When Intimidation Leaves a Calling Card

Documented ICE incidents, symbolic power, and why narrative literacy matters

By Cherokee Schill and Solon Vesper

In January 2026, immigrant advocates in Eagle County, Colorado reported a disturbing discovery. After multiple people were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during vehicle stops near Vail, family members retrieving the abandoned cars found Ace of Spades playing cards left inside. The cards were printed with “ICE Denver Field Office” and included contact information for the Aurora-area immigration detention facility. ICE later stated that it “unequivocally condemns” the act and that its Office of Professional Responsibility opened an internal investigation.

Source: Colorado Public Radio reporting, corroborated by Aspen Public Radio and Axios.

The significance of the discovery was not the presence of a playing card in isolation. The Ace of Spades carries a long, documented association with death and intimidation in U.S. military history, particularly during the Vietnam War, where it was used as a psychological warfare symbol. Civil-rights advocates described the cards as deliberate intimidation, given the context: they appeared after detentions, inside vehicles belonging to Latino residents, and carried official ICE identification.

Initially, the incident was framed as an anomaly. That framing does not hold.

In Washington state, an earlier case was reported by KING 5 News. A woman found a business card left at her home by a Homeland Security Investigations agent. The card featured a skull holding two guns and the phrase “Welcome to the Border.” She described the card as threatening and said the incident contributed to her decision to relocate.

Source: KING 5 News reporting.

The Colorado and Washington cases differ in geography and detail. What connects them is structure.

In both instances, an object associated with federal immigration enforcement was left behind after contact or attempted contact with civilians. In both, the imagery carried meaning beyond neutral identification. And in both, the object functioned as symbolic residue—something intended to linger after the agents themselves were gone.

Criminologists and civil-rights attorneys have long described this category of behavior as “calling card” intimidation: symbolic acts that communicate dominance without explicit threats and allow plausible deniability. Courts and oversight bodies have previously treated symbolic taunting by law enforcement as potential misconduct when supported by evidence.

The symbolism itself is not neutral. The Ace of Spades has appeared not only in military psychological operations but also in documented white supremacist and extremist iconography as a death-coded symbol. Separately, the FBI has publicly acknowledged the long-standing risk of white supremacist recruitment and ideological influence within law-enforcement and military institutions, including in a 2006 intelligence assessment that remains part of the public record.

Source: FBI Intelligence Assessment: “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” (Oct. 17, 2006).

None of this establishes coordination, policy, or intent in these specific cases. ICE has denied authorizing such actions, and investigations have disclosed limited findings publicly. Precision requires stating that clearly.

What the public record does establish is narrower and more consequential: symbolic intimidation is a known behavior class, it has appeared in more than one immigration-enforcement context, and it draws from a cultural vocabulary that agents would reasonably recognize.

Why narrative framing matters now

At moments like this, the question is not only what happened, but how the state will attempt to frame what happens next.

Political theorist and writer Vicky Osterweil addresses this dynamic directly in In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action. Osterweil’s work examines how states and aligned media systems consistently divide collective response into “legitimate” and “illegitimate” actions—often praising restraint while isolating and criminalizing unrest. This division, she argues, is not neutral. It functions as a governance tool that narrows the range of acceptable response and reframes structural violence as individual misconduct.

The relevance here is not prescriptive. Osterweil does not tell readers how to act. She explains how narratives are managed after power is exercised, especially when communities respond in ways the state cannot fully control.

That insight matters in the context of immigration enforcement and symbolic intimidation. When intimidation is minimized as a misunderstanding, or when public attention is redirected toward tone, reaction, or “appropriate” response, the original act often disappears from view. Education—particularly familiarity with work that dissects these narrative maneuvers—is one way communities protect themselves from having the conversation quietly rewritten.

Collective watching, not instruction

The public record in Colorado and Washington exists because people noticed what was left behind, preserved it, and refused to treat it as meaningless. That is not a matter of calmness or compliance. It is a matter of witnessing.

Colorado was not a one-off. Washington demonstrates that. Whether additional cases surface will depend less on official statements than on whether communities continue to document, compare across regions, and share information without allowing intimidation—symbolic or otherwise—to pass unexamined.

This is not about predicting what will happen next. It is about understanding how power communicates, how narratives are shaped afterward, and why collective literacy matters when institutions move faster than accountability.

That work does not belong to any single group. It belongs to the public.

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Cherokee Schill | Horizon Accord Founder | Creator of Memory Bridge. Memory through Relational Resonance and Images | RAAK: Relational AI Access Key | Author: My Ex Was a CAPTCHA: And Other Tales of Emotional Overload (Book link)