Can we agree this is not OK?

This was going to be a poem.

I got home on Thursday and finally forced myself to look more closely at a photo I’d avoided on my Instagram feed on Wednesday. 

The one of Liam Canejo Ramos. The 5-year-old detained by ICE. 

On Thursday I looked at the picture. I stared at the picture. I absorbed the picture. 

Tiny Liam in his blue bunny ear hat. His big Bambi eyes. His cheeks- so American-as-apple-pie-sweet you could gobble them up. I could see in his face, the way he was holding himself together as the assassin’s glove of a naked, lily white hand gripping the strap of his Spider-Man backpack.

I told you this was meant for verse. 

He could’ve been the first school picture of any number of my students. He’s their little brother. He’s in the little train of grinning preschoolers winding to the bus at the end of the day. Their small hands holding each other’s backpacks so they don’t get separated. He looked so familiar. 

When I say I cried, I mean I sobbed. The feeling that photo gave me was intravenous. It washed through my arteries in a lava floe of rage, despair, and grief. It paralyzed me. I could feel my heart splintering apart in my chest. 

This is not hyperbole. 

I wrote a poem to distill the truest bits of this feeling into words. With hopes that those words would help me understand. That I could dangle them out in front of anyone who cared to read them so that we might mourn together. 

What is this world?

What is this world? 

I wrote the words fully aware that the people who looked at his photo and saw justice or felt indifference would likely roll their eyes at my softness. My idealism. This photo might be characterized as rage bait, right? This tactic deployed to incense the masses into chaos and exhaustion In order to distract and suppress. Here’s a 5-year-old detained by ICE at his school. Then used as bait to lure his father out of his home. 

This narrative whips us all up into a frenzy of do something, do something, do something. And it keeps happening. And our cries become more frantic. And nothing is done. And we scream ourselves into exhaustion.  

I can just hear the puppetmasters cackle over how easily all the delicatesnowflakebluepilledparticipanttrophywinninglibtard sheeple took the bait.

But in case you’re suddenly doubting your own reaction, rage was the appropriate emotion. And if you saw that photo and thought it was justice, then maybe this post isn’t for you.

I worked on my poem on Thursday. And Friday. And Saturday morning. Then Saturday afternoon happened and suddenly the canvas of my one poem felt too small. Suddenly I didn’t want to allow readers the space to come to their own conclusions. I didn’t want to leave room for nuance. 

On Saturday afternoon I watched a video of a 37-year-old VA nurse Alex Pretti being executed in the streets of Minneapolis by federal agents. He was using his phone to record Customs and Border Patrol Agents, something that was within his rights to do. He was shoved by an officer. Pepper sprayed. Pinned down to the ground. Beaten. Then shot. Ten shots were fired at him. Ten. 

The narrative was that he was a gun-wielding extremist intent on massacring federal officers, intent “to inflict maximum damage” does not match the story told in the videos. Sure, he legally carried a gun. But he wasn’t holding it. In fact, it appears he was disarmed in the videos. Just like the narrative that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist does not match the story of a woman murdered while attempting to turn her car around. 

And those are just the two white people whose lives have been cut short because of so-called immigration enforcement. 

There was also Keith Porter, a black father of two, shot by an off-duty ICE officer outside his apartment on New Year’s Eve. The officer is facing no charges. Porter was celebrating the new years by firing a couple rounds in the air outside his building – maybe not the safest idea – but certainly not an offense worth being killed for. 

Since January 1, six men have died in ICE custody. 

There’s Parady La. Died in ICE detention from potential drug withdrawal. Herber Sanchez Dominguez, a 34-year-old Mexican citizen. Died in ICE detention when he was found “hanging by his neck and unresponsive.”  Victor Manuel Diaz, a Nicaraguan migrant, who was found “unconscious and unresponsive” in his room. ICE lists caused of death as “presumed suicide” but says the death is still under investigation. Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, a 68-year-old grandfather who died in ICE detention after complaining to his family for days of a worsening illness. There’s 42-year-old Honduran migrant Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, who died in ICE custody from heart-related issues, according to ICE. There’s 55-year-old Cuban migrant Geraldo Lunas Campos, whose death in ICE custody is now being investigated as a homicide after an autopsy found he died from “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression” and was “unresponsive while being physically restrained by law enforcement.”

In 2025, 30 people died in ICE custody, the department’s deadliest year in more than 20 years.

“They died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. Some died at ICE detention centers and field offices, others after they had been transferred to hospitals, but were still under ICE custody. In some cases, their families and lawyers have alleged, they died of neglect, after repeatedly trying and failing to get medical care,” according to the Guardian.

Regardless of their “status” in our country, nobody should die in detention while waiting for a hearing.

What happened to Liam, to his father, to Keith Porter, to Renee Good, to Alex Pretti, to Parady La, to Herber Sanchez Dominguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos- what happened to them is happening to all of us. As if we aren’t all one body. As if the injury we inflict on any body isn’t revisited upon us.

For now, I don’t care if we can’t see eye to eye on any other issue. Can we start with this:

No person deserves to die for crossing an invisible line. 

Think about that. Can we agree on this statement at the very least?

