“Do You Know What a Fascist Is?”

For parents of young children, daily life revolves around the dance between bonding and separation. It causes us a great deal of anxiety, this constant leaving and returning. We tell our children comforting things like “mommy always comes back,” and fret about keeping that promise. It’s hard, this reality, this learning curve. But we are the privileged ones who live safely, out of the gruesome reach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the prison system. For other families just like ours but with different luck, each day brings the possibility of brutal separations without clear end.

So how can the rest of us allow the government, in our name, to wrench families apart?