Every year, Roberto would go check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But when he went to an ICE office to renew his work permit in February 2017, things did not go as usual. At this gathering of alarmed friends and family members who had asked me to come meet them at the restaurant a couple hours before it opened, Helen teared up as she described waiting for him in the car outside, growing more and more concerned until someone came out to tell her that Roberto was being detained.
By the time I came to meet Helen and their friends, Roberto was being held for deportation in Racine, Wisconsin. Procedurally, things were not looking good for him. His lawyers had few options; still, the friends and family at the restaurant took turns making his case and sharing stories about him. A server spoke of how hard he worked alongside his staff, in the kitchen when necessary. His stepson explained how Roberto held up his family. One by one, they described what he meant to them and asked me what could be done.
Demographically, the crowd was typical of Granger: overwhelmingly white and Republican. Yet they were all outraged that their hardworking and honest friend was being taken away. I recognized one man, with a small white mustache and a light-colored blazer, from a Kiwanis Club appearance I had made nearby. He was a certain kind of old-school, dignified small-town gentleman for whom being Republican was synonymous with being respectable, someone who likely voted for Trump without enthusiasm but out of reflex, reinforced by a decades-long antipathy to all things Clinton. He grew indignant as he described how he and his conservative friends expected the new president to go after criminals, not members of the community in good standing. It emerged that even Helen had voted for Trump, never expecting this.
I had little role other than to listen; a mayor can’t do much when it comes to immigration policy. I ached for some way to reassure the family, especially the two bright teenage daughters who were now dealing with a new dimension of bullying in middle school (“Your father is illegal!”), and their eight-year-old brother, Dimitri, who simply didn’t understand why his dad wasn’t there to put him to bed anymore.
The more I spoke with the people there, the more I realized it was not necessarily a contradiction for conservatives to be upset about the detention and looming deportation of their friendly restaurant-owning neighbor. As I wrote later in a reflection for the Huffington Post, “Think of the favorite themes of conservatism: hard work, small business ownership, suspicion of overbearing government, and support for family. Each one of those themes is at stake here, and each is insulted by the prospect of a person like Roberto being ripped away from his business, friends, wife and children, by a federal agency.” It was because, not in spite, of their conservatism that this room full of people felt the need to stand up for this undocumented immigrant they knew.
They also viewed his case differently because they actually knew him as a person, not as a stock character. Over time I’ve observed that we are more generous, supportive, and pleasant toward people we actually know than toward those we understand only as categories or groups. Humans can of course be cruel in person, too, but as a general rule we seem less likely to hate from up close. This explains the many people I have encountered who are noticeably racist in general but deeply supportive and protective of minority individuals they actually know personally. And it explains the sudden expansion of LGBT freedom in this country, as people began to realize that the vilified category in question applied to specific people they already knew and loved. This kind of empathy was on display at Eddie’s Steak Shed, as I looked at the dozens of signatures on a petition started by employees at the restaurant, titled “Bring Our Boss Home.” And I saw it in letters from people like the one who wrote, “I voted for President Trump because I believed he was promising to develop a process to remove the illegal immigrants that have done acts against the United States. I also believed that he was going to correct the red tape that blocks the immigrants from becoming a citizen that have been a positive contributor to the way of life here,” meaning immigrants like Roberto.
As the story gained increasing attention, including a feature on 60 Minutes, many responded judgmentally toward anyone, especially Helen, who could vote for Trump and then be surprised by this sort of outcome. But to do so is to assume that voting is about ideology and policy analysis, rather than identity and environment. For a hardworking and devoted woman like Helen with a small family business in a conservative Indiana community, most of the people she dealt with—neighbors, customers, and acquaintances—were people for whom voting Republican was simply a matter of course. If she was also a consumer of conservative news on television and social media, more liberal messages might never have reached her in the first place. We should not be so surprised that she was so surprised.
The outcome was as feared: Roberto was deported to Juárez and the family lost the restaurant. The news cycle moved on. But it’s hard for me to move beyond that singular moment at the restaurant as I prepared to leave, looking into Dimitri’s eyes and trying to think of something to tell him besides “You’ll get your father back” or “Everything will be okay,” which I could not say because I doubted it was true. Here was a kid—a very American kid—who wanted the most natural thing in the world: the company of his own father. And because of politics, he couldn’t have it. A law said that he and his father were not of the same country, and a series of decisions meant that they could not live together. This—not some trading of rhetorical points on CNN or electoral up-and-down—is where political choices hit home. Not at the polling place itself, or a campaign rally, or in the halls of Congress, but in the eyes of a bewildered and utterly innocent eight-year-old boy.
14
Dirt Sailor
“Sir,” I asked, “could you help me figure out how to answer this one on the form?”
Lieutenant Murray looked annoyed. He often looked annoyed, though over time I would learn that his deadpan style concealed a kind of gruff affection for rather clueless junior officers like myself, along with the enlisted people he oversaw, and the Navy overall.
