Words Unsaid

by KG MacGregor

  They ignored him, continuing to joke with one another. Even Santos seemed to find his predicament funny. All the while Andy grew increasingly desperate.

  “Come on, guys. This is fucked up. I was born in Oakland. All you have to do is call my mom. I can give you her number.”

  The bearded man turned in his seat and aimed his flashlight across the two rows directly into Andy’s face. “My friend here told you to relax, didn’t he?”

  Andy bit his lip and tried to shield his eyes from the light.

  “Didn’t he?” he barked, causing Lucía and her siblings to flinch.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suggest you shut the fuck up, amigo.”

  The light bored into him for another few seconds as the van went dead quiet. When the guard turned away Andy’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, stinging with unshed tears.

  * * *

  Anna wrapped up the leftovers from five different pizzas, thinking Andy would eat it all when he got home. Whatever he wanted—pizza, chips, milkshakes—anything to help put this traumatic ordeal behind him.

  “I vote we drive downtown right now and bust him out of there,” George said. “Poor kid’s probably scared half to death.”

  “It wouldn’t do us any good, George,” Lily said. “That place is a fortress in normal hours. Even attorneys have to go through one of the federal offices to get access to their clients. This time of night, there’s no one to ask but the janitor.”

  “Yeah, well…I’ve got a thousand bucks for a janitor who’ll go in there and sneak him out.”

  Anna was simmering with anger but resigned to the fact that their son wasn’t coming home tonight. “I’d settle for a janitor who’d go in there and tell him we love him and that we’re out here working our tails off to get him out. I can’t stand the thought of him feeling like we’re just letting him sit there.”

  “I’m sure he knows we’re trying, honey,” Lily said.

  They were waiting in the kitchen for further word from Detective Cooper, who was on the phone in the dining room trying to track down someone from the Department of Homeland Security who could get them access to the detention center. Unfortunately, she said, ICE usually bristled at cooperating with law enforcement in LA, since the city had declared itself a sanctuary for immigrants. Whether they’d make an exception for the child of a sitting judge remained to be seen.

  “We don’t even know for sure if he’s still being held there,” Lily added. “I worked a couple of immigration cases with Tony, and they move people around a lot. And fast. Plus there’s a paperwork lag, so the records might have them in one place but they’re actually somewhere else. Frankly, I think the assholes do it on purpose to inconvenience the families. By the time we get Andy released, we might even have to go all the way up to Oregon to pick him up. That’s one of the places they take teenagers.”

  While Anna was relieved to know Andy hadn’t been kidnapped by a ruthless gang, she wasn’t going to celebrate until he was home. She’d heard the horror stories, detainees piled on top of one another in dirty, lice-infested quarters. Older children forced to take care of toddlers separated from their parents and left to fend for themselves. The idea that Andy had already spent two nights in a place like that made her sick to her stomach. Their sweet, sensitive son locked in a cage. It was all she could do not to cry.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Lily said as she tugged Anna onto the bench of their breakfast nook.

  “I’m just trying to manage my expectations. Finding his phone down there isn’t the same as finding him.”

  “No, but at least now we know where to look.”

  The officers Cooper had sent to canvass for witnesses had confirmed that ICE agents came through the festival after the stabbing and rounded up dozens of people. But why Andy and Serafina?

  “This makes no sense, Lily. Serafina has a green card, and Andy…sure, he looks Latino but Christ, his last name’s Greek. It’s right there on his license.”

  “It’s obviously a screwup. I’ve read how they raid these events, scooping up everyone and asking questions later.”

  George snorted. “Or not asking questions at all. These macho jerks act like they’re working on a quota system. End of the month, they still need a couple thousand bodies. Any bodies will do.”

  A movement caught Anna’s eye, Eleanor leaning against the doorjamb. Her arms hung loosely at her sides as a yawn escaped her mouth. “Come over here, sweetie.” She folded her daughter in her arms and kissed her head. “You’ve had a really long day. Maybe you and your brother should go on up to bed.”

