'13 Reasons Why' season 3 uses Tony Padilla's ICE encounter to highlight the torment of families being deported
This article contains major spoilers for season 3.
Among the many burning issues that Netflix's very controversial but highly popular teen drama '13 Reasons Why' has tackled so far, season 3 branches out beyond the battles of sexual assault and drug abuse and explores topics like the harrowing experiences of families being torn apart due to ICE and deportation of immigrants. Played out through the third season's plotline for one of its very crucial characters, Tony Padilla (Christian Navarro), the story follows the troubled teen with a dark past and anger issues as he meanders through what he believes is his journey of redemption. And for all the good work he puts into rehabilitating and pulling his classmate Tyler Down (Devid Druid) out of the dark hole he had been in, Tony's reward is being separated from his family and finding out about it when he returns home one night.
In the sixth episode of season 3, we see a flashback of Tony finally bring his boyfriend home, to meet the parents. The two of them talk outside the door, with his boyfriend holding flowers and Tony bearing words of encouragement, reassuring him that his parents are going to love him. In all this, things start tensing up when nobody answers the door. A distraught Tony enters the house and sees it empty - stripped down of all the life as the darkly lit living room and properly set up dining table show signs of his family having left in a haste. Tony figures something has gone extremely wrong, and his worst nightmare comes true as a neighbor informs him that his family was 'taken'. The ICE aka Immigration and Customs Enforcement took them.
It is at this moment that we find out that Tony's entire immediate family - including his parents and siblings - were undocumented, and this is probably what had been plaguing the young teen all this while, given the current political scenario in the States, where the show is set. We find out Tony's family have just been detained and scheduled for deportation by the authorities, and the abhorrent act was pulled by Bryce Walker's (Justin Prentice) family, in the wake of his sexual assault trial in season 2. Bryce was a serial rapist and the prime reasons why Hannah decided to end it all. She wasn't the only one he raped though, as he had also raped his friend Justin's girlfriend, Jessica Davis, and his own girlfriend, Chloe Rice, among many others. And considering Tony was directly involved and invested in the trial, Bryce's family - in an attempt to payback - decide to report Tony's. Throughout the investigation of Bryce's murder, Mrs. Walker pointed fingers at Clay and Tony as they were the closest, and also best friends with Hannah. But the Walker family had already pulled their trigger at Tony by taking away what he holds dearest, just the way they assumed he was about to take away what they held dearest.
As vile as calling the ICE on those innocent lives and uprooting Tony from his family was, the reasons it hit us harder was that Tony is the one person who shows up for the rescue. Viewers have known of Tony's struggles in the past, but for the longest time, we didn't receive any closure or even a smidge of an answer as to why the former convict was still so troubled when all he did was help his friends out. In the first season, the plot revolves around Hannah's suicide and the 13 titular reasons, or people, who contributed to it. Hannah revealed everything in cassette tapes and gave the task to Tony to distribute the entire set of them around after her death, to each people involved in it. Tony did that and had to bear the brunt of everybody looking at him like he could have saved Hannah. But what they forgot that Tony too, is just a child. Older than his peers, but a kid nevertheless.
Later in the season, he helps Clay by guiding him through the experience of finding out Hannah's truth, serving as the guiding light that spurs Clay towards seeing sense in sometimes letting things be. After helping Clay process the shock of what Hannah had gone through that culminated in her suicide, Tony was also there to lend him his endless support. And he did the same for Tyler, in the aftermath of the school shooting cliffhanger finale of season 2. Tony arrives without qualms to pick the boy and his ammunitions up to drive him away from the location after Clay was able to stop Tyler from shooting up their high school. Tony's patience and compassion reaches a whole other level when he plans with Clay how to hide Tyler's guns, and offer him the much-needed comfort and support to stabilize the boy. He is the one who works on Tyler the hardest, giving him physical training to exert all the rage and anger he felt when he wanted to shoot up the whole school after he was raped by his classmates.
Tony does this all, and works full time at first, and later, part-time, at his family automobile shop. But of course, his endless list of favors and all the labor he puts into helping others are answered with pain. But Tony isn't the only one suffering, as countless families are being torn apart in real life because of the POTUS' controversial and questionable immigration policies. Tony is just a drop in the ocean of pain these families are going through and '13 Reasons Why' season 3 articulates the same torment with brilliance.
'13 Reasons Why' season 3 premiered on August 23, and is available for streaming on Netflix now.