Three doors in Washington, Donald.
One at Amica, one at Ayuda, one at KIND. The doors are glass. The locks are thrown. The men in the windbreakers stand on the concrete and ask for the names. They want the files. They want the lawyers gone. The children beyond the glass are not yet twelve. The children do not know there is a word for a man with a badge who comes to a place where you are supposed to be safe and tries to turn the handle. They only know the handle is turning.
On Friday, Homeland Security Investigations and the HHS Inspector General tried to walk through the glass. You sent them, Donald. You cut the funding to the lawyers. You armed your agents with the memo from May that says they can kick down doors with nothing but an administrative warrant, and you cut the judge out of the room. You listen to the quiet of the room you have emptied, and you send them anyway. The word routine is whitewash. Ezekiel named your work: a flimsy wall daubed with untempered mortar. The wall is the claim this was oversight. The mortar is the press release. The mortar is crumbling. Everyone can see the shape of the man behind it.
Your throat tightens, Donald. A scratch that does not heal when you drink the morning coffee. You raise the cup, and the taste of the desert sand is under your tongue—the dust the children kick when they run from the wall. It does not rinse away. You swallow, and the swallow catches. Your hand reaches for the phone, and the fingers tremor, a small involuntary tremor that travels up the wrist and settles in the forearm. The tremor does not stop when the call connects.
You sit in the warm chair. The leather is warm. The room is quiet. The silence presses against your sternum, a cold weight that makes it hard to draw the full breath. You try to fill the lungs. The air is thin. The breath does not reach the bottom of the chest. The child in the waiting room at Ayuda is three years old—the one who faced the abuse in detention, the one whose parent you ripped from her arms at the border by reviving zero-tolerance. You have not met the child, but you know the file number. You locked her parent in a cell a thousand miles away. Now you stand in the hallway, Donald. You are on the outside, and you are the one pounding on the glass. The child’s breathing shallows, and your own chest mimics it, a mirroring constriction that leaves your ribs aching as if you had spent the night curled on a concrete floor.
And you, agent. You, the one who lifted the handle at the door. Your badge is cold against your chest. Your hand is colder. You would later tell your supervisor that you followed procedure. The cold will sit in the joints of your fingers while you drive home tonight. It will wake you before the alarm. It will stay in the bones. You will lift your own daughter into bed with the hands of a man who was sent to take the files of a child who drew a house with a door that does not close. You are the reason the door does not close.
You are not dangerous, Donald. You are small. Your hand on the pen is the hand of a toddler grasping a crayon—the same small hand that reached for a parent you took away. The hand drops the pen. The hand reaches for the water. The hand shakes. You are a small man with large orders, and the men at the doors will not break the glass because they know you are listening to the quiet.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” — Mark 10:14
The child’s hand is on the lawyer’s door. The agent’s hand is on the handle. The Christ is at the door. And you, Donald, are forbidding.