I Do Not Care If You Break The Law

You’re late for the PTA luncheon and your egg salad is funking up the G Wagon.

“Current estimates are that approximately 45% of undocumented immigrants did not enter illegally. …Simply being in this country without documentation is not a crime.” - The ACLU’s Brief on The Criminalizing Of Undocumented Immigrants

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INTERVIEWER: “What about people who just think it is plain wrong that, you know, god made men men and women women, and there shouldn’t be any gender fluidity?”

TRIXIE: “Well, God’s not real and I am so… do that with that.”

- Vice reporter Isobel Yeung interviewing drag queen Trixie Mattel, the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3

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I don’t care if you break the law. I don’t care if anyone breaks the law.

I care if people harm each other. I care if people are hurt. But I do not care about those things because of the law. That is childish and unexamined. The law is decided by people with all sorts of agendas beyond doing what’s best for those under it. The law is made up. We decide to whom it applies and when it applies. The law is a shield and a suggestion to the upper class, and it’s an excuse for them to come down on the lower class.

No human alive always does what’s legal. We’re tired or overwhelmed or stressed. The specifics confuse us. We find the law inconvenient. We’re unaware some laws even exist. We’re making split second decisions with all sorts of nuanced, complicated factors. You don’t have to follow the law exactly, but you can choose to report other people you see doing the same. It’s to protect your neighborhood and your kids and your job.

There was that time when you filled out a form at the DMV incorrectly because it was so loud in there, and then your license expired.

Maybe you drove in the carpool lane alone when you were late for work.

In the realm of “10 Crazy Laws Still On The Books” BuzzFeed posts, I’ve probably killed a moth that was flying under a streetlight because my chihuahua was going to eat it. (His palate is… bad.) I know I’ve definitely worn cowboy boots without owning at least two cows.

I’ve rolled past a stop sign. I’ve littered. Maybe you’ve played music too loud, or been tipsy in the line outside a bar, or stepped foot onto private property in search of a rogue frisbee.

Who doesn’t fudge their way through their days? “Be understanding,” you’d say, fighting tooth and nail for your high schooler who lost a sports scholarship for a little marijuana use at prom. “He’s just a kid.”

You would beg highway patrol to be let off the hook. Yes, your baby isn’t in the exact right car seat today but that’s because the new one arrives from Amazon tomorrow. Being a new mom has you so scatterbrained.

Even though the sign says “No Pets,” your dog should be allowed inside the restaurant. (Let’s just put him in a bag and hope no one notices. And if they do, it’s like, come on, he’s just a little dog. He’s really good and chill.) Still no? Ugh. Fine. You’ll find a therapist who’s willing to say he’s a service animal. (Everyone does it. Plus it’ll make flying with him so much easier.)

“No exceptions!,” you declare, except for when you scream about stockpiling guns if the Democratic Party makes any effort to control them.

That’s extreme. Maybe you’re not a gun guy.

You just park in a handicapped spot because you’re only doing a quick Starbucks run. You text and drive because it’s really important that you close on this property before the weekend. You jaywalk because your new running shoes gave you the worst blisters.

You hit poles in movie theater parking garages and drive off. You nick other cars and don’t leave a note. You’ve had to throw a punch to help a drinking buddy who was getting roughed up by some goons. Maybe you’ve been sold on the magic of ayahuasca by a “masculinity guru” and so you did some illegally in a tent in Sedona.

Maybe it’s a split-second decision under duress. You opened a package of cookies for your crying kid before you’d actually reached the grocery store register. That’s allowed, even if it’s frowned upon. Then, you exited without paying for the cookies because they were in your daughter’s hand, and in the hullabaloo of getting everyone settled into the car, you didn’t realize she still had them. You immediately return to the store to pay, but unfortunately that is still shoplifting.

It was an honest mistake.

You’re already late for a PTA luncheon and your egg salad is starting to funk up the G Wagon. What are you supposed to do here? In this scenario you decide to rush off without paying at all. It’s just one bag of cookies. You can’t go back in there without undoing all the car seats and taking your kids inside so you decide to deal with it later.

