Elephants are Cool

we all know hypothetically about the horrors of living in trumps america. we’ve all seen the same stories, we know how dangerous it is to be brown, that your whole life can fall down in an instant. we know this. I thought I knew this more than most, with my boyfriend being mexican. in the back of my mind I’ve had this anxiety for months, knowing what could happen - and today it did. 

we were stopped by what looked to  be a cop car in what I thought was an ordinary police stop (scary enough already) but it turned out to be anything but. behind the car were three  black vehicles with tinted windows, literally like you see in the movies. me and my boyfriend are both fresh out of teenager years, and there was just two of us against several armed government officers. 

this was literally the single most terrifying experience of my life. they told us to put our hands up and all I could think was that they’re gonna tell him to step out of the car, they’re gonna kill him in front of me, and I’m gonna have to call his family and tell them that I saw their son die and that he’s never coming home.  they laughed in my boyfriend’s face, asking several times for his name and jiggling the door handle and held us for what felt, to me, like a small and hellish eternity. I’m sure most people can understand what a traffic stop can be like as a brown person in america - i feel like i don’t need to say much more here and honestly just trying to describe everything that happens makes me want to throw up so I’m not going to.

eventually they let us go and somehow it only gets worse from there. we found out that my boyfriend’s father had been picked up by ICE. we believe at present that the point of the stop was to stop me and my boyfriend from driving past the daycare down the road (where his father was dropping off his 3 yr old son at) so that we wouldn’t be able to see what they were doing to his dad. the fact that they know our schedules so well means they must have been following us and watching us for a while. i would say that i’m paranoid except that honestly, this is entirely justified. 

currently, his dad is being held by ICE. because it’s immigration court, not criminal court, he is not entitled to free legal representation. we need at least $5000 for lawyer, not even including the bond. my boyfriend and I both work but there is no way for us to be able to raise this kind of money on such short notice. my boyfriend is basically in shock right now, as I think is very reasonable, and this entire situation feels beyond hopeless. the only chance we have of keeping his family together is through this lawyer, and through asking for help from others.

i know you are all tired from everything you see on the news. i know that there are many stories like ours. but please, this is ours. this is the man I love. this is his father. this is our future together. I never thought this would actually happen and it honestly still feels like a surreal nightmare but it has happened, and we cannot get out of it ourselves.