THE LEAST OF WHAT WE DO

by Pilar Saavedra-Vela

 

Vusala Yusifova and her daughter, Inji, asylum seekers from Azerbaijan, cutting a client’s hair in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Photograph by César Rodríguez.

 

Trump Deported Them. A Costa Rican Mountain Town Took Them In. —The New York Times, April 16, 2026
 

 

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. —Matthew 25:31-46
 
 

The cicadas have been silenced
by the chill of the oncoming night
 
On the highway, under a tree,
cardboard  is home  to a warm body
 
The cloud village of Monteverde
welcomes  deported families
 
from Russia and Azerbaijan who sought
asylum in America
 
One Russian witnessed  election cheating
another  man protested in Azerbaijan
 
Imagine being denied American
solidarity, shown instead a boot
 
all the way to  Costa Rican limbo
to find help among  the Quakers
 
Korean war objectors
who settled  a mountain top
 
The poet’s song has been silenced
 by the chill of the oncoming night
 
The tired, poor yearning masses
cradled by the foreigners as their own.


Pilar Saavedra-Vela is a student of poetry, painting, and acting, former editor and translator.  Born in Colombia, she grew up in the US  and now lives in Costa Rica. Pilar's poetry has been published in Passagers and The New Verse News.

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.

THE THEOLOGY OF ICE

by Stuart Broughton

A protester carries a US flag through teargas launched to clear protesters outside the Broadview immigration processing centre in Chicago. —The Guardian, October 3, 2025

NBC Chicago's investigative team reports at least 3,000 jailed immigrants have vanished from federal records, according to human rights attorneys and organizations. 

All across America
people are 
disappearing.
One minute
they're here
and the next
they're gone. 
Disappeared,
dissolved,
dematerialised.
Deported.
Detained.

It's an American
Rapture. 
The Rapture,
but only in
America.

Those of us
brought up
on such theological
dogmas
know that this 
expulsion of the
saints will
usher in
a tribulation.
As if things
could get
worse.

The thing we got wrong
was that instead of the angels
doing the Lord’s work,
it’s the agents 
doing the Devil’s.

As my old pastor
used to say,
“Fuck”.

Stuart Broughton. Gen-something. Library-adjacent. Tangata Tiriti. Libra. From  Aotearoa | New Zealand. Trying to work it out.

THE MILLER'S TALE

by Lynnie Gobeille

I tend to be on the lighter side of white,

don’t often get singled out—

in fact at 74 I am barely noticed.

I can walk down (mostly) any street and feel safe.

No fear of being deported.

I have no tattoo that would taunt them.

No affiliation with some unseen gang.

No radical disclaimer required

I can roam my country freely.

Little do they know of my SDS ancient background—

Or my scars from protests long since past.

I tend to be on the lighter shade of pale.

Students for a Democratic Society button circa 1965

Lynnie Gobeille is passionate about poetry. She is one of the cofounders/editors of The Origami Poems Project, a world wide “free poetry event.” She was the Editor of the Providence Journal Poetry Corner (St.Cty Section). Her poetry has been published online & in numerous journals. Her work has also been read on NPR & ELFIN radio in England. She currently works at her local Library, with fingers crossed that the funding continues to keep the doors open.

ARE WE THERE YET?

Ode to Passover

by Anita S Pulier

Painting by Frans Pourpos the Elder (c. 1565–1580) depicting God showing Moses the Promised Land. Source: Wikipedia.

Celebrate forty years of wandering.
Forty years of searching.

Read Haggadah to the children,
give thanks,

sing praises
for the tribe surviving.

Focus on the ancients,
not the news.

Ignore ICE, as it issues
this warning: if officers

view you as Other,
hear a foreign accent,

take notice of tatoos,
you will be wrangled

like cattle into pens
and, paperless or not, deported.

To where? Weep, explain
you have lived here

since you were two,
this is your home.

Your wife, your children,
your aged mother

may never see you again.
Glory be to what?