You could, of course, close the kids in the car and go pay, but the store could still detain you for shoplifting. A cop could come by and cite you for leaving your kids in the car. Your kids could get hurt or kidnapped. Then, you’d have to report to CPS at your house in Brentwood, and all your neighbors will gossip about why you’re being investigated for child abuse. So much for your friends in the PTA.

All the extenuating circumstances and innocuous flaws and all the giving you the benefit of the doubt must be nice.

But a Mexican mother making a living selling icees at an intersection, who has struggled through a language barrier and nonstop obstacles to try to get US citizenship, somehow deserves no understanding or grace AT ALL?

If she once walked out of a store with her kid holding a package of cookies, you’d say, “Well, sorry but she has a criminal record. She should have paid more attention. She should have behaved better as a guest on our land.” (Laughable.)

You behave better! We all scrounge to live the American dream. Your wife hired a tutor to write your kid’s college entrance essay because college is the gateway to a good job. Your husband has some genius way he and his accountant skirt taxes that is probably not totally legal, but that’s just called being smart. You need that money for the kitchen reno.

You know it’s bad, you tell your best friend over the dull chatter at a local gallery opening, but Maggie had a bright future ahead of her when she got that DUI. It was one little mistake, and it was only because her course load was so heavy that semester.

It seems like everyone should be very accommodating and understanding for your stressful life circumstances and realities. They should understand that you’re doing the best you can and that you’d do whatever it takes to help your family thrive. And in return, you don’t have to try and understand that other people also can’t live good lives by always doing everything by the book.

People being ripped from their families and chased through fields by a Gestapo of morons makes sense to you because they had to have done something “illegal” that either 1) you would never do or 2) you are entitled to do because you and your parents are natural born citizens.

And sure, you feel sorry for the kids, but it’s their parents’ fault. Crimes have punishments. Actions have consequences. They knew this was coming.

You can wash your hands of whatever happens to this family next.

Well, I might ask you, what about due process? Surely, you remember due process. It’s what you demanded be in place if your son was ever accused of sexual assault.

“Honey,” you call upstairs to your wife. She’s getting ready for bed and you’re at the dining room table. She hums to say she heard you. “I was thinking before Aiden starts school in the fall, let’s hire Travis to get that charge expunged.”

“Isn’t Travis kind of crooked?” she replies, meeting you at the top of the stairs. You peck her on the lips on your way to the shower.

“Yeah, he definitely is,” you laugh as you flip on the water, “but that’s what makes him so worth his rate.”

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I don’t care if someone is out past a curfew when the National Guard has invaded our city. I don’t care if they resist arrest. These bounty hunters won’t show their badges or give their names. They cover their faces. They don’t have warrants. I don’t care if a woman scuffles with an ICE officer when he is trying to pull her son into an unmarked van. They could be taking him to a detention center to be tortured or they’re deporting him to a country he’s never been to. That’s legally kidnapping. She could never see her child again. What would you do if that happened to you? Can you put yourself in that mother’s shoes for one goddamn minute? You’d break any law to keep them safe.

“But undocumented immigrants came across the border illegally!” I don’t care.

“But they overstayed their visas!” I don’t care.

“But they have to go through the proper channels!” Most are. Also, I don’t care.

“They don’t pay taxes!” Yes, they do. So much so that the IRS is being pushed to share tax returns so ICE can track immigrants using ITINs. These undocumented people followed the law by paying their fair share and this is how we repay them. I also do not care if they pay taxes.

“But it’s immigration fraud.” That’s made up. That’s a made up thing. What even is that? I don’t care.

“But they disobeyed our borders.” I don’t care. Division of land is not real. Borders are fake. They change all the time through conquest and political bargaining. Nationalism isn’t real. Humanity doesn’t stop once you cross a line on a map.

