Aisha Bailey
 There are those who care for families—no matter who they are, where they come from, or what language they speak.

Just recently, a family I’ve grown close to came into my office. Quiet, somber, they asked for all their records—urgently. When I asked why, the mother whispered that some of their family had already been sent back to their country of origin. The rest needed to leave—immediately.

I tried to catch my breath.
 These were good people.
 Hardworking people.
 People who had made this country their home.

All I could do was cry.
 I wrapped my arms around a woman I had come to know, come to respect, and felt a pit of anguish rise in my chest like a wave I couldn’t hold back.

There’s an irony that won’t leave me:
 That some whose ancestors braved shores and slipped across borders just a couple generations ago have since forged a false history in fire—rewritten and repackaged, but never true.
 Their conviction doesn’t make it so.

It takes a kinetic kind of toil to build a life.
 To create rhythm and routine.
 To build consistency, connection, and community.

And yet, laws—cold, calloused, and calculated—seek to undo it all.
 To unmake what has been made.
 To uproot what has taken years to grow.

They say these families are “less than.”
 But I have seen the fullness of their humanity.
 I have watched their children thrive,
 dream,
 laugh,
 heal.

And now, I fear.
 For them.
 For others.
 For the unseen toll on the children forced to carry the weight of loss and displacement.

How will they return?
 Will they be punished for leaving?
 What will this rupture mean for the small, tender hearts I care for every day?

I sobbed as I said goodbye.
 I held their hands, their shoulders, their pain.

And I know—deep in my bones—that there is a karmic debt being accrued by these biased, brutal policies.
 This system dares to expel people from the very continent it resides on.

These are storybook times now—tendrilled lies spun into myths about a past that never existed.
 Some find comfort in those illusions.
 But let’s be clear:
 It never was.

There were always people here.
 Long before you came.

This country was a country before you waved a muslin flag and watched the red and white dye smear on your sweaty fingertips in summer.
 Before your progenitor marched in Klan rallies to stake his claim on citizenship.

This land was my land.
 This land was theirs too.
 And it still is.

Lest we forget—
 God sees all.