  “Can I sleep with you and Ma? Grandpa’s sleeping in Georgie’s room.”

  It was rare for the children to ask to join them in bed. Even when they did, Anna usually carried them back to their room in the night. This, however, was not an ordinary plea. The kids were genuinely stressed out. “Do you promise not to snore and kick and steal all the covers?”

  Eleanor laughed. “Are you talking to me or Ma?”

  Lily sneered and rose to steer her out. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go up and get you and Georgie to bed.”

  As their steps faded on the stairs, Anna said to her father, “Thanks for being here, Dad. I didn’t realize how much I needed the kids with us.”

  “They needed it too. They’re as worried as we are.”

  Detective Cooper entered from the dining room. Behind her, Peter was packing up his equipment. “The good news is patrol picked up Angel Martinez an hour ago trying to buy baby stuff at Target with Serafina’s credit card. Said he picked up her purse off the ground when everyone scattered. Her green card was still in her wallet, which explains why ICE took her in.”

  Anna blew out an exasperated breath. “Baby stuff. Could we have been more wrong about these guys?” She had half a mind to track Martinez down and hand him a check to make up for her horrible thoughts. “You said good news. Is there bad news?”

  “We haven’t been able to locate Andy. They won’t talk to us through official channels, but a friend of a friend unofficially reported that Serafina was bused out yesterday morning to the processing center at Adelanto. That’s up near Victorville, San Bernardino County. However, he said Andy wasn’t with her.”

  “They were separated?” The idea that Andy had weathered this alone pierced Anna’s heart. “He’s just a kid. Why wouldn’t they keep him with his guardian?”

  “Because they’re sadistic bastards,” George spat. “Cruelty’s a feature, not a bug.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Cooper said. “Splitting up families is meant to be a deterrent. The current administration believes immigrants will think twice about coming to America if they know their children will be taken from them.”

  “So that has to mean he’s still downtown.”

  Cooper’s face fell. “I wish I could tell you that. Unfortunately, ICE’s juvenile detention is notoriously difficult to navigate. Sometimes it’s four or five days before minors even appear in the system.” Sheepishly, she added, “Which is a roundabout way of saying that as of right now Andy hasn’t shown up on the detainee list. Until he does, getting him released is going to take some tenacious lawyering.”

  Anna could hardly stand to think of her son spending another night in that place. She’d never felt so helpless. “Fortunately, I’m married to a tenacious lawyer. I guarantee you she’ll be in their faces first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, I believe you.” Cooper strolled toward the door. “All right then, I guess that pretty much gets the LAPD out of your hair. I can get one of the officers to drop off Serafina’s bag.”

  “Good, it’ll help to get her green card back.” Anna walked her out, where they started with a handshake that gave way to a hug. “Thanks for everything, Tawna. You were great.”

  “You have my number. Give me a call when you get your boy back, okay?”

  Anna turned out the lights one by one and trudged upstairs to share the news. She found Eleanor tucked beneath
the covers in the center of the bed. Lily, still fully dressed, was wrapped around her—sound asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Andy’s stomach growled with envy as the bearded guard returned to the van with a bag that smelled of Canadian bacon and hash browns. There had been no such breakfast for Andy and his fellow passengers. Detainees, the driver had called them. They’d been handed gooey breakfast bars and warm bottles of water from a bag in the cargo compartment. That was an hour and a half ago at a rest area on I-10.

  They’d driven all night, ending here at sunrise in Phoenix, Arizona. Fifty-two degrees according to the digital sign they’d passed before pulling off the freeway. Andy was stiff from the ride and tired from lack of sleep. When was this nightmare going to end?

  The guards finished their breakfast and tossed the trash out the window as they got underway again. To Andy’s surprise, they didn’t turn back toward the freeway. Instead, they crossed the intersection and entered a complex of office buildings marked only with numbers. The parking lot was empty at this early hour but for a small cluster of vehicles at a brick and glass building that topped out at six floors, identified as Building 250.

