The World Doesn't Work That Way, but It Could

by Yxta Maya Murray

  “Rehabilitation robotics,” Monica said.

  “That’s right,” Mom said.

  “And after U of A, I’ll go to Michigan or MIT and get a master’s,” Monica said.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “So just settle down.”

  Monica went quiet again looking at the tree pictures. All the rest of the seven women and two men got called, and more people came. The nurse who was a Tennessee Walker played with her phone and took two calls.

  The white nurse who was a Clydesdale came out of the door and said, “Gutiérrez.”

  “Wait here, honey,” Mom said to me.

  “Can I come?” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” Monica said. They left.

  I sat on my chair and looked at the new people who had shown up. It was a bunch like the others, mostly women and a few men and the women being mad at the men.

  “Just shut up,” a white lady wearing tight black pants and who was a Miniature Warmblood said to another hound-looking man wearing an Ole Miss sweatshirt.

  “Hey, little fidget,” the Tennessee Walker nurse said to me. She opened up a drawer in her desk and took out some candy. “Want something sweet?” She reached over her desk and handed me a wrapped caramel.

  “Thank you,” I said. I ate it.

  “Aren’t these good?” she said, popping one into her own mouth.

  “Tennessee Walkers can be any color,” I said. “They all got flashy and unique four-beat gaits and their long necks are elegant and refined.”

  “Well, isn’t that something,” the nurse said.

  Monica came hustling out. Her eyes had gone glossy and red, and she dashed through the office and out the front door. All the people bickering in the room went totally quiet and stared.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Mom said, coming out after Monica. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” the Tennessee Walker nurse said. “It happens.”

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Mom said. I followed her out.

  When we go to our car, which is a black Honda, Monica had her arms crossed across her chest, and it looked like her forehead was swelling. Mom beeped the car so it opened. Monica got in the back seat and lay down. I got in the back seat too and curled up over her legs. Mom got in the front seat and started driving.

  “It’s all right,” Mom said. “It’s okay.”

  “You’re not mad?” Monica said, crying.

  “Don’t cry,” I said, hugging her legs.

  “Of course I’m mad,” Mom said. “But it’ll be all right. We’ll figure it out. Maybe we can make another appointment.”

  “Maybe New York will be nice,” Monica said in a crackly voice.

  Mom clamped her mouth down and kept driving. We were all quiet for a while except for Monica huffing raggedy while she tried not to cry so hard. I crawled all around her and cuddled up in her crooks. After about twenty minutes, she calmed down and tugged on my arm.

  “Be a Palomino, Chris,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Mom said, looking at us through the rearview. “Chrissie, do your Palomino.”

  I looked down at my legs and arms all tangled up with my sister’s. I tried to horse up my mind, but I couldn’t see that pale-yellow shine on them anymore. My pony magic was gone. My hands weren’t hooves but just had fingers. My feet were girl feet in sneakers.

  “I don’t want to be a Palomino anymore,” I said.

  “Well, what do you want to be then, a Clydesdale?” Monica said.

  “I want to be like you,” I said.

  Monica looked up and out the opposite car window. She looked tired and beautiful. Under my hands I could feel the tight, hard swell of her belly.

  “No you don’t, baby,” she said.*

  We recommend Option 3 as the most effective method to achieve operational objectives and the Administration’s goal to end “catch and release.” This initiative would pursue prosecution of all amenable adults who cross our border illegally, including those presenting with a family unit, between ports of entry in coordination with DOJ.

  KEVIN MCALEENAN, Commissioner, US Custom and Border Protection; L. FRANCIS CISSNA, Director, US Citizen and Immigration Services; THOMAS D. HOMAN, Acting Director, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Memorandum for the Secretary: Increasing Prosecutions of Immigration Violations,” April 23, 2018, https://www.openthegovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/other-files/Part3%20from%20CBP-2018-070727_Redacted.pdf

  This practice of separating class members from their minor children, and failing to reunify class members with those children, without any showing the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child is sufficient to find Plaintiffs have a likelihood of success on their due process claim. . . . A practice of this sort implemented in this way is likely to be “so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience.”

  Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enf’t (“ICE”), 310 F. Supp. 3d 1133, 1145 (S.D. Cal. 2018), modified, 330 F.R.D. 284 (S.D. Cal. 2019) (quoting County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847 n.8 (1998))

  Option 3

  “IS IT DONE YET?” Gary asked. He stood at my door. Gary’s probably fifty-two years old and about five foot five. He has brown hair and brown eyes and wears rimless glasses. Today he also wore a striped pink shirt with a solid-blue tie.

  “Not quite,” I said, writing at my desk, and I mean frantically typing garbage letters on my computer to look like I was working. I’m forty-eight years old, and I’m six foot four. I have brown hair and brown eyes. I have a mole on my left shoulder, and I need to do sit-ups. I’m a lawyer for the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), which serves the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) out of Potomac Center North, on Twelfth SW. Gary is my bastard of a boss.

  “I asked for it by two o’clock today,” Gary said.

  “It’s not totally ready.” I looked at the three massive accordion files on my desk and the three boxes of files on the floor next to my feet and sniffed helplessly.

  “Do you have too much on your plate, Kevin?” Gary asked, his voice getting thin and high, like a woman’s. “Is that the problem?”

  “I’ll get it to you by tomorrow,” I said.

  “Tomorrow at what time?” Gary asked.

  “First thing,” I said.

  Gary nodded and turned to leave. I looked at the clock on my computer and saw that it already said 2:42 p.m.

  “Or,” I said.

  Gary turned back around and looked at me.

  “Look, it actually might take just a little bit longer.” I rifled through the colossal amounts of papers on my desk. “But, since you’re here, let me just ask you—”

  “What?”

  “About Option 3. It means that we’re separating them when the parent’s been arrested for illegal entry?” I scrabbled around my desk, trying to find Tab F in Folder XV because I thought it might have a synopsis of the protocol. “That’s . . . human smuggling, when you arrest the dad or mom or whatever for 1325? Or . . . uh . . . 1324(a)?”

  “Yes,” Gary snapped. “Right, I don’t know. It’s what we’re doing. You’re the one writing the memo on it.”

  I slapped through some more papers. “Or it’s human trafficking? Which is different from smuggling, sort of.”

  “It’s zero tolerance, Kevin,” Gary said. “That’s the mandate. Read the file. I left you a memo based on notes of a conversation I had with the director. It’s—yellow.”

  “What’s yellow?”

  He bugged his eyes out at me. “What?”

  “Nothing, okay, I’m reading it,” I rattled out, trying to find the appendix in File XVI, which maybe had the thing he was talking about.

  “Get your shit together,” Gary said and stomped off.

  As soon as Gary left my office, I started to research and write Option 3. According to Gary’s emails and all-caps verbal instructions, the Acting Director of ICE wanted to share a first draft of this recommendation for family separation with the Director of USCI
S and the Commissioner of CBP ASAP. Then we would shoot it over to the Secretary of DHS for approval and etc. He’d given me the assignment about two weeks ago. But I hadn’t had time to do it yet because, in all honesty, Gary was sort of right. I really just did not have my shit quite together at the moment. Marjorie had a terrible flu and was also so mad at me. So I’d had to take a little family medical leave time to take care of Heather and Sabrina, particularly Heather, who is at a really delicate stage of development according to Marjorie. But Sabrina too, she’s just eight years old, and I have to be there, as a father. And a husband. Whose wife is so pissed because, I have no idea why. I think it has something to do with me saying yesterday that maybe we shouldn’t go to Lacie’s party tomorrow, because she, Marjorie, didn’t look that great, which Marjorie interpreted as something to do with me saying that she wasn’t beautiful anymore after having the kids, which I absolutely did not mean. She’s just sick! People don’t look as good when they’re sick.

