How Loud Would You Scream?

Through our involvement with foster care, I have seen families dissolve right in front of me. Regardless of the reason, this undoing is unbearable. The wounds that follow sink deep, deep down inside the hollowed-out chest of those children left behind. These wounds refuse to be soothed—not with nighttime lullabies or daily reassurances, not with adoptive mothers or fathers wrapped tight around abandoned children, a human bandage to try and ease the hurt. Nothing can replace the bonds of blood, not love or time or the best-intentioned hope. These things, of course, can help, but I’m not sure they can ever fully heal what has been broken.

This is the double-edged sword of foster and adoptive care. To build the ties of a new family, the first must be undone. Sometimes, this is the only choice that remains. Sometimes, the obstacles in the way of reunification are just too heavy for a family to lift, and the dissolution of that family is the heartbreaking last resort.

But what we are watching unfold on street corners and in the hallways of courthouses nationwide—the choices being made to intentionally destroy families, to deport mothers and fathers and children, to separate families who are otherwise thriving and whole—this is not a last resort. This is hurried and heartless. These decisions to ship parents thousands of miles away from their children are devoid of any “pro-family” or “Christian” values the current administration uses to excuse each and every antithetical action.

The number of videos that pour in each day of fathers surrounded by masked men, of mothers shoved to the ground as they plead to keep their family together, of federal agents mocking their victims, shouting “Adios” into tear-soaked faces, this blatant cruelty should be enough for any of us to pause and reconsider the goals of our new Republican rulers. The same people who campaigned over the “loss of family values” and blame “fatherless children” for our nation’s crime and poverty levels, now cheer as mothers and fathers are stripped from their families. What becomes of the children left behind or the parent who can no longer make ends meet without the income and support of their partner? How “great” will our America prove to be for them?

Through fostering children who have been severely neglected and abused, I have come to understand that sometimes we, as a community, will have to pick up the pieces of a shattered family. We will have to come alongside the children and grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and adoptive parents forced to rebuild that family. This work is humbling and horrific, and under extreme conditions, it is sometimes necessary.

What is in no way necessary, however, is the intentional unravelling of a family who wants and deserves to stay together, a family who has faced danger and immense sacrifice to reach this country. These mothers and fathers have come here for the promise of realized dreams for those seeking refuge, only to find that in today’s America, families are forced to seek refuge from the hardened arms of government, arms that aim to reach right inside of our homes, grab hold of anyone who resists, and cover our mouths while the rest of us sleep.

But I am wide awake, and I will not lie here quietly, lest I disturb my neighbors and their peaceful slumber as some family down the street gets snatched from their beds. This is not a drill. This administration is not just targeting the “hardened criminals” and “gang members” they campaigned on. By mid-year, ICE statistics confirmed that approximately 72% of detainees had no criminal conviction. This number is up dramatically from the 28% of the previous year. With this administration, the greatest increase in detention and deportation has been in the number of people without a criminal history.

Meeting campaign quotas by stalking families on their way to school and work and church should send a shiver down the spine of every American, regardless of who you voted for. The Supreme Court permitting ICE agents to use an individual’s race as grounds for immigration stops should concern all of us, no matter the color of our skin or citizenship. The intentional annihilation of American families should scare every single one of you. It terrifies me.

Every day, my family and countless families across our community live with the fallout of severed biological bonds; I assure you the devastation that comes from oceans of separation between parent and child brings glory to no one. Greatness will not come from smashing the building blocks of our society. Such measures should only ever be used in cases of proven neglect or abuse, and even then, only as the very final option. Yet, more videos surface every day of safe and present parents dragged away from their screaming children as this “pro-life, family values” administration continues to make the destruction of families one of their first priorities.

I will never be quiet as families are torn apart—not outside of courtrooms, masked faces creating barricades between husband and wife or mother and child, and not inside of courtrooms where families dissolve after 180 days and the stroke of a pen. Not 200 years ago on plantations ripe with cotton and twisted scripture. Not 50 years ago inside of Catholic boarding schools, ripe with Native children for the taking. And not today, as brown bodies are shoved into unmarked vehicles driven by nameless men. None of us should be silent as the American government willfully destroys family after family. How loud would you scream if it was your own?

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Rage