12 Reasons to Abolish C.B.P. & I.C.E.

1.
When my father arrived
in this country, the first words
he learned in English were:
Thank you.
—to the Latina
who sat beside him
& summarized
the teacher’s
rapid-fire speech:
Thank you.
—to the snickered whispers
he chose to ignore & the broad-
jawed bruiser who pretended
his Colombian immigrant
classmate did not exist:
Thank you.
—to the mentors who
combed through line after
line of a language that felt
to his tongue like braille
to my hands:
Thank you.

2.
A father of two delivers a pizza
to a military base in Brooklyn.
The military police officer who
ordered it demands the father’s
naturalization papers.
When the deliveryman refuses,
the police officer calls I.C.E.

Some soldiers at Fort Hamilton
ordered a pizza. It had pepperoni,
green peppers, onions, I’m lying, who
cares? It was a pizza     that might
cost a father his family—the only tip
the soldier gave was a phone call
that risked making two little girls
fatherless.

3.
The first journalist allowed
to enter Casa Padre calls
the detention center
an internment camp:
nearly 1,500 undocumented
children locked up
in an abandoned Wal-Mart, having
committed no crime but crossing
a border to survive.

3.
The five year-old boy who shares
my name: Carlos, taken from his mother
in Missouri & put up for adoption
against her wishes, now renamed  Jamison
by the couple who stole him.

3.
The pregnant women detained by I.C.E.
shackled around the stomach & denied
medical care while they miscarry.

4.
The honors chemistry textbook
at my public high school was missing
one-third of the elements of the periodic
table; my English teacher would return
papers with red wine stains & reeking
of weed smoke; 60,000 bridges in our
country are architecturally deficient—Is there nothing
else we can do with this money?

5.
The former chief counsel of I.C.E. who stole the identities
of immigrants seeking asylum, a man who forged documents
with the photograph of a murdered woman.

6.
List of present-day U.S. states that were part of México
before 1848: California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona,
close to half of New Mexico, a quarter of Colorado,
& part of Wyoming.

7.
Piles of confiscated rosaries
in Brownsville, Texas—
I imagine them hovered over someday
by trauma tourists muttering:
Never Again—again &   again
& again
& again.

8.
The son of a Syrian refugee invented
your iPhone. A Soviet-born computer scientist
invented Google. Even a Canadian happened
to create basketball.

9.
Most terrorist attacks in the United States
over the past two decades have been carried out
by white American men. Most terrorist attacks
over the past two hundred years in the United States
have been carried out by white American men.

I have not seen a single headline calling
a white American man:  terrorist.

10.
Border Patrol agents encounter a father, mother
& their three year-old son from Honduras
entering the U.S. across the border with Texas.
The family asks to apply for asylum.

The C.B.P. officers say the family must be
separated, physically restrain the father, tearing
his three year-old son from his arms.

They place the father in a chain-link detention
cell, then move him forty miles away to solitary
confinement at Starr County Jail. At 9:50am
the next morning a guard finds the father
lying in his own blood, having strangled himself
with a piece of his clothing.

The father’s name was Marco Antonio Muñoz.
The father was the same age I was when
my own son was three. His name was Marco Antonio
Muñoz. His death was not publicly disclosed
…it did not appear in any local news accounts.[i]

11.
José: the five year-old carrying a trash bag
of dirty clothes & a stick figure drawing
of his parents, taken from his family.

11a.
The seven year-old girl in a pink bow & dress, left behind
after her parents were deported.

11b.
Johan: the one year-old, playing with a purple ball
& drinking from a bottle, appearing in court without his father.

11c.
The three year-old, separated from her family, climbing
on top of the desk during her deportation trial.

11d.
The infant from Honduras pulled from his mother’s breast
mid-feeding, separated from his mother.

11e.
The child with special needs, separated from her mother.

11f.
The boy who is deaf and not able to speak, separated from his mother.

11g.
[                                                                       ]

11h.
[                                                                                               ]

11i.
[                                                                                   ]

12.
Upon   whose bones
do   we stand?

What    will
it take?

---

[i] Miroff, Nick. “A family was separated at the border, and this distraught father took his own life.” The Washington Post, 9 June 2018. www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-family-was-separated-at-the-border-and-this-distraught-father-took-his-own-life/2018/06/08/24e40b70-6b5d-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html?utm_term=.66a717b1851c. Accessed 9 June 2018.

---

---