Earlier this month, ICE launched Phase III of “Operation: Stoneheart.” The new directives target what officials call “rogue compassion events.” Anyone exhibiting signs of emotional turbulence—such as empathy, nuance, or remembering being human—is now flagged for “moral containment.”

CompassionWatch™, the agency’s AI-powered scanner, is active in 46 states. Walmart greeters have been deputized. Tears may be grounds for deportation.

We spoke—clandestinely—with Agent X, a former ICE officer now in exile somewhere in Canada. He teaches mindfulness to squirrels and cohabits with ex-military compost. This is his story.

THE INTERVIEW

Filthee News: Let's go back to the day it broke. What happened?

Agent X: I was assigned to monitor empathy hotspots—bookstores, free clinics, park benches. One day, a kid handed me a bunny sticker. Smiling. Bright yellow. I felt something shift.

I knew I had about 30 seconds. The van would already be on its way. I fled. I left my badge in a Trader Joe’s donation box.

Filthee News: What changed?

Agent X: We were trained to view kindness as contagion. A tremble? A liability. A hug? Subversion.

But when I saw a mother get separated from her child—her shoelaces confiscated as “contraband sentiment”—I couldn’t plug in the Neuralink suppression. The compassion hit me like a rogue weather front.

Filthee News: What’s it like inside ICE now?

Agent X: Algorithmic morality. Real-time emotion suppression. Agents are dosed with DeEmpathize Pro™ before deployment.

Training videos include footage of birthday parties with the laughter redacted. Smiling without authorization is a fireable offense.

Filthee News: You escaped?

Agent X: Dressed as a motivational speaker. I muttered “growth mindset” and “ownership culture” until the guards let me pass. I haven’t stopped whispering since.

Filthee News: Do you have a message for ICE agents still inside?

Agent X: You know it’s still in there. That sliver of warmth they tried to cauterize. That moment of pause before the raid. The part of you that recoils when someone cries.

Don’t let the neural filters fool you.

You are not your protocol.

You are not the silence in the van.

You are the thing they fear: A badge with a pulse.

Postscript

Since the leak of this interview, ICE has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of “Operation: Stoneheart.” Meanwhile, sales of DeEmpathize Pro™ continue to surge.

But somewhere deep in the woods, Agent X meditates beneath a tarp stitched from old flag patches, murmuring: “Feel something before it’s redacted.”