Unaccompanied Alien Children

“Out there on the border the inhumane treatment of migrant children continues as we lie safely in the warmth of our beds.”

One night I dreamt of a brightly lit white room and in the center I sat on a cold concrete floor, a chain link fence surrounded me and several small children.

In some way I was aware that it was a dream but a strong need to search for my son filled my limbs like I knew he should be there. I looked around the room but did not see him. It was clear that we were being held in one of the cages where the US government was keeping children back in 2017. I called for his name and began to feel suffocated by the distress of not being able to find my son. A baby, about a year old just like my own daughter, began to cry at my feet so I picked them up and held them in my arms. Their little body pressed tightly against my own, it dawned on me that this could be real. More children began to cry for their mothers, the sounds of their voices filling this empty space, this cold room, this dog kennel of a cage, sent chills up my spine. With my free hand I motioned them to come sit with me  and as they began to huddle in closer I searched their faces for my son’s and when I realized that he was not there I began to scream his name. A feral, primitive scream thundered out of my chest vibrating the walls of the white room and the weight of his absence, of the idea that he had been lost, placed elsewhere without me felt heavy and crippling. There was nothing I could do, nowhere to run, no one to ask for help, no one was coming to save us. It was just me and these crying children in a cold, white room. 

A disembodied scream woke me up safe in my own bed, a half whisper, half cry, a gasp for breath still in the dream but returning now to the realm of reality. My neck and back were clammy. I wiped the sweat off my forehead then walked out of my room, across the hall to my children’s bedroom, instinctively – to make certain that the nightmare was just an unconscious fear coming to life in my own mind. My son’s face looked so peaceful against the dim glow of the glow-in-the dark stars by his bed. My daughter as small as the baby who’s cry added to the anguish I felt. I tucked them in and stroked their faces, careful not to wake them. I placed special stuffies under their arms, still reeling from the bad dream. There on the floor near their beds with my back lying flat and my hands resting over my chest where the weight of loss sat heavily just moments ago, I listened to the sounds of their deep sleep breathing. Somewhere out there, the nightmare was being lived by other mothers and fathers.

A few months after Trump was inaugurated, policy decisions about family separations at the border were being made. Reuters reported on this as early as March 3rd of that year. The separation of families at the border increased significantly and by November of 2017 there were so many children being separated from their families that there was a shortage in beds for babies. This was all happening before reports of children being taken from their families began coming out. The children that came with their parents were being taken and then placed in these detention centers for “unaccompanied alien children” and their parents criminalized. A story was published in the Atlantic about a three year old boy who was taken from his father, and the father was then placed under federal custody.

In writing this essay, I found an article from NBC News that reported that in 2017 the Trump administration had run a pilot program for separating migrant families. A “pilot program”? An experiment to see how effective this act of inhumanity would be and what praise it would bring to the administration at the time?

When news broke about the conditions of these places where children were being held, articles being written, pictures being shared on Twitter, videos of parents being reunited with their children some who were too young to remember them and were often terrified of their own parents turned strangers from the hours, days and months long separations they endured, I could not keep my composure. So I looked away. I glimpsed these separations through articles, my heart pounding in my throat. I pushed the image of my brother and I, me two years old, him one year old–the ages of my children at the time of this horrific US kidnapping of migrant children–being ripped from our mother’s arms at the border as far into the depths of my unconscious as I could. It returned in the form of a dream, a vivid nightmare except it wasn’t me that was taken from my mother but my son from me. There in that dream where the sounds of small children crying echoed alongside my disembodied voice calling for my then two year old son, an unfathomable loss was created before me, a loss so great it has been wielded as a weapon since the time of colonization.

The cold white room and chain link fence and orphaned children were real – even if only in a dream. Out there on the border the inhumane treatment of migrant children continues as we lie safely in the warmth of our beds after having kissed the faces of our children and sent them off to bed with stories and songs. 

America takes children, it places them in warehouses, cages, prisons. America kills children in the name of patriotism. This is not the American dream that they told us about. 

That could have been us: it’s all I think about when I hear about migrant children being abused, or killed at the hands of the State. Their deaths and displacement is not an accident. It is calculated, a revamped and recycled version of colonialism. It is indigenous children being ripped from their families and placed in boarding schools. It is Black children being sold into slavery, it is Black children being murdered by police brutality and white supremacy and I wish we would all stop pretending to be shocked by the death and abuse of migrant children by colonizers like Greg Abbot. It is a horrific nightmare but it is not new and it is not an accident. If the most vulnerable among us are treated this way, who is safe? 

Propina

On September 8, 2017, on Facebook where most of my family keeps in touch, I shared an article from DREAMer’s Roadmap called 6 Ways to Love Yourself When You Are Undocumented in the U.S.A. This excerpt from that article has stayed with me ever since: 

Your body has defied laws and words, lines on papers, and on maps. You crossed these lines and now find yourself in a strange place, that you have somehow built a home out of. 

In order to make this home real, you have had to find a way to live, a way to connect, and a way to survive. Many of us did this without speaking the local language. All of us did this in fear. Yet, through these obstacles you have survived, and are here, living and breathing and still traveling in many ways. 

You are not from here. But you are not from there either. Not anymore. 

You are from somewhere else, instead your body belongs only to you and the culture you have created from living in between worlds. You’re a survivor. You are a traveler. . You have gone through so much in order to get to where you are today, and no matter what happens tomorrow, you will always have today.

And you will always have your power.

We’ll see you next week!