Sep 19, 2017
What will we tell the children?
The heart-wrenching wail of a toddler filled with rage and grief filled the air at the vigil in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in New Orleans. Immediately before the cry, we heard the child asking “¿dónde está mi papá? ¿Dónde está mi papá?” Where is my daddy? Where is my daddy?
If immigrant detention and deportation has ever been an abstract or academic question for you, the sound of that child’s cry could have moved it from your head to your heart in a heartbeat. How do you explain to a toddler that her dad has been detained and may be deported because of arbitrary political decisions?
ICE has revealed that it has detention and deportation quotas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is working hard to scoop up as many people as possible right now to create a case for more funding in Congress.
With each raid, the terror in the community rises.
Children run home from school each day, hoping that their parents will come home from work. Some never do, targeted by ICE to fulfill their quote of detentions and deportations. A father has been in detention for 14 months with no word to the family about when he might be released. A mother is told by ICE that she must self deport next week and no, they don’t care what happens to her 1 year old US citizen child. People are being disappeared from our neighborhoods. There is brutal irony of the sheer intensity of terror created by the actions of a federal department created in response to a terrorist attack on the US in 2001.
Now, more than ever, we must defend and advocate for and love our neighbors. Immigration justice isn’t about “them.” It is about us. All of us honoring the dignity and worth of each and resisting any dehumanizing and criminalizing narrative that seeks to divide us.
Love resists, friends. And so must we.
