1,460 days

Last year, more Americans were killed for BEING Muslim than by a Muslim terrorist. Also re: terrorism, Americans are more likely to be killed by an abusive spouse than a jihadist. Xenophobia lives!

Our immigration system’s capacity for cruelty: we condone leveraging special needs children against their desperate parents in defense of a border. A line in the dirt. 

Imagine being that ICE agent in Laredo... imagine spending your night following an ambulance carrying a sick child, standing outside her hospital roo mall night. What thoughts go through your ind during those hours? Imagine watching as nurses prepare a terrified post-op child to be transferred to a detention facility for unaccompanied minors alone, though her parents are nearby, as are family detention facilities. What goes through your mind as you escort her gurney out of the hospital? Is this just part of your job? Is it serving some grander goal? In the face of abject cruelty, how does your mind abstract from your actions? Blame it on the chain of command? Reduce the child to less than human? Is that how you cope with treating this family so inhumanely? How? How? I really can’t understand. 

10-Year-Old Immigrant is Detained After Agents Stop Her On Her Way to Surgery, October 25, 2017

“Those who can withstand the battering ram for at least 90 minutes while also being “aesthetically pleasing” (on the US-facing side) have a shot at winning a lucrative piece of one of the US government’s largest infrastructure projects in decades.”