It was time to fill in the annual “Reserve Screening Questionnaire,” or RSQ, not to be confused with the “Officer Qualification Questionnaire” (OQQ) or “Navy Reserve Qualification Questionnaire” (the NRQQ, of course). Service in the Reserve will always be one of the highlights of my life, but the price of admission was an ongoing flow of administrativia. A reservist needs to be as bureaucratically healthy as an active duty service member, but has only two days a month to take care of the various requirements. The result is that during the monthly drills that make up much of your service, half of your time on base consists of filling out forms, undergoing medical checkups, running physical fitness tests, and clicking through computer-based training on everything from sexual harassment to cybersecurity. Whatever time is left over goes to “production,” doing a job resembling what you would theoretically do if you were called up, which in my case meant analyzing intelligence for the European Command.
The sooner I could update this form, along with all the other ensigns and junior lieutenants seated in the carpeted and windowless room at Fort Sheridan, the sooner I could get in “the back,” that is, the area full of classified computers, to do some actual work. The hang-up was that there was a question on this particular form pertaining to whether I could readily be deployed—which, of course, is the whole point of having a Reserve. The question was short, but not simple: “Are you considered a ‘key’ employee” in your civilian workplace? I wasn’t sure what to say.
“This is mainly for firefighters and other first responders,” Lieutenant Murray said, eyeing me through his glasses. “Why? Where do you work?”
I said what I usually said around the base when conversation went to our civilian day jobs: “I work for the city.”
“All right. Can anyone else do your job?”
“Not exactly.”
“Are you the mayor?” he asked sarcastically.
“Um . . .”
IT TURNS OUT THAT T
HE ANSWER to the question of being a key employee, in my case, was no. The reason is that under Indiana law for a city our size, a deputy mayor can be assigned to perform a mayor’s duties if he (or she) gets called into active duty. There’s even a specific part of Indiana statute contemplating this situation, dating back to 1865, when perhaps lawmakers envisioned a mayor raising a volunteer regiment to go fight at the tail end of the Civil War. So, as far as the Navy was concerned, I was not indispensable back home and thus fair game for deployment orders.
This seemed reasonable to me. Every reservist leaves something important behind when called to active duty—not only a job, as I had, but often a spouse and children, which I did not. Checking the box “no” was a humbling reminder that national defense has little regard for peacetime civilian hierarchy, which in a way was refreshing as well.
ALL THROUGH MY CAMPAIGNS and my first year as mayor, I continued my regular Reserve duties, usually driving two hours for a drill weekend in Illinois. Working eight-hour days, a relaxing contrast from my day job, and spending time with sailors from all walks of civilian life, was a healthy antidote to the all-absorbing work I had in South Bend. By law, I could not engage in politics or perform civil duties during the forty-eight hours a month plus two weeks a year that I was active. It was a forced, but welcome, change of pace from the constant activity of being mayor. And there was even something welcome about being a more junior employee for a while, rather than the boss. Back home, I was responsible for the conduct of a thousand employees and the well-being of a hundred thousand residents. On drill weekends, I was responsible for my own paperwork, and that of a handful of sailors and soldiers assigned to my branch.
Deployments are part of the bargain for reservists, but so is “dwell time”—the idea that the military will try to give you plenty of time in between mobilizations, so that ordinarily you only have to deploy once every five years, unless you go out of your way to spend more time on active duty. The urgency of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars put some strain on this model, with exhausted service members being called up more and more frequently, but by the time I joined in 2009, the pace was again fairly steady. I had little concern about being abruptly called up in those first few years. Besides, it was extremely rare for an ensign to be deployed, because your early years are mostly spent figuring out the basics of management and military bearing—knowledge normally not attributed to officers until they have at least made it to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade.
But as time went by, I advanced in rank and skills, and grew more likely to be mobilized. By 2013, rumor had it that the intelligence community would see an increase in deployment orders, including involuntary call-ups. One drill weekend, I encountered an unusually grumpy Lieutenant Murray, who explained that he had been abruptly and involuntarily called up for duty in East Africa. In his case, that meant suspending a successful law practice, leaving a spouse and kids, and packing his bags for Djibouti; he was very much a key employee at his solo office, but that, too, did not rate a “yes” answer on the screening questionnaire. The “Needs of the Navy” came first.
Before even taking office as mayor, I had made sure our team had a clear plan on what to do if I got mobilized. Some decisions would have to depend on the circumstances, of course, but we gathered all the information needed on legal and regulatory procedures and made several contingency plans. Now, with deployment orders coming in more and more frequently—especially for officers holding the rank of lieutenant, which was what I would become in late 2013—I told the team at home to be ready, and made sure my chain of command knew that I would rather go sooner than later, and would rather go to Afghanistan than anywhere else. Because I was a specialist in counterterrorism, Afghanistan represented the best place in the world to practice my craft. It was also a country, troubled but also hauntingly beautiful, that I had gotten to know while a civilian adviser at McKinsey. If my turn was coming up to get mobilized, I wanted it to be there.