“But immigrants are going to eat up the resources of the people who were born here.” I don’t care. They deserve safety. We should have a more equitable division of those resources. The only immigrant hoarding US resources is Elon Musk.

“But they might be criminals.” So are you. So am I. So is the President.

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Mexicans are the biggest scapegoats used to rally support for increasing mass deportations, even though data has repeatedly shown that Chinese and Indian people are in the top six nationalities in the US without documentation.

But “Indian and Chinese citizens are not found among the most common nationalities deported from the United States. In 2022, only 733 Indians and 264 Chinese were deported from the US” compared to Mexicans, who remain at the top of the deportation statistics.

For Trump’s administration, this is about Latinos, and he can keep moving the goalposts for citizenship (removing birthright, threatening to deport Rosie O’Donnell) as many times as he wants. This increases confusion and inconvenience, especially if English is not someone’s first language. What’s legal? What isn’t? If we can’t keep track, is there any grace?

Sorry, I’ll put it in a way you might understand. It’s like how at your daughter’s private school they tweak the uniforms every year so as to sell more uniforms. Her skirt is now technically not up to dress code, but buying all new clothing every year is just too much of a hassle. Sometimes you miss the memo, or you forget. Hopefully no one gives her any grief and if they do, you’ll just go talk to the principal. You two went to college together.

“They’re breaking the windows.” “They’re writing graffiti on the federal building!” “They’re looting!” “Won’t someone think of the buildings and the items?” “They’re blocking the streets!”

Okay. Officers are illegally denying due process, as you cheer them on. They’re tear-gassing priests and rabbis and trampling unarmed civilians with horses.

“What about the small businesses being hurt, huh?”

Sure. Do you ever hang out in that area? Do you buy things at those stores or eat at those restaurants or from those food trucks? Are you actually upset about the spray paint on the downtown courthouse or do you skirt jury duty every time so you’ve never actually been inside?

There is an ever-increasing rogue army under an illegitimate and evil President. This is also “illegal,” if you want to go there. (Since being immoral isn’t the priority for you that it is for me.) None of that actually matters to Trump and the ICE agents and the bounty hunters and the cops and the National Guard. They only care about the concept of “illegal” when it’s not facing them.

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For my podcast Bad With Money, I spoke about eliminating the tax code with Scott Hodge, president emeritus of The Tax Foundation, a generally right-leaning organization.

As it’s been explained to me, a tax deduction reduces what you have to report as income by taking into account the “why” of what you spent, while a tax credit takes what you’ve paid and gives you the money back for making certain choices. A deduction is claiming your phone as a work expense. A credit is when you pay less taxes on an electric vehicle.

Hodge hates that. His idea is to create a flat tax, and get rid of singular tax credits like the one I mentioned above or the Child Tax Credit or the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (which incentivizes diverse hiring). Criminals, he claimed, are using these exemptions and deductions for reasons other than their stated intention.

You don’t have to show proof to get these credits. You don’t have to sign up or bring paperwork or wait in line. You just claim them. He averages 20 billion dollars annually is paid out to “people who don’t deserve it.”

“It really induces and encourages a lot of criminal enterprises to get into the business of trying to claim these things and take advantage of it,” Hodge said.

I replied that we have very different ideas of what makes a criminal.

“You’re looking at the wrong people. You say that's 20 billion dollars paid out to people who might not have ‘deserved it.’ And I think, ‘Well, good’.”

“But it’s welfare fraud.” I don’t care.

“But they have to prove they really need food stamps or disability insurance or healthcare or subsidized housing.” I don’t care about that. And no, they don’t. We made up any hoops they have to jump through. We can do away with them.

“Does she really need those food stamps?” I don’t care.

I think everyone should have food stamps. I think everyone should have food. I’ve been on food stamps myself. If you're in a situation where you're submitting the forms and documents, downloading the app and making an account, and having the hearings about reinstating them when you need to? Fine. Take the food stamps.