  Actually, on the family leave thing, I hadn’t taken it officially, yet. I didn’t even have time to fill out the paperwork. I’d just run panicked out of the office at all hours of the day every time I got a call from Marjorie or Saint Andrew’s vice principal, like at eleven a.m. once, to get Heather from school when she started biting that girl. And then I’d also had to bug out every day at three p.m. to pick up both kids when their classes ended. After that, I’d take them to ice cream or to whatever until about four or so, so that Marjorie could get some sleep. Then, after dinner, I’d try to get some work done. The only thing was, Heather was having problems with screaming a lot, and Marjorie would need things like Vic’s and Nyquil. And right before she’d gotten the flu, Marjorie had fired Conchita, because, who knows? Something somebody did. It was just a bad week. So, great!

  I looked at the screen on my computer, which looked like this after my garbagey typing that I did to keep Gary off my back:

  As;ldkfjas;dkfjas;kldjfas;kldjf;askldjfas;kldfja;lskdfj;askdfjasd;klfjas;kldfja;

  I erased all that, and then I just had a blank screen again. I looked back down at the files on my desk and started to read through them, very rapidly and hopefully efficiently. I pivoted between stuff on credible fear screenings and did a quick Wiki on the Flores Agreement and then engaged a speedy review of the AG memo on zero tolerance that I’d actually not read when the front office globally first sent it around.

  . . . I direct each United States Attorney’s Office along the Southwest Border—to the extent practicable, and in consultation with DHS—to adopt immediately a zero-tolerance policy for all offenses referred for prosecution under section 1325(a). . . .

  “Okay, not very helpful, just a bunch of regular blaaah,” I whispered (Gary had left my door open, and secretaries and other line attorneys were meandering down the halls). I clawed through the files again and finally found a big yellow stickie just barely sticking out of the middle of File XV. I tore the stickie off and looked at it. It was in Gary’s handwriting and I guess was my “memo” that he’d been talking about. I could have missed it so easily, he should have put it on the top of the file and stapled it there and put my name on it. But he didn’t because he’s an idiot and is stupid.

  Option 3 authorizes family separation in the event of an arrest of a parent at SWB on suspicion of a 1325(a)(1)–(3) violation. Find out legality and write up how it is legal and constitutional and also how we have humane controls and conditions in place at the whatever camps or prisons & things they’re going to go in—find out what those are, too.

  “Uh huh,” I said, my mouth open and trying to remember what exactly 1325(a)(1)–(3) covered. “Something, something . . .” I began to type.

  Option 3 is an excellent idea for the protection of the borders and of smuggled/trafficked children, who are victims of sexual abuse. Option 3 is also legal because aliens basically have no rights constitutionally because Congress has very broad powers to control immigration, even when Congress’s laws affect delicate family dynamics, like when moms are mad at dads and won’t help them out with child care or when people are trying to be good parents generally speaking but are having trouble doing so. See, e.g., Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. 787, 797–98 (1977) (ok to exclude illegitimate children and natural fathers from special preference immigration status).

  “No, that’s not good,” I said, reading it over. I deleted it.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzz

  I looked down at my phone. Marjorie had just texted me.

  “THEY R WAITING FOR YOU OUTSIDE OF THE SCHOOL RITE NOW”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said. I looked at the files on my desk and on the floor. I couldn’t carry them all out to the car. I took two of the big accordions, stuck them under my armpits, and ran out the door.

  “Hey!” I said, when I pulled up in front of Saint Andrew’s, which is a beautiful and expensive private school with a huge campus full of Harvardish brick buildings and gorgeously mown lawns and is costing me my retirement.

  “Hi, Dad,” Sabrina said, smiling. Sabrina’s eight, like I said. She’s blond like her mom and has a triangular face that I love and sooty dark lashes and big blue eyes, also like her mom.

  “Hi, hi. Heather, hi, honey,” I said. “Okay, get in. Let’s get in.”

  “Fffffff,” Heather said, scowling at me. “You’re late.” Heather is seven and has also blond hair like her mother. She has a triangular face too, which is also like Marjorie’s. Actually, neither of my daughters look anything like me or anyone in my family.

