963. It connects to nothing. The Catawba River dies at Lake Wateree. There’s no hydrological pathway to any international boundary.”
“The legal determination has been made.”
“By who? Show me the statute. Show me the case law. Show me anything that says a landlocked recreational lake constitutes a border.”
Moss’s jaw tightened. Behind the glass, Miguel’s daughter had started crying. The sound was muted but Maya could see her shoulders shaking. Miguel crouched down, talking to her, but the officer pulled him back up.
“I don’t write policy,” Moss said.
“You’re enforcing it.”
“That’s my job.”
Maya stepped closer to him. “You know this is wrong. I can see it on your face. You know there’s no legal basis for—”
“What I know doesn’t matter.” His hand moved to his belt, then away. “The executive branch claims the authority. Courts will take years to sort it out. Meanwhile, people like me have orders and people like you file motions that go nowhere.”
“So you just...” Maya gestured helplessly at the building. “That little girl in there. You just take her because someone three levels above you invented a legal theory that makes no sense?”
Moss looked at her for a long moment. The sun caught the edge of his badge. “You think if I don’t do it, they won’t find someone else who will?”
“I think you’re choosing to participate.”
“I’m choosing to keep my job. My pension. My health insurance.” He glanced back through the glass. Miguel was signing something now, his hand moving slowly across the paper. “You think taking a stand changes anything? You think if I quit tomorrow, those people don’t still get detained? System’s bigger than me. Bigger than you.”
“The system is people,” Maya said quietly. “It’s you and the officer in there and every other person who decides that keeping their job is worth more than—”
“Than what? Playing hero? Ending up on the other side of that glass?” Moss’s voice had gone hard. “I got a mortgage. I got a kid in college. You want me to throw that away for what? So I can feel good about myself while someone else does the exact same thing I would’ve done?”
Inside, the officers were moving the Ortegas toward the hallway. The daughter was still crying. Miguel had picked her up now, carrying her. His wife followed with her arms still wrapped tight around herself.
Maya watched them disappear down the corridor. Her intake file felt heavy in her hands.
Moss turned to follow them back inside.
“You know it’s wrong,” Maya said.
He stopped with his hand on the door. Didn’t turn around. “Yeah.”
“And you’re doing it anyway.”
His shoulders rose and fell. “File your motions. Maybe you’ll win in a few years.”
He pulled the door open. The air conditioning from inside hit Maya’s face for a moment, then the door closed and he was gone. Through the glass, she watched him walk across the lobby, pull out his radio, speak into it. He moved with the easy efficiency of someone doing a familiar task.
The protesters had gotten louder behind her. Someone was shouting into the megaphone about constitutional rights. Maya stood at the checkpoint with her bar card still in one hand and the intake file in the other, watching Officer Moss disappear down the same hallway where he’d taken the Ortegas.
The sun hammered down on the plaza. Sweat traced lines down her spine. She could go back to her car, turn off the engine she’d left running, drive to the office and file the emergency motion she already knew would be denied.
Through the glass doors, the lobby was empty now. Just the guard at the desk, scrolling through his phone. The hallway where they’d taken the family was out of sight around a corner.
Maya looked down at her intake file. Miguel Ortega’s signature on the representation agreement. His daughter’s name written carefully in the dependent information section, each letter precise.
She turned toward her car. Behind her, the protesters kept chanting, their voices carrying across the plaza, echoing off the federal building’s concrete face before fading into the hot afternoon air.