United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is the federal immigration agency Natasha Kingsley turns to in a last attempt to remain in the United States, though the agency cannot intervene in the legal process that has ordered her family to leave that night. Its downtown Manhattan building is both a place of institutional refusal and an unlikely point of connection: Natasha’s repeated encounters there with security guard Irene lead, years later, to a message of thanks that helps keep Irene alive.

The Agency and Natasha’s Last Attempt

On the day her family is scheduled to leave the country at ten p.m., Natasha goes to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services hoping that someone there might help her find a way to stay. Her family is undocumented, and she understands that this is her last chance to appeal to a person—or even to fate. Her desperation does not mean she believes in fate; it means that the options available to her have narrowed almost to nothing.

The visit begins with a familiar security procedure. Natasha puts her phone, headphones, and backpack in a gray bin and walks through a metal detector. The guard, Irene, stops the bin before it reaches the conveyor belt. Their daily routine includes Irene turning Natasha’s phone over and lingering over its Nevermind album-cover case, an image Natasha dislikes seeing touched. The small friction between them takes place inside an institution that, to Natasha, represents the possibility of help but offers no personal intimacy or assurance.

At the reception desk, Natasha is told that she must call the main United States Citizenship and Immigration Services line and make a new appointment. She objects that she has no time: her family is due to leave that night. She explains that Irene’s unusual behavior is the reason she came, but the receptionist dismisses her concern. The agency’s ordinary appointment process cannot accommodate the emergency Natasha is trying to communicate. The contrast is stark: for the people in the waiting room, their cases may be familiar, while for Natasha the imminent loss of her home is unprecedented and immediate.

A Matter of Jurisdiction

Natasha later learns from Jeremy Fitzgerald that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is not the right authority for the action she hoped it could take. When he asks why she went there, she explains that she did not know what else to do and had been hoping for a miracle. Her visit is therefore less a viable legal strategy than a final search for a door that might still open.

The distinction matters because the family’s removal case has already passed through a different legal process. After Samuel Kingsley’s arrest, the family received a Notice to Appear from the Department of Homeland Security. At an immigration hearing, a judge offered the choice of Voluntary Removal or an application for Cancellation of Removal. Samuel initially rejected voluntary departure, and the family pursued cancellation, hoping that Peter’s United States citizenship could support their case. They hired an inexpensive lawyer and argued that removal would impose extreme hardship on a citizen family member. The judge denied the case, and Samuel accepted Voluntary Removal; the family’s lawyer advised against appealing and said that leaving voluntarily would preserve some hope of returning in the future.

That history clarifies what United States Citizenship and Immigration Services cannot do for Natasha. Fitzgerald tells her directly that the agency is outside the relevant jurisdiction. The agency building is not where the decisive ruling is made, and Natasha’s urgency cannot reverse a decision reached through the family’s immigration proceedings. When Fitzgerald later leaves a voicemail with unfortunate news, the deportation order still stands and the judge has not overturned the Voluntary Removal. The agency has been part of Natasha’s effort to find help, but it has not been the authority controlling the outcome.

The Building as a Point of Contact

Although Natasha receives no immigration remedy there, the agency’s security station becomes a recurring point of contact between her and Irene. Their daily exchanges are marked by the guard’s attention to the phone case and Natasha’s dislike of her touching it. The detail gives the encounters a concrete repetition: the same bin, the same case, the same pause at the security checkpoint. In Natasha’s crisis, this routine is irritating and intimate at once, a small human interaction taking place within an impersonal public institution.

After leaving the building, Natasha calls to request a same-day appointment with Jeremy Fitzgerald. The call does not transform the agency into the solution she sought; her legal assistance comes through Fitzgerald’s office, and the case remains governed by the prior immigration ruling. The sequence instead shows how Natasha moves from one possible source of help to another as time runs out. She tries United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, then seeks a lawyer, while the order requiring her family to leave remains in force.

Irene and the Later Significance of the Agency

Ten years later, Irene still remembers working as a security guard at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services building in New York City. A case officer, Lester Barnes, tells her that a girl has left a message on his voicemail for her. The message is simply an expression of thanks. Irene never learns what the girl was thanking her for, but the message arrives at a decisive moment: Irene has planned to die that day, written a suicide note at lunch, and mentally mapped her route to the roof of her apartment building. The thanks gives her reason to stop.

The later revelation recasts the agency setting without suggesting that the institution itself saved Irene. Its role is the practical one of placing Natasha and Irene in the same building and enabling a message to pass from Natasha through Barnes to the guard. An encounter Natasha experiences amid an unsuccessful effort to prevent her family’s removal acquires an unforeseen consequence in another person’s life. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services remains unable to change Natasha’s legal fate, but the workplace connection formed there becomes the channel through which her gratitude reaches Irene—and arrives in time.