  “Okay, let’s get in,” I said again, brightly. “In we go.”

  “What this?” Sabrina asked, climbing over the files I’d thrown in the back seat as she and her sister piled into the car.

  “Oh, just some stuff,” I said. “Push it to the side.”

  “There’s not enough room!” Heather said.

  “Of course there is,” I said. “Just push it.”

  The girls kicked at the files, and I could hear the cardboard crunching and crushing as they smashed it onto the floor. It was fine. It was all on the computer, somewhere, though I wasn’t sure if Gary had Dropboxed me all the things.

  “Let’s go get ice cream again,” Sabrina said, when they’d settled in.

  “I don’t like ice cream,” Heather said.

  “Who doesn’t like ice cream?” I laughed at her, trying to make eye contact in the rearview.

  “Fat people like ice cream,” Heather said.

  “Where’d you learn that?” I asked, squeezing the steering wheel.

  “I’m not fat,” Sabrina said.

  “Of course you’re not fat,” I said.

  “Mom,” Heather said.

  “Mom, what?” I asked.

  “Mom said it, that ice cream makes you fat,” Heather said.

  “No it doesn’t,” I said, cheerily. I was already driving down Victory Lane, without any idea of where I was going. Could I just go home and do my work? “Except, we can’t get ice cream yet, because we’re going to keep our appetites for dinner, right? We’re just going to go home, right?”

  “Mom texted me and said to stay away for at least an hour,” Sabrina said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I drove us to the ice cream store, shop, whatever. Belson’s. It’s on Milbern Drive and has a little pink sign and tiny white tables and is filled with kids smashing cones in their fists and dropping balls of ice cream on the floor while their mothers and fathers and nannies stare out the windows. When getting out of the car, I extracted one of the crushed files from the footwell of the back seat and brought it into the ice cream place. Then we stood in line while children shrieked and smeared bloody-looking chocolate everywhere. I got Sabrina a vanilla and Heather a pistachio and a vanilla, and I got myself a big bowl of cherry and chocolate. The place was crowded with parents and squirts, and we barely got a table. But Heather sort of muscled her way into one before a grandmother or an extremely old mother and her dark-haired son got it, so we sat down. I immediately tried to do some rese
arch/writing as we all ate, by balancing the file on my knees and pulling out papers with my right hand and reading them and scooping ice cream with my left.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Heather told Sabrina, while licking her pistachio.

  “No, you’re not,” Sabrina said. “Because then Dad would kill you.”

  “Okay, guys,” I said, reading and only eating the cherry part of my ice cream. I’d found a good case, just, right away. Which was great. I started to really, actually, read it, and while I read it, I put down my spoon and pulled my phone off my belt to take notes. “Be nice.”

  “He would not,” Heather said. “Mom would kill me.”

  “Yeah,” Sabrina said, laughing into her vanilla. “Mom would kill you.”

  “Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the Secretary has broad authority to detain aliens who enter the United States unlawfully until we can remove them from the country,” I yammered into the phone. “Inadmissible aliens and aliens who cross into the US illegally are subject to criminal penalties and deportation. See 8 U.S.C., sections 1325 and, Kevin, check, 1326.”

  “How would she kill me?” Heather said.

  “She would shoot you with a gun,” Sabrina said, quietly, while licking her ice cream.

  “And if the Secretary seeks to deploy Option 3 by separating the children of inadmissible aliens and illegal, uh, crossers from their misdemeanor-committing parents, thus turning said children into unaccompanied minors,” I went on, while Heather’s face began to turn a bright shade of red, “that also would be well within her constitutional brief, because the enforcement of US immigration laws, on its own, does not itself violate substantive due process. See, e.g., de Robles v. INS, 485 F.2d 100, 102 (10th Cir.1973). Further, ANY parental detention pursuant to the arrest of persons suspected of violating immigration laws can conceivably interfere with parents, uh, being physically with their children—”