Quiz time!
What would you do if you were on the street and you saw random people in uniform snatch a breastfeeding baby girl away from her mother? And then drag the baby’s mother down the street into a random office building?
I don’t know you personally, but I know what 98 percent of you would do, because you are decent, good humans. You would riot right there in the street. You would lose your shit. You would tackle the aggressors, uniforms or no. You would hang onto that baby girl for dear life until the mother could be found. You would record this disgrace on any device you had. You would call the authorities because you’d still trust them. You would tweet and post and make sure that this never, ever happened again. Because, hey, this is America, right?
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Well, I love you for that. And I wish we had all been there on Saturday at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport when a mother from Sudan — who is a legal permanent resident — had her 11-month-old U.S.-born baby forcibly removed from her arms as a result of Trump’s sweeping, xenophobic, racist-as-fuck spree of executive orders.
Let that sink in, please. Please don’t close your eyes and stop reading. Don’t turn away. Don’t click on the Natalie Portman baby bump story yet (Natalie would want you to stay with this story, trust us).
What's really knocking us for a loop is how little coverage — and how little outrage — we are seeing about this news item. Where is the outrage, truly? What's it going to take?
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There is nothing, nothing OK about this. And my only glimmer of hope is that it seems more and more people are beginning to realize what a death spiral our country is in.
The ACLU and multiple attorneys rushed to the airport to intervene on the mother and daughter’s behalf. Attorney Andrew Strong (we love you, sir) posted on Facebook during the ordeal, “I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT I AM HELPING DRAFT A RESTRAINING ORDER TO PREVENT AN 11 MONTH OLD CITIZEN FOR DEPORTATION.”
We can’t believe it, either, Mr. Strong.
As for the little girl, she’s back with her parents again. Both mother and daughter were released, but their future — here in their home, their legal home — is now uncertain.
Attorneys, I think you’re not going to be lacking for work in this new and terrible world we live in.
In the meantime, what are we going to do? Resist.