\n<\/p>\n
The cars sat<\/span> abandoned at the side of the road. Their engines idling, with hazard lights flashing, according to a witness who captured video of the incident<\/a> on his phone. The occupants of the vehicles had been taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers late last month in what a local immigrant rights group calls \u201cfake traffic stops.\u201d During these encounters, ICE vehicles reportedly employ red and blue flashing lights to mimic those of local law enforcement agencies, duping people into pulling over.<\/p>\n When family members arrived on the scene in Eagle County, Colorado, their loved ones had already been disappeared by federal agents. But what they found inside the vehicles was disturbing: a customized ace of spades playing card<\/a> \u2014 popularly known as a \u201cdeath card\u201d \u2014 that read \u201cICE Denver Field Office.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are disgusted by ICE\u2019s actions in Eagle County,\u201d Alex S\u00e1nchez, president and CEO of that\u00a0immigrant rights group, Voces Unidas, told The Intercept. \u201cLeaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is an act of intimidation. This is not about public safety. It is about fear and control. It\u2019s rooted in a very long history of racial violence.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops regularly adorned Vietnamese corpses with \u201cdeath cards\u201d \u2014 either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for their kills. A 1966 entry<\/a> in the Congressional Record noted that due to supposed Vietnamese superstitions regarding the ace of spades, \u201cthe U.S. Playing Card Co. had been furnishing thousands of these cards free to U.S. servicemen in Vietnam who requested them.\u201d<\/p>\n Official U.S. military film footage<\/a>, for example, shows ace of spades \u201cdeath cards<\/a>\u201d being placed in the mouths of dead Vietnamese people in South Vietnam\u2019s Qu\u1ea3ng Ng\u00e3i province by members of the 25th Infantry Division. Similarly, Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade left their victims with a customized ace of spades sporting the unit\u2019s nickname \u201cGunfighters,\u201d a skull and crossbones, and the phrase \u201cdealers of death.\u201d Helicopter pilots also occasionally dropped\u00a0custom calling cards from their gunships. One particular card <\/a>read: \u201cCongratulations. You have been killed through courtesy of the 361st. Yours truly, Pink Panther.\u201d The other side proclaimed, \u201cThe Lord giveth and the 20mm [cannon] taketh away. Killing is our business and business is good.\u201d<\/p>\n The cards found in Eagle County harken back to this brutal heritage. The black and white 4\u00d76-inch cards look like an ace of spades with an \u201cA\u201d over a spade in the top left and bottom right corners. A larger ornate black and white spade dominates the center of the card. Above it reads \u201cICE Denver Field Office.\u201d\u00a0Below it is the address and phone number of the ICE detention facility in nearby Aurora.\u00a0<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez said his organization took possession<\/a> of identical cards found in two separate vehicles by two different families. \u201cThese were not from a doctored deck of cards. These were designed with this legacy in mind. They were printed on some sort of stock paper and cut in the dimensions of a card,\u201d he explained. Basic templates for ace of spaces playing cards are readily available as clip art for purchase online.<\/p>\n A DHS spokesperson told local NBC affiliate 9News<\/a> that ICE\u2019s Office of Professional Responsibility will \u201cconduct a thorough investigation and will take appropriate and swift action.\u201d\u00a0ICE\u2019s Denver Field Office did not respond to questions posed by The Intercept about the office\u2019s use of the cards, the meaning behind them, and its agents\u2019 tactics.<\/p>\n \u201cYou realize \u2014 of course \u2014 that in Spades, the ace of spades is the trump card,\u201d said a federal official of the Bridge-like card game, alluding to the possibility that the death card is also an homage to President Donald Trump. That official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak to the press continued: \u201cThese guys are not too subtle, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n Sen. John Hickenlooper,<\/span> D-Colo., recently took to the Senate floor to denounce the use of the malicious ICE calling cards. \u201cThey found \u2018death cards\u2019 [left in] the cars of their family members who were taken away by ICE agents,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cThese cards \u2026 have a history of being used by white supremacist groups to intimidate people of color. \u2018Death cards\u2019 is what they call them.\u201d<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez expressed worry that similar acts of intimidation are happening elsewhere but may not be reported, noting that while Voces Unidas became aware of the death cards in the course of their work, investigating such incidents is not a core focus of his organization, which provides legal assistance to immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people call us, they call us to get an attorney out to them at a detention center,\u201d S\u00e1nchez explained. \u201cIn the process, we sometimes hear about these details. But it isn\u2019t a priority. Our job is not to investigate cards. Our job is to provide legal aid.\u201d\u00a0He noted that the community served by Voces Unidas in the western slope of rural Colorado does not trust local law enforcement officers, elected officials, or mainstream human rights groups. \u201cThey\u2019re calling organizations that they trust. And unless those trusted organizations are doing civil rights reporting or are going in-depth in providing emergency assistance, it\u2019s very difficult to find out the details of such incidents,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo I would be surprised if we\u2019re the only community where this has happened. We just might not know it.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither ICE nor its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, returned a request for comment about the use of the death cards in Colorado or elsewhere in the U.S.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time that immigration agents have used similar imagery during the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing deportation campaign. This summer, for example, a Border Patrol agent taking part in immigration raids in Chicago wore the image of a skull with a spade<\/a> on its forehead affixed to his helmet below another unidentified but apparently unofficial patch. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Recently, The Intercept <\/a>published a guide<\/a> to official and unofficial patches <\/a>worn by immigration agents. These included a shoulder patch worn by personnel from the St. Paul, Minnesota Field Office, where Jonathan Ross<\/a> \u2014 the ICE agent who shot Renee Good<\/a> \u2014 works. The St. Paul office\u2019s Special Response Team\u00a0patch<\/a>\u00a0was spotted on the camouflage uniform of a masked ICE officer during a raid of a Minneapolis Mexican restaurant last year. The circular patch depicts a bearded Viking skull over an eight-prong wayfinder or magical stave \u2014 a Nordic image called a \u201cVegvisir.\u201d\u00a0The symbol has sometimes been co-opted by\u00a0far-right extremists<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another ICE officer in Minnesota was\u00a0spotted<\/a> wearing a patch reading \u201cDEPLORABLE,\u201d a term some devotees of then-candidate Donald Trump adopted in 2016 after Hillary Clinton\u00a0said half of his supporters<\/a>\u00a0belonged in a \u201cbasket of deplorables,\u201d since they were \u201cracist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, [and] Islamophobic.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE and DHS failed to respond to repeated requests for comment about these patches.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n