I think it is very unlikely that Shawn Ryan could have predicted that this episode could have been so prophetic. The world were very different eighteen years ago, and for American public, the Global War on Terror and economic issues that would become dominant during Wall Street Crash, were much more relevant, with immigration being one of the lesser concerns.

I think that Ryan with his final episodes wanted to present the opposite. Vic, a macho street warrior, ends as faceless cog in the cold, sterile machine of federal bureaucracy, with ICE, with the focus of government and public interest being set elsewhere, at the time being the least likely to engage in violent antics that made LAPD so infamous in 1990s. This is one of the series' greatest ironies.