Do I even want to talk about the election? No, I do not. Figure I’d write about a morning back in 2017 when I got a call at work from Marty. Must’ve been a Friday cuz Fridays were his day off back before the pandemic. “You’re not going to believe who just showed up at our door. A couple, a man and a woman, and the way they were dressed, I figured they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.” They weren’t. They showed him their badges, they were from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They asked him what he knew about our neighbors. Rather laughable in a way because what made them even think he’d say anything? He did exactly what I would’ve done — can’t help you, sorry, not sorry. They were our neighbors for several years. A working couple with a 4-month old and a five-year old when they moved in. They worked opposite shifts in the service industry so one of them could always be with the kids. It was a happy-sad moment for us all four years later when they told us they finally bought a house. They tried to buy the three-unit they lived in, but the absentee landlord wouldn’t sell to them. A bummer, because we still miss them. I think the thing that bothered me more than ICE coming to our door, was when Latrice (not her real name obvi) came over, sat at our table, and apologized for it. Her beautiful, big brown eyes with the to-die-for lashes teared up as she told us she worked hard, she was a good mother, she’d been a teacher where she came from, and it was an issue with her green card that she was working on. She did get it sorted out, but what bothered me about it and still does, is that she felt she had to explain herself to us, and apologize for the harm our government does to people, all of us, pitting neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, sister against sister? I mean really? Asking us about our Neighbors? Isn’t there something somewhere about loving your neighbor as yourself? No one should have to explain to anyone why they matter. Why they have a right to exist without fear of deportation or incarceration. Why they have a right to sanctuary. Why they are a good person. That was seven years ago that ICE came. And here we are again. If it’s not the Orange Men, it’s the ICE men.
(**For more on the Orange Men, check out BBC News article, July, 11, 2012.)