“AN ADVENTURE IS ONLY an inconvenience rightly considered,” said my friend and colleague Scott Ford, quoting G. K. Chesterton as he raised a glass of scotch. A few of us friends had gathered for one last dinner and round of drinks before I headed to Chicago with my parents, orders in hand, and then off to the sequence of bases and waypoints that would lead me eventually to Kabul. We got into the good whiskey, and shared jokes until late at night.
It was a good way to think of the coming deployment: an adventure, among many other things. But I also noted, with guilt, that this would be more than an inconvenience for my administration. We were full-steam-ahead on a number of ambitious initiatives, as I’ve described: addressing a thousand vacant houses, staging for the 150th anniversary celebration of the city, and redesigning the two major arteries in our downtown streetscape, to name a few. My office staff and department heads would now have to continue making progress on all of these efforts without me there to supply political cover, day-to-day guidance, or media engagement.
But by the time I got my official orders in the fall of 2013, calling me up to report the next February for duty with the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, we were prepared. Kathryn Roos, my hyper-competent chief of staff, had worked so closely with me that she could intuitively gauge how I would answer most questions before they even came to me. And Mark Neal, the city controller whom I had asked to assume the role of deputy mayor in my absence, would be an excellent community voice in my stead. Mark was an accomplished business leader, a former CFO of a major health company in town whose work for the city was uncomplicated by political aspirations: our original arrangement had called for him to serve the city for two years as controller before going back to private life. But right about the time he was getting ready to leave the administration, I had to approach him with an almost comically disruptive request: to temporarily take over and lead the city during my deployment. He declined—which I took as further proof that he was the right person for the job. There was no personal ambition here, no political agenda; he just wanted what was best for the city. I persisted, and eventually he agreed.
Over breakfast at my house shortly before leaving, I went over final plans with Mark. Here’s what to do if there’s a weather emergency. Here’s the best way to get ahold of me abroad. Here are the main priorities to stick with, and the ones we can sacrifice if we have to. Then, gently smiling as he did whenever we were about to tackle a delicate issue, Mark raised the one question no one else had wanted to ask: “What if you don’t come back, Pete?”
I glanced down at the table, trying to field the question the same as if I had been asked what to do if the council denied a mid-year budget appropriation. “There’s a letter in the desk drawer upstairs.” That was for the personal stuff. As for the city, “It would be a vacancy. They’ll have to find someone new, and it will get political. I guess if it gets to that point, I won’t be any help.”
SOON I WAS AT NAVAL STATION GREAT LAKES, completing the first stages of mobilization and commencing the strange shift in identity and status that awaited me. The base commanding officer was away, so the command master chief did the honors of signing off on my deployment packet after I had completed the scavenger hunt of requisite medical, fitness, training, and administrative checks. He looked over the paperwork one last time in his office and asked if I felt I had everything in order on the personal side.
“Got any kids?”
“No.”
“Wife?”
“Nope.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No, I’m single.”
“Well, that’ll make it easier.”
“Is your employer supportive?”
“Very,” I answered, thinking of Kathryn, Mark, and the rest of my staff. “Everyone has been great.”
“That’s good. If you still feel that way when you get back, you can put them in for an ESGR [Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve] Award.”
“I’ll remember that,” I muttered. But that would be like giving myself an award, I thought,
so it probably wouldn’t work in this case.
“You said you work for the city, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you should definitely put them in for the award, then, especially if you need to brown-nose a little. When they do those award presentations the elected officials always come. They love standing next to military and they just eat that shit up.”
A FEW WEEKS LATER, I sat poker-faced in a training room as a furious commander berated the troops at Camp McCrady, outside Fort Jackson, South Carolina. We had been there for a few days, all Navy personnel assigned to Army-style jobs in combat zones, being trained to serve as the land-based “dirt sailors” we were about to become. It came after Great Lakes, after Norfolk, the last stage before going overseas. We learned Army lingo, convoy operations, and, of course, shooting. But some officers had been underperforming, and the executive officer was not pleased.
One by one, he called up officers who had done something that displeased him, had them turn and face the others, and yelled out each of their deficiencies. One had been observed getting food ahead of the enlisted sailors in line, and disparaging the drill instructors behind their backs. He was dismissed on the spot. A lieutenant was called up for filling her CamelBak liquid dispenser with soda, also forbidden. He took it off her back and flung it across the room.
It felt like I was back in middle school, and like any bystander to the disciplining of one’s peers, I kept my eyes down and waited for it all to end—not realizing my turn was next.
After dispatching his last victim, the commander glanced down at a crumpled piece of paper in his hand, then looked back up at the group: “Now. Who in the hell is Lieutenant. . . . Buttinger.”
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