  “End of the line, amigos. We know you have a choice in security escorts and we appreciate you choosing ICE Tours for your travels back to May-hee-co.” The driver guffawed at his lame joke as he pulled into a parking space next to a van identical to theirs. “They’re all yours, Berman.”

  The bearded guard slid the door open and directed Lucía and her siblings out to stand beside the van. Then he motioned for Ruben to join them. Santos was ordered to sit in the van’s doorway while they wrapped him in a chain belt attached to both handcuffs and shackles for his feet.

  “Your turn, José. Oh, wait…you want us to call your mommy, the judge? I can do that for ya.” He took out his phone and pretended to dial as the driver burst into laughter. “Sorry, she’s not answering. Looks like I’ll have to hand you off to a real judge.”

  Though he burned with anger and humiliation, Andy knew it was no use to argue. If anything, they’d probably treat him worse, as evidenced by how tightly they’d pinched his wrists and ankles in the cuffs. At least they were taking him to see a judge. He’d been to the courthouse a few times to watch his ma argue cases, and once right after she became a judge. He recalled that defendants always got the chance to speak. He would explain how this was all one big mistake.

  He fell into line with baby steps, noticing Santos was far more adept at walking with his feet tied together, as though he’d done it before. The first floor of the building was empty and dark. No wonder, since the clock on the wall said it was only twenty after six. On the second floor, Berman led them into Courtroom 5 and steered them to the back two rows. Several children and teens—that’s who was in the other van, Andy realized—sat near the front, where the parties stood before a judge on a large TV screen.

  An attorney was presenting her case for one of the children. “Your Honor, Eduardo García has family in Las Vegas who are willing to post bond and take him in while his request for asylum is being adjudicated. One call and they can be here to pick him up by lunchtime, relieving the American taxpayer of the burden of his care for what could very well be the next two and a half years.” She sounded sure of herself. “I know my esteemed colleague would agree that would be preferable to relegating Eduardo to custody in a detention facility to the tune of nearly eight hundred dollars a day.”

  Andy watched with both fear and fascination. Poor Eduardo was Georgie and Eleanor’s age. He looked scared until the woman gave him a wink. Maybe she was the designated attorney for all the kids. Andy hoped so. She was younger than both his moms but sounded like she knew what she was doing. Her confident smile and dark-rimmed glasses instantly reminded him of his seventh-grade math teacher, the only one who’d ever made math fun. Best of all, she had a snappy way of talking the judge seemed to listen to.

  The other attorney, with his buzzcut and stiff black suit, looked as if he’d never had a day of fun in his life. “If it please the court, Eduardo García’s father resides in Honduras. I’m sure Your Honor would agree that it’s best for Eduardo to remain in his home country with his family.”

  “Counselor?”

  “Your Honor, Mr. McInnis knows very well Eduardo’s mother is currently being held at Eloy Detention Center. And his father likely doesn’t reside in Honduras, or anywhere else. He disappeared eight months ago after being threatened by drug gangs. Fearing the same would happen to her and Eduardo, his mother has requested US asylum and is likely to be released soon to live with these same relatives in Las Vegas.”

  “Objection, calls for speculation,” McInnis said. “Such an outcome for Mrs. García is far from assured. If anything—”

  “That’ll do.” The judge raised his hands to silence them both, then ruled matter-of-factly that Eduardo would be handed over to his relatives.

  Victorious and smiling, the woman briefly hugged the boy before nudging him toward a clerk who guided him out. As the next case was called, she pushed her file into an overstuffed leather satchel and turned to leave.

  Andy then watched in horror as a pair of children, the oldest of whom was Ruben’s age, approached the TV without an attorney. Who was going to speak for them?

  He swiveled in his chair, shifting his shackled feet into the aisle to get the attorney’s attention as she walked past. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he whispered. “I need a lawyer too. My moms can pay, I promise.”

