CLAMPDOWN AT DILLEY DETENTION CENTER

by Ellen Romano

Children detained at the immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas, speaking with ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg over video call. Clockwise from top left: Diana Crespo, Luka Mora, Juan Nicolas Mo, Alexander Perez, Amalia Arrieta, Mayra Delgado. Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica. Click here to donate to ProPublica.

 

Imagine the children’s drawings, 

a family of three, standing in a cage, 

a family of five, standing in a cage, their faces blank,

a family of seven lying down in a cage, labelled

with the words, me quiero ir,  I want to go home. 

 

Imagine the children’s letters,

We are kidnapped, help.

There’s an agent here, he’s watching us.

I can’t see Willi, accompanied by a picture of a pet cat.

 

On the day the art supplies are confiscated,

crayons, pencils, drawing paper,

the letters and pictures are seized as well,

portraits of friends, the tracing of a child’s hand,

tears and a frowning face in the palm,

even a five year-old’s picture of a peaked roof house,

lit from one corner by an inextinguishable sun.

 

One mother saves a handful of shredded pages,

all that is left of her daughter’s drawings. In a place

that is never warm enough, another mother hides

the drawings of as many children as she can

in the sleeves of her puffy jacket, carries them

everywhere. 

 

Imagine a government that tries to steal 

a child’s ability to imagine, imagine a five-year old

wearing a detention uniform, a replacement 

for the blue, bunny-eared jacket taken from him,

the conejo that shared his name,

 

imagine a child’s voice too dangerous to be heard,

though no louder than the sound

a crayon makes on a scrap of paper.

Author’s note: All descriptions of children's letters and art work were taken from various news articles except for the description of a five-year old's picture of a house, which as an elementary school educator I feel is quite typical.

Ellen Romano, she/her, is an educator, mother, grandmother, widow, and beekeeper living with her dog, Doc, in Hayward, California. She is the winner of Third Wednesday’s 2023 Poetry Prize, and won second place in Naugatuck River Review’s 2023 Narrative Poetry Contest. Other work has appeared in Lascaux Review, The Deadlands, december magazine, and other publications. 

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 INEQUITY OF JUSTICE

A Sestina

by Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Dreams die in the blood of children,                                          

embryos born from the seeds of sorrow,

the milk of starvation, the torture

of chains and broken bones, the searching

of scorched earth; of survival as the “other.”

Mother and child, deported, disappear.

A cancer-ridden toddler and his mother disappear.
The video follows the mother, struggling to free her child
from the chains that bind them to “others,”
to the brutal and inhumane soldiers, deaf to sorrow,
prodding them toward a military plane, after searching
naked bodies with naked hatred as prodding guns torture
 
the nameless, bent and broken, then pack them in tortured
positions, until the engines roar, the plane lifts, and America disappears.
Activists march in the streets, carrying signs of protest, searching,
their eyes and ears alert to the danger of their neighbors. Children
and strangers in their midst, yet unaware of pain and sorrow, 
might be kidnapped, handcuffed, and thrown into cars with “others.”  
 
As if on cue, masked men swoop down upon “others,”
targets of skin and color, a mother and three daughters, tortured 
by HSI in their own home, left with smashed lives of fear and sorrow,
shivering in their underwear, in the rain, until the men with guns disappear,
leaving terror, and trauma cut with razor blades, on the backs of children
 looking for meaning in sleep, and awaken to desperate searching. 
 
Is there no end to a life whose desperate searching
leaves scars and barriers to block all “others,”
grieving as ICE hunts men, women, and children.?
The loss of deported loved ones enduring torture
affects human beings who mourn their disappearance,
and pursue justice in community and legal searches.?
 
Today, a Vermont man was not deported. Released from sorrow,
returning to his community which made, rehearsed, and researched 
plans to release him, they acted to assure his reappearance.
Hope returns with him, to all of us in helping “others”
escape the lawlessness of criminals in their acts of torturing
“Illegal aliens”, the name given to adults and innocent children.
 
            How much longer can children endure grief, sorrow, and torture?
Who will name these children? Why are they the “others”?  Has justice disappeared?

