The Alien in my Guest Room: Part 29
The Cruelty is the Point
Fernando went to his regular ICE meeting this morning, and I am very anxious.
You see, last week a Guatemalan asylum-seeking mom in New York went to her regularly scheduled meeting, and they didn’t let her leave. They tossed her back in detention — back into the concentration camp — for no discernable reason, and started the deportation process. They did not care that back at home, she had two children — aged 10 and 13 — who were due to come home from school, to an empty apartment.
There was no explanation, no official change of policy, no newspaper story. The only reason I know about it is that she’s another soul under the wing of Immigrant Families Together, the organization that is helping Fernando. They wrote about it on their Facebook page.
She was following the protocol, doing just what ICE had told her. She had committed no crime, broken no promises, missed no appointments, forgotten no paperwork. As an asylum seeker, she had legal status — not permanent, but legal; and our government is required to jump through certain hoops before they can deport her.
It didn’t matter.
I have no idea whether this type of event is widespread or isolated. I don’t know if Fernando will come home today. I haven’t told him about this woman because there’s no point in scaring him. If he’s to get asylum, he has to go to all his meetings. If ICE is going to flaunt the law and imprison him — or worse — there’s nothing he (or I) can do to stop it.
Along with many other immigration observers, I have come to believe the cruelty is the point. As they say, “It’s a feature, not a bug.” It’s classic abusive behavior — keep ’em guessing, off balance, never sure whether what they’re doing will get them punished or rewarded. Frightened people are weak and easy to control. Lock them up; traumatize the children for life; torture the parents — and it is torture to have your child torn from your arms, never knowing when — or even if — you will see then again; gaslight them by telling them one thing and then demanding another…it’s all designed to make El Norte, the Land of Promise, look like hell. It’s designed to keep them from wanting to come here.
And still they come. What they leave behind is sufficiently terrible, that to escape it they will risk a hundred deaths — by drowning, by exposure, by violence. They know they will probably be robbed and beaten and extorted along the way…if they aren’t murdered by gangs or destined to die of thirst in the desert. And still they come.
Immigrant women get contraceptive injections before they start on the trek, because they expect to be raped. They can’t control that, but they have some control over whether they will bear their rapist’s baby (Source). And still they come.
Imagine being in a situation so horrible that you would risk all that to get away.
I rarely interact with my Republican cousin anymore, but I still hear his voice in my head. I find myself arguing with his phantom: They are “just” economic migrants, ghost JohnJuan says. They’re not really in need of asylum. They want to steal our comfort and riches (that he admits we got not by merit but by the accident of birth) and bring us “down to their level.” They’re lazy and just want to live off the dole. They are hardened criminals. They are bad parents for bringing their children on such a dangerous journey.
I wonder if Joseph and Mary were bad parents for taking their baby into the wilderness to find safety from Herod’s massacre of baby boys.
Yes, I am Jewish; and no, I don’t take the New Testament as “gospel truth” (so to speak); but I know my Bible stories. And Christian Bible stories too. My not-terribly-useful bachelor’s degree was in religion; and for many years I wrote and produced the History Channel series Mysteries of the Bible. Whether or not the Biblical narrative is literally correct, there is truth in Matthew’s take on the nativity: loving parents will risk any danger to save their children from chaos and violence.
I’m ranting to you because I don’t know what else to do as I sit waiting to hear from Fernando, hoping he comes home to the first loving family that he ever had.
Things here at Casa Blackwell have fallen into a routine, with less drama than the previous six months or so. He goes to his English class, and sometimes afterwards he takes the metro to Santa Monica to take a walk by the ocean. I help him with his homework: it’s a long, slow slog. He helps around the house, watches too much TV, and chats endlessly on WhatsApp with a girl from Honduras. Hermes tells him to look forward, let the Honduran girls go, find love locally. He responds: If I am deported, I want something to go back to.
We have tried everything we can think of to get his ankle monitor removed, to no avail. ICE doesn’t care that he’s no flight risk, has no criminal history, and that he has appeared for every single appointment, even the random times they called him and said, “Get downtown now. You have an hour.” It doesn’t matter that he’s home every time ICE knocks on my front door to check on him. It is cruel to keep the humiliating, annoying, heavy piece of malfunctioning machinery on his leg, making him look and feel like a criminal. And that cruelty is the point.
Meanwhile, a rumor was circulating that ICE policy changed, and now anyone with an ankle monitor will have to wear it until their case is adjudicated, which can take years. I called Fernando’s lawyer to see if this would affect him. She had heard the rumor too. She said she’d fight it, that since he entered the country as an unaccompanied minor, the alleged guideline might not apply to him. But she didn’t sound encouraging.
There was no memo, no law passed, no article linked on Facebook. We don’t actually know if it’s true. It’s just another drop in the pool of arbitrary and unpredictable rulings that are carefully hidden from the eyes of the American people, whose tax dollars fund all this shameless inhumanity.
When I started this post, I had so many ideas what to write. I’d tell you a heartwarming story about a generous volunteer who did extensive footwork to help Fernando get retroactive health insurance for his October accident (looking at you, Dr C!). An inspirational anecdote about a young man released from “Remain in Mexico” detention, against all odds. Amusing tidbits about the hometown girls in Honduras who now find Fernando irresistible.
I would intersperse these paragraphs with the creeping dread I feel every morning as I open my computer to find out what fresh immigration hell our government has wrought overnight. How Honduras, one of the most violent countries on the planet, is being called a Safe Third Country for migrants, without irony. How Homeland Security wants to make asylum seekers wait twice as long for work permits, while threatening them if they take advantage of any financial support from the government, like emergency medical insurance or “food stamps.” How bonds have skyrocketed to ridiculous sums, up to $40,000 per person. How my hope is fading.
But hours have passed and I have not heard from Fernando. I don’t want to be a helicopter in-loco-parentis (emphasis on loco), but I have to go call him.
His phone rang seven or eight times. After the fourth ring, I had to coach myself to breathe. When he finally picked up, he didn’t speak right away. I heard a voice echoing mechanically in the background: “Welcome to the Metro Expo Line to Santa Monica. Next stop, Culver City.” He is almost home.
Please excuse me for now. I need to take some time to finish crying before he gets here.