They come in the night,
not as protectors but predators,
with windless breath and guns without names—
ICE, like a curse, like a shiver
that snatches children from classrooms,
fathers from job sites,
mothers mid-meal, mid-prayer, mid-kiss.
This is not law.
This is erasure by clipboard.
A bootprint on birthright.
A cage dressed in government seal.
Paper does not make a person.
Borders do not define a soul.
They storm our neighborhoods
as if love could be detained,
as if survival were a crime,
as if home were something
they could revoke with a knock.
But we know:
no badge is holy when it breaks a family.
No uniform excuses the breaking of bodies
or the breaking of bread turned bitter
by fear.
And so we rise.
We link arms in sanctuary churches,
tattoo resistance into our tongues,
block doors, hold vigils,
write names in the sky with our grief.
We say ni uno más.
We say abolish ICE.
We say dignity has no detention center.
Tyranny thrives on silence—
so we scream.
We scream in Spanish, in English,
in every mother tongue torn from a mother’s throat.
We will not unsee.
We will not comply.
We will not forget the ones taken,
because memory is also a weapon.
And mercy—
mercy is an act of war
against this cold machine.
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