Even One
No apologies from ICE
They had just moved
from Maryland to Oklahoma —
a new house with peach siding,
rent they could afford,
boxes still stacked
by the back door.
The girls were still learning
the street names.
Their mother still used GPS
to find the grocery store.
And then —
before dawn broke clean —
a pounding at the door,
the shout of men in black vests,
rifles slung like warnings.
“Outside. Now.”
No time to dress.
The mother wrapped a coat around one daughter.
The other shivered in socks on the steps.
They stood there —
exposed, confused,
as agents moved through the home
like it was already theirs.
“We have a warrant,”
they said.
And maybe they did.
But the name wasn’t hers.
Not her husband’s.
Not anyone she knew.
The man they wanted —
he’d lived there.
But weeks ago.
Gone now,
no longer part of their walls or their story.
Still, they took the phones.
Still, they emptied drawers.
Still, they took the cash
meant for groceries and gas,
offered no receipt,
no apology.
Later came the silence —
no charges, no record,
nothing left but fear
stitched into their mornings.
And she learned,
in hushed reports and buried headlines,
that they weren’t the only ones —
that this was happening
to others.
Again and again.
But even if it hadn’t been.
Even if it were only them —
only one mother
with two frightened girls
on one Oklahoma porch
before the sun had risen —
it would still matter.
Even one
is too many.
Even one
is a tear in the promise
we think we live under.
Even one
should stop the whole machine.