  “No talking, Casillas!” the bearded guard hissed as he sprang toward them.

  Andy kept his voice low. “Please, there’s been a mistake. I’m an American. My ma’s a judge in LA. Her name’s Lilian Kaklis. K-A-K-L-I-S.”

  She gave him a pained look. “Sorry kid, there’s no time to file. But call me at this number and I’ll try to hook you up with someone who can help.” She handed him a business card, which the guard snatched immediately.

  “This detainee is not authorized to engage legal services at this time.”

  “Are you prepared to back that up in a court of law, officer?” She peered closely at his ICE vest. “Badge number six-one-one-five-two.”

  “I think his name’s Berman,” Andy offered meekly, earning himself a steely glare. Probably not a good idea to call out the guy who decided how tight his handcuffs and shackles would be.

  The door opened suddenly to a larger group of detainees, all of them children and teens. As they were guided into the rows opposite Andy’s, the attorney snagged three of them, saying they were her clients. She left Andy with a pat on the shoulder. “Good luck, kid.”

  * * *

  Dozens of cylindrical concrete pylons formed a blockade around the federal plaza, their purpose to prevent a vehicle attack like the one that had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Lily perched on one as Anna paced.

  “I can’t believe we live in a country where they can snatch children off the street and lock them up,” Anna fumed. “And feel absolutely no obligation to call their parents. When did the US turn into a fascist state?”

  “I assume that’s a rhetorical question.”

  Anna had been ranting nonstop since waking at four fifteen. She’d taken Eleanor back to her own room and returned wide awake, all but pushing Lily out of bed so they could be at the federal building when it opened.

  Lily shielded her eyes from the morning sun as she eyed a familiar figure at the crosswalk heading in their direction. Tall and balding, he had an easy smile she could see from almost a block away. “Here comes Tony.”

  As the head of the legal aid clinic where Lily had worked for over fifteen years before her appointment to the bench, Tony had personally handled the lion’s share of their firm’s cases involving immigration. He was just the one to guide them through this federal maze.

  “He looks happy,” Anna said. “It must be good news. Maybe he’s talked to someone already.”

  “Nah, he’s been like that ever s
ince he married Colleen. You couldn’t break his face with a sledgehammer.” She greeted Tony with a warm hug. “Thanks for being here, Tony. Trust me, we’ll make it worth your time. Billable hours, my friend. We need someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Happy to help get the ball rolling. Immigration’s more than half our caseload these days.” He gestured toward the entrance to the federal building. “I made us an appointment with Randall Thorn at Homeland Security. If anyone can cut through the red tape, it’s Ran. Did you bring the paperwork?”

  One by one, she made a stack in his hand. “His birth certificate, my sister’s birth certificate, her death certificate, my birth certificate and Anna’s, the adoption decree with his name change, his passport, our passports. There’s never been an American citizen with more documentation than Andy Kaklis.”

  She also provided the paperwork they filed each year to keep Serafina in their employ, including her A-number, which would identify her as a permanent resident. Once they finished with Thorn, Tony would be off to Adelanto to try to arrange for Serafina’s release.

  Feeling upbeat for the first time in three days, Lily squeezed Anna’s hand and followed Tony inside, waiting while he cleared their visit with security. With visitor passes pinned to their chests, they were escorted to a third floor office where Tony made the introductions.

  Randall Thorn was straight out of central casting for a paper-pushing bureaucrat. Mid-fifties, silver crewcut, with a short-sleeved shirt and what looked like a clip-on tie. He was affable, and it was clear he and Tony were friends.

  “First off, let me apologize for this mix-up. I know you must be worried sick. Any given day we’ve got about fifty-four thousand detainees in federal custody. We’re bound to have a handful of honest mistakes here and there.” He tipped his head back to peer through his glasses at the computer monitor. “I’m not seeing Andres Kaklis on our list of detainees…but that doesn’t mean we don’t have him. I always said we could have a nuclear strike on LA and it wouldn’t show up in the system till next week.”