I can’t get those screams out of my head, the screams of terrified children, cutting through the madness of that viral video. I watched in shock as their cries were drowned out by the sound of brutality. Those ICE thugs didn’t see human beings; they only saw targets. The so-called “illegal alien” as if they come from a different planet.
I watched ICE agents drag parents out of a car as their kids screamed for them in desperation. Their little hands stretched out, grasping at empty air, while their mothers and fathers bled on the ground and no one stopped it. No one even flinched.
My stomach tied in knots as I watched, but I couldn’t look away. I felt the heat rising in my chest: the disbelief, the fury, the shame that we live in times that allows this kind of cruelty under the banner of “law.”
Those children’s screams echo in my mind, louder than any justification or excuse. Every time I close my eyes, I see them terrified, abandoned, punished for nothing more than wanting their families to stay together.
I wish I had never seen that video, but maybe it’s good that I did. Because now, I can’t forget. None of us should.
That horror wasn’t just another viral clip it was a glimpse of our failure, our indifference, our complicity.
I can’t unfeel how I felt that day, I can’t unhear those haunting cries, the look on the faces of those children. I wish I hadn’t seen that video, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re not supposed to look away anymore.
