The story of M: a ray of sunshine

This story begins with the previous post.

Chapter III
Over the weeks, M had been waiting for news about her father and brother. Finally, she heard that they had made it back to the border in an attempt to cross and begin the journey north through the US to be united with their family again. Crossing is always a dodgy process, all the more so if you have been recently ejected. They were caught. Dad was sent back a second time, but brother was taken into custody and sent north to a county prison in south-central Pennsylvania. I don't understand the process of sending someone who had recently been deported so far north into the country he was deported from, just to be incarcerated again, except that such policy benefits the private prison system - a steady stream of inmates means security for multi-million-dollar prison contracts.

So her brother is back in prison, where he started at the beginning of this debacle, only now her father is gone too.

Chapter IV
The other day we were playing basketball outside on a glorious Fall afternoon. One of my students ran up to me, saying that something was wrong with M. I ran over to where she was, on the far side of the court by some dumpsters. She was crying. She had just received a call from home; her brother had been released and he was at home. We all gathered around her, hugging her and patting her on the back. It was something achingly profound, happening right there on a middle-school playground. It was a microcosm of a world full of separation and pain that, in one instant, in one small life, finally saw a ray of sunshine breaking through, a drop of hope, of being reunited with that which had been lost.

I don't know why brother has been released; I don't know if his freedom is temporary or long term, if it bodes well or ill. For now, we can only hope, and enjoy the sunshine.

"I pledge allegiance to a country without borders, without politicians..."

This post has been hard to write, which is why it has taken so long. It isn't the first story, chronologically speaking, but I felt it should be the first one to be shared. It was the grain of rice that tipped a scale in my life that has slowly been getting heavier. This blog is the result of that final grain; it is the first scattering of rice, spilling off of an overwhelmed heart.

The story of M
M is one of my middle-school students. She is about 12 years old. Right now, she is living with her mom because her father and brother are out of the country. 

Chapter I
A little over a month ago, she informed me that her father had been put in jail for being in the US without papers. He had tried to bail his son out of jail, who had been incarcerated for similar reasons. Upon discovering that the father was also undocumented, instead of releasing the son, the authorities jailed the father along with him. The mother would have been in danger as well, but some last vestige of sanity in the legal system apparently prohibits the incarceration of both of a minor's parents or legal guardians, at least for non-violent crimes.

Chapter II
More recently, she confessed that her father and brother had been deported, and that the immigration authorities had given her mother an ultimatum to leave the country by a set date in October. M is a legal US resident; she was born here and has lived her whole life here. She understands some Spanish, but does not speak it. In an empty classroom, as I tried to comfort a weeping 12-year-old girl, I got the sinking feeling that the world is a much darker, scarier place than I'd ever realized. 

M's story isn't over, and I feel as though mine may have just begun.