I read this recently on a Substack:

This Is Not Who We Are

What happened to Maria doesn’t make us safer. It makes us smaller.

Democratic Wins Media

Aug 8READ IN APP

This week, Senator Mark Kelly visited the ICE detention facility in Eloy, Arizona. What he saw there is disturbing, and he shared one story in particular that stood out – because it so clearly reveals how deeply broken, and inhumane, our immigration system has become.

Maria has lived in the U.S. for twenty years. She has no criminal history. Her son is a U.S. Marine, stationed in Yuma, Arizona. He’s married to another Marine. Together, they have a two-year-old – Maria’s grandson.

Maria was in Yuma to help her family. Her son was preparing to leave for training. Her daughter-in-law had just had hip surgery. So Maria stepped in, like any grandmother would, to help care for their young child.

Then, after a routine grocery run, she was detained. When she returned to base – again, the very base where her son serves – she was stopped, reported to Customs and Border Protection, and sent to ICE custody. That’s where she is now.

We want to be very clear about what this means. Maria was detained on a U.S. military base, while caring for her Marine son’s family. She is now being held in detention, separated from her grandson, for trying to be there for him.

This is not a story about border security. This is not about rule of law. This is about a system that has lost its way.

When Senator Kelly asked if she had been there when her son graduated from boot camp, Maria broke down in tears. She didn’t lash out. She didn’t demand anything. She just kept saying how proud she was of her son.

That’s what stuck with us.

We’re told that harsh immigration enforcement is about keeping us safe. But detaining a grandmother who is helping raise her Marine son’s child doesn’t make us safer. It makes us smaller. It trades compassion for cruelty and common sense for fear.

This country has always been at its best when we recognize the humanity in each other. That’s what binds us together – across difference, across generation, across immigration status. We say we value family. We say we support our troops. We say we welcome those who contribute to our communities.

But actions like this tell a different story.

Maria is not a threat. She is a mother. A grandmother. A proud parent of a Marine. She is exactly the kind of person any country should be proud to call its own.

So we have to ask: if we treat Maria this way, who are we? And more urgently: who are we becoming?

This is not who we are. Or, if we’re not careful, it soon will be.

Let’s choose better. Let’s fight for better. Because no one who loves this country – who sacrifices for it – should be treated like this.

The night before I read this, I had been watching the excellent TV series, Babylon Berlin:

Colognian commissioner Gereon Rath moves to Berlin, the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4378376/

I have reached the episode where the seething resentment toward Jews is taking shape and brown uniformed youths are threatening a wealthy elderly Jew who was trying to leave a train in the station. They heckle him, surrounding him, until he is so overwhelmed with fear he has a heart attack.

When I read the above piece, after watching what has been shown in the last few months on the news of ICE thugs surrounding innocent, helpless and harmless individuals and detaining them far from their families, I feel like I am still immersed in the horror and oppression of Babylon Berlin.