Lucille Gang Shulklapper is the published author of five chapbooks of poetry,  short stories, and picture books. Her work appears in journals, magazines, and online. She has taught reading from K-college, made recordings for the blind, and led workshops for The Florida Center for the Book, and others. Though she wrote from the age of six, she was never published until  the age of 60. Three decades later, she has started an Open Mic Poetry Program for her residential, and assisted living fellow retirees.   She lives in Boca Raton, Florida. 

A GRIM FAIRY TALE

by Lynn White

Dozens of asylum-seeking children have been kidnapped by gangs from a Brighton [UK] hotel run by the Home Office in a pattern apparently being repeated across the south coast, an Observer investigation can reveal. A whistleblower, who works for Home Office contractor Mitie, and child protection sources describe children being abducted off the street outside the hotel and bundled into cars. “Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers,” said the source. —The Observer, January 21, 2023 PHOTO: Hove, where unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have been abducted, according to a contractor working for the Home Office. Credit: Andy Hall/The Observer

When I was a child 

my mother told me 

that Never Never Land

Is where the lost children go,

those who can’t find their way home.

My mother told me that

they stay children for ever

and can play all day long.

It sounds like a fairy tale

and perhaps 

that’s where these children have gone,

stepped into a fairy tale

or perhaps

they’ve been taken into one

by a monster

straight out of Grimm.

And now they wait.

And there’ll be others

waiting.

Waiting,

for someone to find them.

Perhaps they’ll put up a sign

hoping someone will see.

And they’ll sit by the sign

waiting for rescue,

waiting for the fairy tale ending

that can never come.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. 

INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL

by Stephen Barile

 

Bill told me when he was a boy

Two federal officers and an Indian agent

Came to his parent’s hogan,

 

And against his mother’s will

Put him on a bus with other Navajo boys

He knew and delivered them to Tolatchi.

 

On the bus trip there,

From the window, he kept careful watch

Of the position of the sun

 

In the afternoon sky as a means

To guide him home to Chinle,

He said, pointing to the clouds.

 

Bill moved closer as he bragged,

Navajo were experts at disappearing

quickly and hiding in the vast lands.

 

At Chuska Indian Boarding School

He would be assimilated

Into American culture,

 

Given an American-style haircut,

Dressed in a white child’s clothes,

Forbidden to speak his only language.

 

From the moment he arrived,

He could no longer be an Indian.

They cut off his hair,

 

Forbade singing and dancing.

He waited until dark, then ran

In the direction of his family home.

 

Bill figured he ran south

Near Tse Bonito. At Separate Hill,

A search party nearly captured him.

 

He kept on running in the night

South to Mexican Springs and Nakaibito

At sunrise, he was west of Kinlichee.

 

Over the next two days, he found food

And rested, then ran to Nazlini, then Chinle.

It took him three days to get there.

 

His mother hid him carefully

When Indian agents came around

To check on his whereabouts.

Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, educated in the public schools, attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. He was a long-time member of the Fresno Poet's Association. Stephen Barile taught writing at Madera Community College and CSU Fresno. His poems have been published in Featured Poets, Santa Clara Review, Kathmandu Tribune, Tower Poetry, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Rue Scribe, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Metafore Magazine, From Sac Literary Journal, The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and Pharos, among others journals.

SAVING PAUL RUSESABAGINA

by Elane Gutterman

Paul Rusesabagina at his cell at the Remera Metropolitan Police Station, Kigali, Rwanda on September 3, 2020. Rusesabagina, arrested early this week to face terror, murder, and arson charges, says he is choosing his defence team to prove his innocence. Following his arrest, Mr Rusesabagina, whose heroic actions during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi inspired the Hollywood movie Hotel Rwanda, was paraded before the media by Rwandan authorities on Monday. His deeds are also captured in the 1998 book We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by American journalist and author Philip Gourevitch. It remains unclear how he ended up on Rwandan soil, where had not set foot in almost 20 years. Authorities said he was arrested on an international warrant, and with the cooperation of other countries. He is accused of founding and sponsoring an armed rebellion that claimed multiple attacks on Rwandan territory, leading to deaths and destruction of property. While living in Belgium and the US with his family, he formed the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD) in 2018, an opposition party with a military wing—the National Liberation Front (FLN)—that has claimed responsibility for a spate of attacks in Rwanda, from its base in eastern DRC. He has also been a fierce critic of President Paul Kagame since the early 2000s, often accusing his government of undermining human rights. —The East African, September 3, 2020

