Katie Miller, the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has determined who is responsible for “stoking violence against our brave ICE Officers”: NBC’s beloved procedural crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
In a post on the social media platform X, Katie Miller shared a headline saying, “NBC’s ‘Law & Order: SVU’ Portrays ICE Agents as Villains Allowing Rape.”
“If you have any curiosity who is stoking the violence against our brave ICE Officers,” she wrote. “This is the premiere episode of @NBCLaw and Order this week. Why is NBC condoning this on their air?”
In the Season 27 premiere that aired last week, Capt. Olivia Benson, played by Mariska Hargitay, was seen investigating a sexual assault committed in an apartment building.
The case hinges on the testimony of the building’s undocumented maintenance worker, Jorge “George” Ruiz (Juan Francisco Villa), and is thrown into jeopardy when Ruiz is targeted in a federal immigration raid.
The episode aired a day after a suspect killed one detainee and critically injured two others at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas, Texas.
The Daily Beast has reached out to NBC for comment.
Even though no law enforcement officers were injured during the Dallas incident, FBI Director Kash Patel said the suspect, identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, was targeting agents and wrote “NO ICE” on a bullet casing.
Jahn’s brother said the shooter—who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound—wasn’t interested in politics and didn’t have strong feelings about ICE.
The Department of Homeland, however, has portrayed ICE officers as under attack, saying assaults against agents are up 1,000 percent.
The agency hasn’t provided evidence backing up the statistic, and grand juries have refused to indict several suspects accused of “assaulting” officers, including one who threw a Subway sandwich.
Both the original Law & Order and the spin-off SVU, which centers on sex-based crimes, feature stories “ripped from the headlines,” meaning they are often inspired at least in part by real crimes and news stories.
In the episode referenced by Miller—whose husband is largely responsible for shaping President Donald Trump’s immigration policy—Ruiz fails to show up for the trial, so Benson goes looking for him and discovers a massive ICE raid taking place at his building.
When Benson tries to parley with the commanding ICE officer, he shrugs her off and dismisses Ruiz as a convicted felon. His only crime, however, was a minor drug charge from 15 years earlier, according to an episode description from NBC.
Although the episode doesn’t seem to dramatize a specific news story, it fictionalizes elements of various real-life ICE encounters that have been documented since Trump took office in January.
Despite claiming to lock up the “worst of the worst,” the administration has targeted Latino neighborhoods and job sites, arresting thousands of people who have never been charged with a crime or who committed non-violent crimes years ago.
As of this month, immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in U.S. immigration detention, even though being undocumented in the U.S. is a civil infraction, not a criminal offense, The Guardian reported last week.
The SVU episode also highlights the tensions that Trump’s immigration raids have created between local law enforcement officers and federal immigration agents.
The Trump administration has targeted sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles and New York, which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused of “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
In sanctuary cities, local law enforcement officers don’t routinely collect information about people’s immigration status, though they do turn undocumented people over to federal immigration agents if a federal arrest warrant has been issued, or if the person has been convicted of a serious crime.
Supporters say the policies reduce crime by fostering trust between police and the community.
The SVU episode shows Benson managing to win Ruiz’s trust, only for ICE to ambush him at the police station.
Similarly, real-life immigration agents have been waiting outside immigration courtrooms and seizing people as soon as their hearings end, or detaining them when they appear for routine immigration check-ins.
Benson tries to arrest Ruiz to keep him out of ICE custody—just as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland dad who was mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran mega prison, asked to remain in jail last summer in order to avoid a second deportation.
Instead of releasing him, the Trump administration has doubled-down on its error by insisting that Abrego Garcia is a criminal.
He has been charged with human trafficking, and in a very SVU-sounding twist, officials are so eager to convict Abrego Garcia that they released a convicted human smuggler from prison in exchange for his testimony against the father of three.
Then, in yet another parallel to real life, the ICE officers on SVU go so far as to arrest Benson for obstructing their operation.
Similarly, immigration agents arrested several Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey last summer for trying to enter a detention facility and conduct congressional oversight.
Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted in June on suspicion of assaulting an ICE officer. Video shows her pushing back on an agent who is shoving her and other members of a crowd.
Ultimately, in SVU land Benson is quickly released, and Ruiz gets his happy ending in exchange for testifying.
McIver, meanwhile, is due in court next month for oral arguments on whether the judge in the case should dismiss the charges against her.
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