Listen! Angry screams nurtured
by hatred, drown out the cries

of kids in Florida, or Texas, or next door.
How many more will be force fed this poison

in the name of a merciless God
punishing the sin of survival?

and Gaza
and Gaza

Tonight, we Jews co-opt words;
suffering, pain, freedom.

I imagine the day that
anyone’s God

will deliver enlightenment,
angels will sing,

heavenly light will shine
on the cruel irony of the self-righteous,

the day each of us will be revealed
as the supplicant,

each of us the Other.
The day our ancient journey,

our Passover celebration,
will not fall so woefully short

of the promised land.

Anita S Pulier's newest  books are Paradise Reexamined and Leaving Brooklyn  (Kelsay Books). ). Anita’s poems have appeared in many journals and her work is included in nine print anthologies. Anita has been a featured poet on The Writer's Almanac and Cultural Daily.

FRIDA KAHLO AS A KEYCHAIN

by Terri Kirby Erickson

My Frida Kahlo keychain, a gift from a longtime
friend in Lubbock, is made of felt, hand-embroidered 
with the brightest threads. Her pink floral headdress 
 
is rainbow-shaped, her eyebrows like a minimalist 
painting of a bird in flight—one solid line, double-
arched, meeting in the center of her forehead. With
 
eyes forever closed, this keychain Frida is always 
smiling. She never had polio or walked with a limp. 
Her spine and pelvis were never broken, her uterus 
 
never pierced by an iron bar. In fact, she has no body, 
only a lime-green tassel where her neck should be. 
To her, Diego is just a name, not a faithless husband, 
 
no one to whom her tortured letters were addressed. 
Hanging from a set of keys, she cannot know the fate 
of brown-skinned immigrants gathered like herds 
 
of cattle, handcuffed and transported, the families who 
may not find each other again, the crying babies, their 
stolen mothers. Keychain Frida has no arms to paint 
 
their pain in vibrant colors—a small portrait of herself 
in the corner of the canvas, boldly staring, her blood-
red heart dangling between her breasts like a pendant.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of award-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Latin American Literary Review, ONE ART, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Rattle, The SUN, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many other literary journals, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina, USA.

SENT HOME TO DIE: US IMMIGRATION POLICY IN 2018

by Barbara J. Clark

As a growing number of families are separated as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to control illegal immigration, some parents are being deported before recovering their children.. —Miriam Jordan, The New York Times, June 17, 2018. Photo credit Marian Carrasquero/The New York Times.

Someone has killed my husband and is trying to kill me and my children.

I run away from the killer and towards your home for many days and nights,

Because

I want to live and I want my children to live.

I know your home is a safe haven for us.

Exhausted and hungry we finally make it to your doorstep.

And knock on your door,

But you don’t answer.

We camp out on your front porch for many days and nights.

We knock on your door,

Every day.

But you don’t answer.

We are out of food and water and my baby is running a fever.

In desperation,

I enter your home through an open window.

I find you and tell you I have entered,

Whereupon

You tell me I am a criminal

Because

I entered your home through a window and not the door.

I try to tell you why,

But you won’t listen or don't understand my language.

Instead,

You put me in jail,

You kidnap my children,

You tell me I am a bad mother,

And that I should never have come,

That I should never have run from this killer.

The next day,

You stop kidnapping the children of those coming through the window.

Excitedly,

I ask you, "where are my children and when can I see them?"

You tell me you don’t know or care where they are.

That I should never have run from this killer.

And that I should never have come.

You tell me I am a bad mother,

And have lost my children.

You send me home

TO DIE.

Barbara J. Clark is a registered patent attorney with 24 years of experience drafting and prosecuting patent applications before the USPTO. She currently runs her own patent law firm in Ames, Iowa. She also enjoys writing picture books, social commentary and humorous memoirs. Last week, Ms. Clark, together with over 5000 other attorneys nationwide, signed up to volunteer through Lawyers For Good Government to help provide pro bono legal services to those seeking asylum. She will be training and working remotely on various activities, including immigration parole bond hearings and legal research and writing. She also signed up with the Dilley Project and will be going to Dilley, Texas in August, with an interpreter, to help prepare mothers (whose children are with them) for their “credible fear” interviews.