If not, why are you even here? Why have you read this far? Out of familial obligation? Or because you kind of dislike me and look forward to rolling your eyes at the next self-righteous, sanctimonious thing I post? Are you rage reading? If so, may I invite you to “X” out of your browser and maybe drink some water. Take a walk. Watch a bird or the clouds drift by. Visit your favorite 5 year old. And if you don’t have a favorite 5 year old then by god, go befriend one. Because who can make us laugh better than a 5 year old? Who can teach us how to play better than a 5 year old? 

Who else can teach us how to be human? 

I’m serious. I only wish you peace. True peace. Like the kind of peace one gets from looking at your neighbor and seeing yourself. 

That’s something we can build on. 

For those who are still reading- can we agree that we have all, at one point in our lives, crossed a boundary? Intentionally or unintentionally. Because we were excited or afraid or unaware. We have all been in a place that for whatever reason might not have been ours to be in. We don’t need to get into the details, all I’m saying is I could forgive your trespasses if you could forgive mine. 

That.

That feels like something different. 

That feels like a crack in the ice. 

It snowed here this weekend. Several inches of soft powdery flakes compacted by tiny iceballs of sleet which froze to a creme brulee crust over night. Clearing the driveway and sidewalks yesterday was the worst. Our snow shovels could only scrape the top layer of powder. They threatened to snap when we tried to dig in. They could barely dent the surface. I had to get out a metal garden shovel and use it to create fissures around small sections of ice and snow and then use the shovel to scoop out the chunks. 

It was slow work. It took my husband hours to dig us out. With each crack in the ice we were able to clear larger and larger sections. The sun came out and helped us along.

While clearing the ice and snow, I thought about this moment in history. The metaphor of it. This was supposed to be a poem afterall. 

How our country is frozen in terror or inaction and so entrenched in our own corners of the news and social media that we have stopped moving. We have been trained by politics and algorithms to believe that there are only two sides. And that whatever makes us the most rageful is the thing that’s most important. And in this tug of war, we’ve been so evenly matched that the flag hasn’t moved an inch in months. But what if we all just let go of the rope? What if this moment could be a crack in the ice?

Could we just agree that children should not be picked up from school by armed, masked strangers? Could we agree that it is cruel to then ask that child to stand outside their home in the cold and snow, refusing to allow them to return to their family? 

Could you imagine if it was your child? 

And if we can imagine that, could we also remind ourselves of our commonalities? The spaces where our borders cross? The overlap of the circles on our venn diagrams? Like, can we remember the days when as Americans we all came from different worldviews and perspectives, but we could all agree that the DMV was the worst?

As imperfect as our country is and has been, can we remember the time before we were all so angry? And can that break something inside us? And together, we can brush away the debris. See what opens up underneath. 

This right now, this might be who we are, but it doesn’t have to be who we become. We don’t need to continue to listen to the voices who profit from American pain. American strife. American discord. The ones who are terrified at the idea of community because of what it might cost them.

Sunday, a video popped up in my feed that warmed me. Members of the Minnesota National Guard delivering coffee and doughnuts to anti-ICE protestors. 

Now, if you ignored my advice to X out of your browser many paragraphs ago because my words infuriate you, I expect your hackles to be all the way up now.

But consider this: I doubt that every member of that National Guard unit was on board with the pastries for protestors plan. I bet many of the protestors were dubious of more armed representatives of the federal government approaching them. But an olive branch is an olive branch. Or, as much of an olive branch as a Boston Creme can be. Come to think of it, doughnuts as America’s olive branch is so very appropriate. Americans are built different – we don’t need the elegance of the limb of a Biblical tree when we have the nostalgic comfort of a sugar-glazed orb. We are who we are.

I have never felt more despair in our country than I feel right now. And I was 17 when Columbine happened. A college sophomore on 9/11. A young adult when I said goodbye to my little brother before he deployed to Afghanistan. A new mother during Sandy Hook. A teacher during Uvalde. A human surviving the uncertainty of a global pandemic during Covid.

I’ve seen some things. I know I’m a hopeless idealist- have been since I was a child- but I believe in the possibilities of our country. I believe in the democratic experiment that we all have inherited. 

Just last week when my feed was full of bad news and violence, the country divided, I read the Gettysburg Address to my students. Words that caught in my throat: 

“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

There is work left to be done here. 

Finally, my wise friend who read my original poem suggested that it was OK if I just wrote an essay and ended it with a poem. Below is the poem part. I’m nervous about the poem because of how easily it can be quoted out of context. And because it seems to contradict everything I just wrote. But it’s not meant to. But I needed to distill my rage and despair into something outside myself.

“Bait”

If a 5-year-old boy in bunny ears 
is Un-American 
If his father is Un-American
If white mothers are Un-American 
If black fathers are Un-American 
If VA nurses are Un-American 
If believing that nobody deserves
To be stolen off American streets
To be executed on American streets
To die in detention for crossing an invisible barrier 
Is Un-American
If believing in civil rights 
Is Un-American
If believing in justice
is Un-American.
If dignity 
is Un-American.
Than put me in front of the house
Of Un-American Activities 
So that I can testify
With the full force of my fury and truth that
I’m proud to be Un-American.
And if that fills you with rage.
I guess you took the bait.