Constance Fox wiped her profusely sweating face with her sleeve, lowered the window of her Range Rover and asked Deputy Martinez, “Do you know who I am?”

         “When you show me your license, I will” Martinez said. He looked at her license and then told her to step outside. When she stepped outside, he asked her to take a blood alcohol test but she refused.

         “My father is John Hendrikson, the senator and he will have your badge for this,” Constance told the Deputy.  He asked her to turn around, handcuffed her and took her to the Holy Cross Hospital.  Receiving a warrant on his phone, he showed it to Dr. Grundy who took a blood sample from Constance. When the BAC test revealed that Fox had more than three times the limit, Martinez mirandized Fox and arrested her. The captain hearing of who was being arrested, called the senator, and soon Fox was released  on bail on her own recognizance. 

         Constance invoked her right to a speedy trial. Dressed in an Armani pant suit, her cornflower hair braided like a Viking princess, she looked like a sunflower in a barren field. Spectators and the press thronged the drab musty courtroom. The prosecutor, Alice Sinclair, told the jury that Fox, indicted for two counts of DUI causing great bodily injury of two immigrant children who had been struck by Fox when driving her vehicle three times over the speed limit on a lane used by schoolchildren. The facts were not disputed. However, Vincent Vu, the defence attorney and leader of the “No Immigrants, No Crime” chapter of the county argued that the severely injured children although born in America, were born to an illegal immigrant, and as there was no birthright citizenship, should be considered illegals themselves.

         They had no business being in America and therefore had no one but themselves to blame for their injuries sustained. Sinclair objected to this argument, but Judge Clements, recently nominated by the senator for a federal judgeship, overruled the objection.

         The jury was out for several hours. Constance looked away and in the gallery of spectators she made eye contact with the sorrowful face of a Hispanic woman. Beside her sat two pre-teen children. Heavily bandaged they were looking at her. With a start, she realized that she was looking at the mother and daughters she had injured with her reckless driving. At the opposite end,  Sybil,  her mother, an older version of Constance, dressed in a Missoni pencil skirt fingered her strand of black pearls around her throat, smiled in encouragement at Constance. Constance looked back at the children she had injured to be rewarded by the most beautiful smile of the younger girl. Through tears of remorse forming in her eyes, she smiled back at the girls. Their mother, a portrait of sadness, looked at her with expressionless eyes and stroked the arm of her nutmeg colored elder child.

         Judge Clements declared a mistrial after the jury foreman told him that they were hopelessly deadlocked. He denied Vu’s request that the case be dismissed with prejudice. Instead, he ordered Constance released.

         The senator escorted her outside and her mother who followed exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!”

         A scream of terror made Constance pull out of her father’s embrace. She looked back to see the mother of the girls held by men in balaclavas. The two young girls were clutching their weeping mother.  One man pulled at a bandage from an injured girl and when the child’s mother lunged to protect the girl was brutally slapped by one of the men. Blood started to pour from one side of the mother’s mouth.

         A furious Constance rushed at the men. “Get away, you Gestapo bastards,” she shouted at the four masked men from Ice. The agent who was holding on to the mother let her go.

         Constance pulled the mother away from the agents. The two girls, now confused, did not let go of their mother and followed.

         “Mother, help me,” Constance said.

         Her mother said, “Anything for you darling.” She screamed when one of the ICE agents pulled her by her pearl necklace and slapped her.

         “Save us from these goons,” Constance pleaded.

         The senator looked at this daughter, wife, and the immigrant mother and the two girls. He could not but fail to notice the onlookers with their phones pointed his way.

         “We are a civilized country, a humane people. We are not in Nazi Germany,” he said in his booming voice. Making sure that he was well positioned for the phone cameras, he told the masked men from ICE, “Get out, now, and I mean now! Otherwise there won’t be any Big Beautiful Bill, and you explain to your boss.”

         The ICE agents looked to the man who had grabbed the mother. Onlookers jeered. Some gave the Nazi salute. “Heil Mr. President.” One old lady cried. “I’m a Holocaust survivor, we don’t need to survive another.” The onlookers cheered. Some spat at the men.  One of those from ICE threw a punch at an onlooker but his leader told him to knock it off.

         Constance held up her hand. “I am ashamed and I am so proud. Ashamed that I almost killed innocents like the drunk on Folly Beach. But I am also proud. You have made me proud, proud to be an American.”

         Jeers and catcalls greeted her speech. Vincent Vu tried to leave as unobtrusively as possible but an onlooker spotted him an said, “Look the Vietnamese Stephen Miller, son of boat people!” Laughter and jeers followed.

         Also proud was the senator, proud of his daughter. He beamed in delight and hugged Constance as the crowd  burst into thunderous applaus