Two by ZS
One day, everyone will have always been against this, and someday they will be ok with it again.
Originally published on October 26, 2025
Earlier today, a woman was brutalized. They had just abducted her husband in front of her and her two kids. I sat in the courtroom with them before it happened. “Please,” she begged, sobbing, “take me too.”
The ICE agent grabbed her, slammed her against a wall, and threw her on the floor. Someone called an ambulance. The press stuck their cameras in her face as she was crying on the floor, her kids screaming behind her.
I’m on the fourteenth floor of Federal Plaza, and four floors below me are cages filled with innocent people. Each security guard has different rules. Half the time, observers are kicked out without reason. I am not allowed to talk. I am not allowed to write anything down or hand out any flyers. They want it to be as hard as possible for people to receive help.
A tall, dark man in a suit is sitting across from me. A kid, his mom, and his grandma are seated nearby. I get both their contact information while the agents are kidnapping someone down the other hallway. The man has already been in detention in Louisiana. When ICE asks for his papers, on two separate occasions, he looks at them dead in the eyes as he hands over the documents with steady hands. If he is scared, I cannot tell. His bravery astounds me. He does not let these masked monsters intimidate him, despite the horrors he has lived through already.
Suddenly, and without warning, six agents flood the waiting room. There are four more in the hallway. We sit like that, in silence, for ten precious minutes. I hear laughter outside the door. The agents are playing a song on their phones. Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor. They laugh again.
I freeze. The volunteer next to me reacts. “Are you fucking serious?” We look at each other with wide eyes. They start harassing us.
“What the fuck are you even doing here? You’re doing fucking nothing, get the fuck out. I’m going to get you guys the fuck out of here.” I am frozen, clutching my bag with white knuckles.
The other volunteer responds. “We are observers. You’re not doing anything here either, just sitting here.” The agent laughs. “Oh you’ll fucking see what we fucking do here.” The other agents laugh with him.
Despite the numerous rules ICE agents do not follow, the one they do follow is not arresting anybody inside a courtroom. They instead elect to wait outside the door, let the person believe they are safe, and grab them at the last minute. It is a game to them. They enjoy it.
A third woman walks into the room, cutting through the ICE agents. I can sense the pure fear radiating off of her. She is shaking. She sits next to me, and I lean over to speak with her, to try to get her emergency contact information. I know they will take someone in this room. A paper rustles in my bag as I try to discreetly get her information. The agent who harassed us before stands up and screams at me.
“You can’t fucking do that here. What document did you give her? You can’t give documents.”
I respond calmly. “I did not give her any documents. I am trying to get her emergency contact information.”
He begins screaming at the woman in Spanish. “Ella le dio un documento?”
“No, no” she responds. She is close to tears.
“¿Le iba a dar un documento? Huh?” There are three ICE agents standing over us now. We are trying to explain that we did not do anything illegal, we did not do what they are claiming we did.
Another agent grabs building security and makes us leave. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re done here. Get out. You’re done.”
We ask them to explain what exactly we did wrong, what rules we broke. They don’t answer, because there is no answer. They just force us out, threatening us with arrest if we don’t leave.
“I fucking told you.” The agent says. “I told you I’d get you out.” He laughs at us as we get in the elevator. I found out, later, that the grandma had been kidnapped. I don’t know about the other two.
When do we reach a breaking point? Right now, history is repeating itself over and over and over and over. We keep hitting our previously established breaking points, and we curve right past them again. I go to bed with a mother’s screams echoing in my mind and wake up seeing a child shaking in fear. I go to class, and I write my papers, and I go to work, and I eat out with my friends, and I go to therapy, and I call my parents, and I watch movies, and I laugh.
That’s the thing about memory: it fades. We forget how bad things were and allow them to get bad again. I keep asking myself, questioning how these people can live with themselves, but I know how they do it because I’m doing it too. One day, everyone will have always been against this, and someday they will be ok with it again.
It’s 10:58 AM. I’m sitting in the subway. Half an hour ago, I saw a man kidnapped, his daughter ripped out of his arms. He had been clutching onto her chubby legs with white knuckles. There is screaming, screaming, screaming. Cameras clicking, clicking, clicking. There were two children, the baby girl and a little boy. The judge asked the family why they all showed up.
“I told you last time, only one adult has to be present. The other could have been home with the kids.”
Then, there were cameras, a mother screaming, a court watcher throwing herself between a masked monster and a child, arms outstretched.
The baby has bows clipped carefully onto her pigtails. People and masks and people and masks and cameras and people.
“Tienes que dar la niña a tu esposa,” the masked monster says, in Spanish. “Da la niña a ella.”
The mother is clutching a stroller and the hand of her son, screaming. She is sobbing, and she is screaming, and they are taking her husband for no reason, and she’s holding her kids, and there’s nothing she can do, and there’s nothing I can do. I sit in the courtroom and watch.
Everyone in the courtroom is crying. The judge pretends nothing is happening and continues with court as normal.
It’s 11:07, and I’m sitting in the subway on my way back to school where I will learn about the history of Spain and pretend like a family hasn’t just been ripped apart. There is a father in a cage and a single mother, and two kids who have already been through more than anyone should ever experience in a lifetime, and now their father was snatched away from them in front of their eyes while following the legal process to legally apply for asylum in the United States.
Those kids will never forget their mom’s screams. They will never forget the ICE agents dragging their father down the barren hallway in the name of justice, in the name of freedom and liberty. They will never forget that there is no such thing as innocence when you are not born in this country.
