A More Complex World

 

           I spent last weekend hanging out at El Refugio, a hospitality house that provides support and a place to stay to families/ visitors of the immigrants detained at Stewart Detention Center (check them out here, if you please: http://elrefugiostewart.com/).  I went there with a professor of mine who co-facilitated our spring trip to the Border and who is also one of the house coordinators at El Refugio.  Speaking of a surprisingly positive experience she recently had with a CCA official [CCA is a major player in the for-profit prison industry that turns a pretty penny contracting with Immigration Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants], she remarked, “Sometimes you can’t help but be filled with gratitude at discovering the world is more complex than you thought.”  I found these words to be striking and true.

           Below are my thoughts on the experience of watching a Stewart Detention Center guard count, fold, and repack items into a backpack that El Refugio had given me to deliver for a man who was soon to be deported:  

With meticulous care

she folds
two pants, a pair of shorts, three shirts.
A shirt wrinkles, and so does her brow.
With a shake of the head and the wrist
she folds it once more
with clean—nay, pristine!— lines.

The clothes, for a man

about to be sent
quite forcefully back to his “home.”
Home to a land he left long-ago
for reasons neither she nor I know.

When he arrives

he will carry
naught but the clothes in the bag that she packs
and tales of stark inhospitality received
here, in the U.S.,
home of the brave and the free.
 
I wonder, as she carefully marshals
the clothing into the bag
is this her “something,” if you know what I mean?
Her quiet act of resistance, that is.
Her way of pushing, however gently,
against a system that traps humans as one might
a spider under a cup.
Her way of declaring, albeit softly, HE IS A MAN.
 
I do not know.
It could be nothing, after all.
Mayhap she worked in retail clothing in another life
before a series of turns led her here to this role of guard
at good ole’ notorious SDC,
and her past training came with her too.
I do not know.

But maybe— it is possible—

she thinks to herself,
I will not let this man
return to his land
in sloppily folded clothes.
Perhaps, in wrestling out the wrinkles
with her two hands
she seeks to remove one small wrinkle
from what is likely to be
a bittersweet home-coming indeed. 

Watching, nearly choking,

I swallow unexpected tears
and pass through the metal detector with a watery
and appreciative smile.
I wanted to reach out my hand,
to tacitly let her know
that I saw and was moved by her care.
Thank you, Officer, I said aloud.
Tacking on, in my mind,
Thank you, thank you for a precious reminder—
The world is more complex than we know.