Last night’s episode of NBC’s Law & Order opened with a raid on a church-based homeless shelter by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And it only got worse – and more leftwing – from there.
The episode, “Play with Fire (Part 1),” a crossover episode with Law & Order: SVU, began with an illegal named Ana (Marisela Zumbado) whispering to another woman, Maria (Dani Montalvo), about an apparent sexual assault. As the two women are talking, ICE suddenly rushes in.
Ana: At that warehouse, on 169th. But I–I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I don’t want to get in trouble.
Maria: What are you talking about? Why would you get in trouble?
ICE Agent: United States Immigration and Customs!
Illegals: Ice!
ICE Agent: Everybody get down on the floor!
Maria: Ana, run!
ICE Agents: Stay where you are. Get in the middle! Get in the middle! Freeze!
Priest: Calm down. Slow down. Guns down! Guns down! Slow down.
ICE Agents: Freeze! Go, go, go. Stay where you are! [Indistinct shouts] Federal agent! Stop running! Stop!
Maria: Ana, come on.
NYPD Officer: Stop! Police!
Maria: Go!
NYPD Officers: Stop! NYPD!
Ana: Oh, my God. ♪ ♪ [truck horn blaring]
Maria: Let’s go. [Brakes screeching] [Horn honks]
ICE Agent: I got two running westbound, 159th Street.
Later, Maria is found raped and murdered at a nearby warehouse. It turns out she was an undercover cop investigating a sex trafficking ring that lures illegal immigrants.
Maria’s case shares the same modus operandi and location as another rape and murder a few years earlier. Detectives investigate an illegal immigrant who fled to Mexico while under suspicion in the first case. He has snuck back over the border again. NYPD finds him with cocaine and heroin, but he has an alibi for both murders and is removed as a suspect.
Instead, the rapist-murderer turns out to be a bad cop, Maria’s lieutenant who used his power to gain control over women in the shelter. So, a police lieutenant is the villain rather than an illegal with a criminal history who re-entered the country.
The “bad cop” trope is tired and the opening scene’s portrayal of ICE is heavy-handed. Nonetheless, this Law & Order crossover deserves some credit for at least acknowledging the connection between open borders and sex trafficking. That alone is more reality than network television is usually willing to admit.
