Twelve Reasons to Abolish CBP and ICE.
1...
When my father arrived in this country,
the first words he learned in English were
"Thank you" to the Latina who sat beside him
and summarized the teacher's rapid-fire speech.
"Thank you"
to the snickered whispers he chose to ignore
and the broad-jawed bruiser
who pretended his Colombian immigrant classmate did not exist.
"Thank you" to the mentors
who combed through line after line of a language
that felt to his tongue like braille to my hands.
"Thank you."
2. A father of two delivers a pizza to a military base in Brooklyn.
The military police officer who ordered it
demands the father's naturalization papers.
When the deliveryman refuses, the police officer calls ICE.
Some soldiers at Fort Hamilton ordered a pizza.
It had pepperoni, green peppers, onions,
I'm lying, who cares?
It was a pizza that might cost a father his family.
The only tip the soldier gave was a phone call
that risked making two little girls fatherless.
3. The first journalist allowed to enter Casa Padre
calls the detention center an internment camp--
nearly 1,500 undocumented children locked up in an abandoned Walmart,
having committed no crime but crossing a border to survive.
3. The five-year-old boy who shares my name, Carlos,
taken from his mother in Missouri
and put up for adoption against her wishes,
now renamed Jamison by the couple who stole him.
3. The pregnant women detained by ICE,
shackled around the stomach and denied medical care while they miscarry.
4. The honors chemistry textbook at my public high school
was missing one-third of the elements of the periodic table.
My English teacher would return papers
with red wine stains and reeking of weed smoke.
60,000 bridges in our country are architecturally deficient--
is there nothing else we can do with this money?
5. The former chief counsel of ICE
who stole the identities of immigrants seeking asylum,
a man who forged documents with the photograph of a murdered woman.
6. List of present-day U.S. states that were part of Mexico before 1848:
California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, close to half of New Mexico,
a quarter of Colorado, and part of Wyoming.
7. Piles of confiscated rosaries
in Brownsville, Texas,
like piles of wedding rings and gold dental fillings at Buchenwald.
I imagine them hovered over someday by trauma tourists muttering,
"Never Again"-- again and again and again and again.
8. The son of a Syrian refugee invented your iPhone.
A Soviet-born computer scientist invented Google.
Even a Canadian invented basketball.
9. Most terrorist attacks in the United States
over the past two decades
have been carried out by white American men.
Most terrorist attacks in the United States
over the past 200 years
have been carried out by white American men.
I have never seen a news headline calling a white American man a terrorist.
10. Border Patrol agents encounter a father, mother,
and their three-year-old son from Honduras
entering the U.S. across the border with Texas.
The family asks to apply for asylum.
The CBP officers say the family must be separated,
physically restrain the father,
tearing his three-year-old son from his arms.
They place the father in a chain-link detention cell,
then move him 40 miles away to solitary confinement
at Starr County Jail.
At 9:50 a.m. the next morning,
a guard finds the father lying in his own blood,
having strangled himself with a piece of his clothing.
The father's name was Marco Antonio Muñoz.
The father was the same age I will be when my son, Gabriel, is three.
His name was Marco Antonio Muñoz.
His death was not publicly disclosed.
It did not appear in any local news accounts.
11. José, the five-year-old carrying a trash bag of dirty clothes
and a stick figure drawing of his parents,
taken from his family.
11a. The seven-year-old girl in a pink bow and dress,
left behind after her parents were deported.
11b. Johan, the one-year-old,
playing with a purple ball and drinking from a bottle,
appearing in court without his father.
11c. The three-year-old, separated from her family,
climbing on top of the desk during her deportation trial.
11d. The infant from Honduras
pulled from his mother's breast mid-feeding,
separated from his mother.
11e. The special needs' child, separated from her mother.
11f. The deaf child who is not able to speak,
separated from his mother.
11g... 11h... 11i...
12...
Upon whose bones
do we stand?
What
will it take?
(applause)