Giselle, you were twelve when the man bought you. You called the police. You spoke through a translator. You named the man who bought you. Donald, you stopped paying her lawyer.
The federal government allowed its contract with the Acacia Center for Justice to expire this week, ending legal representation for tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant minors in immigration court. The administration stopped paying the contract in December. The government owes Acacia roughly $65 million. In June, the president signed a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill into law. Ten current and former prosecutors sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security warning that the approach endangers trafficking victims who came forward to testify against their abusers. “By arresting and deporting survivors who have come forward and applied for protection,” the letter reads, “the Government also sends a chilling message to the larger community: don’t call the police, don’t report crime — you or your loved ones will get deported.” Since January, immigration judges have issued roughly 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders per month against unaccompanied minors — about four times the rate from the previous term. Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that subcontracted with Acacia, announced it will no longer participate after accumulating $20 million in unpaid fees. A federal court hearing on the unpaid bills is set for August 6.
Donald, you stopped paying the lawyers because the lawyers were doing their job. A child in immigration court without a lawyer is a child who cannot file the trafficking petition, who cannot produce the evidence of what was done to her, who cannot ask the judge for the protection Congress wrote into law for exactly this child. A child without a lawyer is a child the system can process at the speed you demanded. That is why the money stopped.
Donald, you read the prosecutors’ letter. Ten of them wrote it. They told you: children who came forward to testify against their traffickers would be deported. The next child who is bought and sold will not call the police. You read that. You let the contract expire anyway. You directed the judges to move faster. You told the providers to hand over the confidential client files. Every step was a choice. Every step was yours.
The trafficking ring is still operating. The traffickers are still moving children through the border. The traffickers know that you are deporting the witnesses. The traffickers are not afraid of you. The traffickers are afraid of Giselle. Giselle is the one who saw their faces. Giselle is the one who knows their names. Giselle is the one who told the prosecutors. Giselle is the one you are deporting. You have made the traffickers safer than the victims. You have taught the community that reporting a crime is a deportation offense. The $65 million is not a rounding error. The $65 million is what you decided the children were not worth.
Giselle is on the plane. The plane is climbing. Giselle’s hands are cold against the armrest. Giselle’s throat is dry. Giselle’s stomach is turning. Giselle is being sent back to the people who trafficked her. You, Donald, are at a desk. Your hands are warm. Your throat is not tight. Your stomach is fine. You signed the paper. You arranged the work so Giselle’s cold hands never reach your desk. You do not feel her hands. You will never feel her hands. The not-feeling is the indictment.
Donald, your throat catches when you swallow. It will catch at dinner. It will catch when the evening brief crosses your desk and the trafficking statistics are in the second column, right below the deportation numbers. The twelve-year-old’s name is on a docket somewhere in a filing your administration will never read. The trafficker’s name is not on any docket because the lawyer who would have filed the trafficking petition was furloughed in March. You arranged this. The system you dismantled was built so that a child who had the courage to come forward would find a lawyer waiting for her. You made sure the lawyer was not there.
Donald, your hands sign the morning briefing. Your hands shake the hands in the lobby. Your hands have touched every document on your desk since December, and every document has been touched by the hand that stopped paying the lawyer who represented Giselle. Your hand did not pause. Your hand does not feel what it has done. The tightness in your chest when you read the trafficking numbers should not go away. It will not go away. You will carry it into the cabinet meeting and out of the cabinet meeting and into the car and into the house and into bed, and it will be there in the morning, and it will be there the next morning, and it will not leave. It is the smallest payment you will ever make toward what you have done.
Donald, the next girl — the next twelve-year-old who is brought across the border and sold into a room — will not pick up the phone. You have made sure of it. The phone will sit in her hand and she will not dial because the last child who dialed was deported. This is what you built. Not a wall. Not a fence. A silence. You built a silence out of defunded contracts and fast-tracked hearings and a deliberate refusal to let children speak, and the silence will hold long after you are gone, because the child who would have called the police learned from the child before her that calling the police is how you get sent back.
“I saw you. You did not see me, nor did you know me. You took my garment for my true self. And you did not recognize me.” — Gospel of Mary 15:8–13
Donald, you saw Giselle’s case file. You did not see Giselle. You took her deportation order for her true self. You chose not to recognize her. The Gospel describes a failure to see the divine in the ordinary. Your failure is not a failure to see. It is a choice to look away. That is worse than blindness. It is policy.
Donald, you took the lawyer away. You took the hearing away. You sent her back. There is a word for what you have done to the law that was written for her. The word is not enforcement. The word is betrayal. Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did not do for me. Matthew 25:45.