AFTER READING "MINNESOTA BRIEF: THINK OF THE CHILDREN" BY BREE DONOVAN

by Laurie Rosen

this morning i read this poem 

so sad it feels like a stab 

to my heart i think 

maybe this could move 

the right people…

but the ones who need to be moved 

are heartless with nothing to stab

and empty of any passion 

for reading poetry 

"They Are All Responsible" cartoon by Ann Telnaes

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in One Art: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Oddball Magazine, The New Verse News, Minyan Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food, Zig Zag Lit Mag, and elsewhere. Laurie was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. 

MINNESOTA BRIEF: THINK OF THE CHILDREN

by Bree Donovan

A safeguard document is helping parents prepare in case of ICE arrest and family separation. —CBS News, January 16, 2026.  Click for a video explaining DOPA.

If you cannot see this as an occupation,
but you do wince about the children
(because after all, at heart, you’re kind), please know:
hundreds of adults in Minnesota are training
as DOPAs—meaning “Delegation of Parental
Authority” designees—so in the event children’s parents
are kidnapped and detained who knows where or
deported who knows where, and their children
no longer have mami, hooyo, pa, they do have,
some have, a DOPA. A someone, DOPA, if not papi.
 
If children are your occasional concern, because of course
the children of the hunted could be innocent until proven
guilty, please know: the ones in children’s hospice
(in case you’ve thought of them, yes there are
hospices just for children), each have a nurse,
so far not deported, enfermera, kalkaalisada,
and a DOPA on file in case they die
without their waalidka, their Pa-Moe holding their hand.
 
If children are a now and then concern, pro tip:
a DOPA can be an aunt, npawg, grandfather,
pu, neighbor, pii chai, or attorney. As long
as DOPA papers are signed, the npawg,
neighbor, auntie has the legal right (temporarily
but who actually knows) to decide about schools,
medical care, care in general (will they know
of allergies, asthma, bedwetting, things only parents
know?). Pii chai become waalidka, attorneys-in-fact.
 
If children cross your mind—if—carry on:
parents of disabled children, of children still at home
ages 3 days to 17 years, parents who must keep
working and worry some night as they walk
to their car out the service door they will be taken,
dread this vividly, continuously, while feeding, holding,
tucking in their children, their deepest concern, seeing 
their own abductions play out behind their children’s stories
of dinosaurs and flying tigers and apps and places
where it’s always warm and ice cream is free on trees,
these parents have pre-erased themselves with DOPAs.
DOPAs mean their children, their abiding broken-hearted 
concern, might continue to be cared for somehow for some time.

DOPAs are these parents's last best loving acts. 

So go on, monsters. The children are covered. 

Author's note: The languages here are Spanish, Somali, Karen, Hmong—just some of the languages spoken by kidnapped parents of children in Minnesota.

Bree Donovan is the pseudonym of a St. Paul, Minnesota writer who is active on Signal. A childless adult adoptee, Bree thinks often of the children.