You don’t have to prove shit and you shouldn’t ever have to. Wealthy people are not lining up to enter the food bank, okay? They’re not falsely claiming EBT. Anyone who is probably needs it in some way. They’re trying to survive.

I think everyone should have free healthcare. I think school lunches and pre-K should be free. I think tampons should be free. I think there shouldn’t be spikes on places people could sit. I think housing should be free. I think water should be free. I think we should be giving money away monthly through universal basic income.

“Some people would take advantage!” I don’t care about non-wealthy people committing fraud based on invented laws. Does it bother you this much when billionaires do it?

Our government paid for the National Guard’s deployment to Los Angeles and for weapons sent to Israel. We absolutely have the money. If we don’t, then good American citizens like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and Taylor Swift do. Why don’t we demand of them perfection and transparency and “contributing to society” the way we do of brown immigrants or low-income people?

“These foreigners are not working enough hours to earn their place. They have to prove they’re useful to the United States to be here.” I do not care. And no, they don’t. Their contribution is being alive. Their place is here on planet Earth.

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In January, the Department of Justice’s Public Affairs page proudly proclaimed the arrests of seven people charged with using the Employee Retention Credit and others to defraud the government of 600 million dollars during coronavirus. The convictions were swift and harsh.

But babe: Six-hundred million dollars is peanuts compared to what the wealthy walked away from Covid with. (I encourage you to read the piece linked here.)

“ProPublica, using its trove of IRS records, identified at least 18 billionaires who received stimulus payments, which were funded by U.S. taxpayers, in the spring of 2020,” Time reported. “Hundreds of other ultra wealthy taxpayers also got checks.”

Huge companies like Boeing showed expected temporary losses that they could absolutely recover from, but were prioritized with “payment protection” over people with true small businesses. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, a company with a 230 million dollar market cap (one way to judge size and success) was bullied into returning the 20 million dollars they took in loans. (They wouldn’t normally have qualified due to their worth, but there was a loophole for restaurants.) They returned the money after the Internet bullied them. No arrests were made. The DOJ chose who to crack down on very, very deliberately.

The government did not provide enough resources for its people to survive during a pandemic. The big fish are off limits, so now the little fish must fry.

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“But Obama deported more people.” Okay?? This isn’t a sporting match? I don’t care about Obama? He hasn’t been president in like, a decade? Obama is not representative of the other side of this fight because he does not represent me, like, at all? I also don’t care about what Biden did. I didn’t like that either and now I’ve seen more stuff I don’t like and I’m fighting against it. If a Democratic President was behaving this way, I’d be writing the same goddamn essay. Just because we didn’t rise up before, means we can never learn about something bad and oppose it? I don’t care about what Senator said what that pissed off some other Senator. This is not about Trump “winning” because none of those former Presidents or Congresspeople of either party matter to me. The Democrats are not “my team.” I do not care to debate who was a worse President or what happened in the past that I may have ignored or not known about. We know about it now. We’re paying attention. That doesn’t make deporting and imprisoning people not bad??

It’s a symptom of a sick society that we align ourselves with the letter of the law over the safety and right to thrive of our fellow human beings. How can you look at the Everglades Detention Center, even if you are pro-deportation, and celebrate the decision to imprison human beings in a swamp?

These officers don’t care that undocumented immigrants broke the law and neither do you, really. When the deported person doesn’t have a criminal record, the excuse becomes that just by being “illegal” they’ve already committed a crime. When you say, “Well, the Constitution says…” or “but illegal immigration is a crime” or any other legal or political science argument that puts any of that shit over real people, I want to scream.

I don’t care!!!!

The laws are what we decide they are. The type of society we have is one we can build, even from scratch with brand new unconventional ideas. None of this is just “how it is.” Doing this to our fellow humans is rotted and evil, and the law doesn’t absolve us of that reality. Congress rushed to pass the Patriot Act in 2001. ICE was created in 2003. DOGE was formed this year. We’re not obligated to stick to any of it. Burn it down.

Our laws are just theater, but the puppets they play with are our real lives.

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