This is why I say that the individual’s most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency —Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner, An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography


Transported to the land of a thousand hills
at the Hotel des Mille Collines,
the Hotel Rwanda of that harrowing film,
we cheered for the manager,
Paul Rusesabagina, who managed to save
more than twelve hundred Hutus and Tutsis,
after they fled the killing streets
during the Never Again days
when neighbors hunted down neighbors
as spies and inyenzi cockroaches.

Years later, I swam in the hotel pool
where refugees once drank the water.
I ate in the hotel café where penniless
refugees once came for free meals.
I rode the City’s gardened main thoroughfares,
I went to its clinics, restaurants
and galleries. My eyes saw a facade
of peace and prosperity in this land
of a thousand hills.

Yet the hills stood without freedom
and the ruling strongman ruthlessly silenced
his critics. Even before the film,
Rusesabagina had to leave his country to champion change,
living as a citizen of Belgium, then a resident of Texas.
And this week the strongman netted
new prey, that hero kidnapped, taken from Dubai
to Rwanda, to face trumped up charges as a terrorist.

Now, I too feel immersed in the sea of lies
created by our wannabe strongman.
How can Rusesabagina be saved --
yes, he who managed to save so many.

Elane Gutterman is a health researcher who has studied breast cancer treatment in Rwanda and other East African countries. She is a trustee and the literary chair at the West Windsor Arts Center. Her poems have been published in Kelsey Review, Patterson Literary Review, U.S.1 Summer Fiction, and TheNewVerse.News.

3 MONTHS, 200 NIGERIAN SCHOOLGIRLS

by Paula Schulz

In the 3 months since 200 schoolgirls
were kidnapped, 11 parents have died.
The town of Chibok is just 1 village
cut off from the world, from all mercy,
by Boko Haram. What Haram’s taken--
how to imagine the wear on parents,

the misery of loving fathers
who could not keep their own girls
safe from violent men. The taken
have taken others with them to death’s
doorway. And beyond. 7 fathers could not escape the merci-
less attack on Kautakari village.

4 more have died of heart failure or illness. A village
themselves, they are the grief-broken parents
of the missing. Life showed no mercy
to the father, coma-like and repeating his girls’
names “until life left him”. Until he died,
to say it plainly. So much has been taken

from these families. The school girls taken,
their fathers taken. Powerless villages
of Nigeria pray for life, expect death.
Waiting is hardest for the parents:
all they can think of is their little girls,
children who are merciful, gentle. No mercy

seems likely for them. What kind of mercy
can be found in mobs who burn cars, have taken
airlines out of service. The 57 girls
who ran home found help in their villages.
Grief and rape counselors for themselves, their families.
Now will food shortages mean death?

Chibuk village, the taken girls, their parents:
it can’t be told in numbers, this story
of impending death, this story without mercy.


Editor’s note: This poem is based on reporting in the AP story 11 “Parents of Nigeria’s Abducted Girls Die" by Michelle Faul, July 22, 2014.


Paula Schulz works daily in a 3K setting, sits for grandchildren and grieves for these children and their families.

BOKO HARAM APOLOGIZES

by Paula Schulz

We have taken your children.
We needed something humble to terrorize,
something weak to push around, break like toys.

We have taken your daughters from school.
They shouldn't have been there. We never
went. Yes, the world cannot understand

that we have taken your worthless daughters
from school. Western education is
sinful. And a smart ox does no more work

than a stupid one. We can sell them as whores,
feed them or not, trade them for men of value.
Any grief in us is cold: a chill blade

to stab the hateful. We are not men
who cry womanish tears. We will fire
the bullets of our anger into the future.

We are not peaceful men.


Paula Schulz has taught children for nearly twenty years and joins many others who are saddened and appalled by this kidnapping.