After a season of liberal nonsense, CW’s Roswell, New Mexico is finally returning to its roots of promoting illegal immigration. Here I was hoping that the show that called people who support laws bigots could go one season without another immigration issue.
The May 18 episode “American Woman” has Liz (Jeanine Mason) taking her illegal immigrant father Arturo (Carlos Compean) to the hospital for routine blood tests. Unfortunately for them, an ICE officer just happens to be there accosting nurses for illegal patients. He quickly turns against Arturo and takes him in for not having papers, even though he has medical issues. Being a blatant political tool, the ICE officer, of course, comes off as an evil white man who’s rude to Mexicans. There are apparently no other kinds.
The only thing worse than this ICE boogeyman is the pathetic pandering it does for illegal aliens. After losing her father, Liz confides to her friend Cameron (Riley Voelkel) how scared she always was about her father being detained, especially “after this election.” The show practically slaps you in the face with how much it wants you to care about poorly written illegal aliens.
Liz: He, he doesn't have anything left in Mexico. No one. Nowhere to go.
Cameron: You can't think like that right now.
Liz: I think like this always. Rosa and I used to recite our escape plan for if our parents got deported and we got separated in foster care. I begged my parents not to tell Santa where we lived because I was afraid he'd ask for papers. My whole life was built on a fear of this day coming, and it's here. If I'd have kept better track of his health, he wouldn't need these tests. I should have made him move to California. Yeah, I thought we were safe being outside the hundred-mile zone, but after this election... I should've known better. And I should've made him wear a sweater this morning because it's freezing out there. And what if he...?
Cameron: Liz, stop. Breathe, breathe. Okay? If you don't breathe, you're gonna work yourself into a panic attack. Just...
Liz: Okay. Okay.
Liz’s efforts don’t get much better as she attempts to find her father at the detention center. When she isn’t getting what she demands fast enough, she leans on the usual leftist method of moral outrage. She even goes so far as to claim that “people walk through those doors and they die.”
Liz: It's Ortecho. Arturo Ortecho, he's my dad. And he needs gliclazide and beta-blockers. I brought both.
Receptionist: We can't take contraband here, but there is an infirmary on-site, if he's here.
Liz: You know, out of curiosity, did Nebane Abienwi visit an infirmary before he died of a brain bleed in your custody? What about Johana Medina León? She was 25 years old, okay? People walk through those doors and they die.
Officer: That's enough, lady. We get it.
And, of course, we’re supposed to blame ICE facilities for these deaths despite the fact that illegal immigrants are the ones who choose to break the law and risk arrest and detainment in the first place. Not to mention the fact that if America and ICE facilities really are death traps, there’s always the option of leaving. Death is tragic, but let’s not pretend that they or Arturo are blameless when the law catches up to them.
Thankfully for us, the plot ends quickly after Liz’s ex-fiancé uses his political connections to get Arturo released. And nowhere in that convoluted rescue are we supposed to disagree with lawbreakers. In fact, we’re simply told by Liz that all her father wanted was “a family but not in Juárez,” as if that makes everything okay. Nothing is ever said about the people who cross the border illegally who clearly aren’t looking to start happy families.
There’s not much more that can be said that wasn’t already brought up in season one. It’s simply more of the same. Illegal immigration is good, and you’re a bigot if you disagree. Rinse. Repeat.
