LOS ANGELES – Speaking amid a growing wave of violent incursions into civilian businesses and gathering places, ICE agent Connor Johnson told reporters Friday that he just does this “for the love of the game.”
Johnson made the comments while he and 347 other agents prepared to storm a nearby playground.
“Success is about getting up every single day and trying to do it better than yesterday,” he said, stepping out from one of the dozens of armored vehicles surrounding the 500 square-foot recreation area. “Whether it’s beating a waitress, shooting at reporters or just kidnapping people off the street, it’s all about that hustle.”
The heavily armed agent, who wore a mask to avoid being associated with his own actions and those of his organization, said that regularly brutalizing his fellow Americans was simply a part of his “grindset.”
“They say that greatness is not for the chosen few. It’s for the few that choose it,” he said, lobbing a tear gas bomb into a nearby jungle gym. “That’s the kind of mindset I’m about, bro. Philosophical type shit.”
As a dozen rifle-wielding operators wearing gas masks moved in to secure the plastic structure, Johnson turned his attention to a mother and child playing on an adjacent swing set. Closing in with weapon drawn, he told reporters that being a faceless, jackbooted drone committing violence in the name of a fascist regime was “pretty dope, actually.”
“Steve Jobs once said that the only way to do great work is to love what you do,” Johnson said, tearing the screaming child from the arms of her sobbing mother. “I love this. It is literally my favorite thing to do. I genuinely enjoy doing this and I think it is good.”
Tossing the mother into the back of a windowless van and slamming the door, the masked agent told reporters that he was proud of what he’d done.
“Every morning, I look in the mirror and tell myself to go out there and show the world the kind of man I am,” he said as the abandoned child wailed nearby. “And this is exactly the kind of man I am.”