Prankster pulls insensitive ICE prank on immigrant friend and his parents for April Fool's day

With everything happening around the world this year, I hoped and prayed that we'd forgo the annoying annual tradition of acting like imbeciles in honor of April Fool's day. After all, we're going through an actual frickin pandemic that has practically brought the world to a standstill. Surely, now is not the time to pull pranks on others? Not when people are already running low on hope and patience and the future holds a huge question mark? Apparently, I was wrong. Very wrong.

Yesterday, Redditor u/ICEICEBAAABY took to the platform's r/AmItheAsshole community with the following question: AITA for playing an ICE prank on my friend? The prankster—a Texas resident—then went on to explain how they pulled a tasteless insensitive prank on their friend of over a decade. For April fools, I thought it would be funny if a couple of friends and I dressed up, and pranked our friend who’s a DACA recipient. His parents are undocumented despite coming here a long time ago; they also speak only Spanish and very broken English. The timing for this prank was perfect because ICE is doing raids etc, the Redditor began.

I got 2 other guys with me, who he doesn’t know, and we dressed up officially with sunglasses, etc. We even printed out a fake warrant, they continued. Pretty pleased with their preparations, the fake ICE trio made their way over to the unsuspecting friend's house. We went over to their apartment at 7, and started banging on their door. We said “This is ICE here, we got a tip-off on an undocumented couple living here. We have a warrant signed off by (XYZ). You have the right to remain silent as anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law” etc. We could hear them visibly panicking, and it took everything in us to keep a straight face, the prankster bragged.

However, they weren't done yet. Ignoring any possible warnings from their conscience—if they have one—the trio took the prank to the next level by saying, "do not attempt to run away, as we have law enforcement surrounding the area." The Redditor explained that the trio then proceeded to bang on his friend's door some more, yelling "open up!" Then my friend comes out, and I say April fools, gotcha. And we throw confetti at him. He was LIVID, revealed the prankster who clearly has no understanding of what qualifies as a joke.

He unfriended me on EVERYTHING after I tried reaching him. I texted him at 9, then 10, and it’s now almost 1 now. I didn’t think the prank would backfire this badly, as I come from a prankster family. Every year we’d play pranks on each other. I understand I took it too far but is it really worth ending a friendship of over 16 years because of this? the Redditor asked. Fellow Redditors were more than happy to set him straight, clearing him of all delusions of what the ICE represents to immigrant families.

YTA and I am baffled how you do not see that. Your friend likely has a very real fear of his family being broken up in this manner and you treated it as a joke for your own amusement. It isn't a joke to him or his parents, who by the way certainly did nothing to deserve the stress you no doubt put them through. This isn't a prank that backfired, it went exactly as you expected it to and you're just upset that you're rightfully experiencing consequences for your shitty behavior, commented u/Qekis. u/AnimalLover38 wrote: This post actively gave me second-hand anxiety and I was pissed before I even made it halfway. Jesus Christ.