Seal

These cries are not from here.

Originally published October 19, 2025

By Kate Levy

September 18th

There’s an 8-year-old here in a full blue suit, a tie, a white shirt, tiny, shiny shoes. Even his shoes. 

His dad is dressed in a white hoodie and khakis. It’s like he spent all morning meticulously getting the boy ready in lieu of preparing himself. Perhaps he was thinking that if his son remembers anything of this day, maybe he’ll remember he was wearing a suit the last time he saw his father. The other child is around three. She runs in tiny circles on tip toes, engaging another courtwatcher in a miniature game of hide and seek. I don’t get much of a look at his wife. But we exchange a glance and a warm smile. 

The family waits. Then it’s their turn. The judge asks if they’ve submitted evidence for asylum. “I can show you a video of what they do to me in my country,” the father responds. 

“That’s fine. Attach it to your asylum application.” When their hearing is over, the family exits the courtroom. I don’t follow because I won’t be allowed to re-enter.

And then, a bit of shuffling of papers and murmurs. And then, “¡Mi corazón! ¡Mi corazón!” The cries seem to come from somewhere other than the waiting room, and other than a man. “¡Mi familia!” These cries are not from here.

I hear no one else in his family speak. Eventually, maybe they’ll hear something other than his sobs filling their silence. The boy in the suit has become the man of the house. 

Next case. 

After this, court drags. I’m antsy. I imagine the eagle on the Department of Justice seal is taking off, its scaly little fists hoarding the arrows, then dropping them at random, and then snatching up an unwitting puppy from a backyard, then releasing the terrified animal a few parcels away, or in a different universe. Why there? Remains unknown. 

The more we try to make the immigrants comfortable, the more ICE tries to make us, the judges, the clerks and the building security guards uncomfortable. I know they are coming for us next. Or at least I think they are. Or maybe they’ve already snatched us up, have had enough, and now we’re lying in an open field somewhere, in shock from being mauled by an eagle. If the injury is great enough, and you are in shock, it doesn’t hurt. 

My wife is having a harder time with this than I am. I don’t cry for anything unless its about my mom, dad, sister, dog, or her. Or movies. But she cries for strangers. And music.

They’ll come for us. They will. They’ll come for us like the Klan came for Viola Liuzzo on her way to the Selma-Montgomery march, and for Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, Jews fighting for civil rights during the Freedom Summer.

To them, Liuzzo, Goodman and Schwerner were as good as Black. We are as good as paperless. They’ll come for us, because even though eagles have terrific vision, to them we’re all the same. 

Outside the streets feel like more of a nightmare than the courthouse did. At least in the court, I have no question whether I’d imagined what I’d just seen. All of this, the swinging doors of dry cleaners and the delis, and the little leaves rustling and delicate light, throngs clipping by, none whom have yet had their immigration hearings, all of this makes this whole day in court feel like a fiction.