as a child i had The usual fears

the dark and the monsters under my bed

most of us would’ve grown out them

but not me

i’m still scared of the dark and the monsters

but instead it’s the darkness of a system instead of my room

and the monsters are ice officers

As a child of an immigrant and a first generation US citizen i’ve seen the struggle of trying to get papers

of trying to figure out a world that’s against them

and i myself have had faced my own struggles

tho not as serious equally as important

Being scared that my abuelos will get deported over one mistake

opening the door to wrong people,

talking to the wrong person, for picking up their medications, or even going to the doctor

i was about 5 or 6

That was the first time i started to see the process

I remember this day mostly because of the people i met

rather than the experience

An older man from Mexico here to give his granddaughter a good childhood,

a man from Peru that was trying to bring his pregnant wife over

and a child my age that could barely speak english from Columbia

all so different yet so similar

all with the same fear

The fear that one little thing can take you away from your family

your friends

the life that you made

the life you worked hard to make

all the work and money just thrown away

the blood sweat and tears just gone

out the window because of you got the wrong lawyer

or a wrongly filled paper

even one little misspelling

I know of that negatives that could arise

but the entire point of writing is that is

instead of watching who we abort

we should be more careful who we deport

land of the free is what i was always thought to believe

but being forced to leave over nothing doesn’t seem very free to me