Above, ICE agents in San Diego arrest an undocumented immigrant in front of her children, pulling her off the street into a van in a scene that looks like the kind of kidnapping performed in places like Chechnya and Argentina. 

I found the Bible verse that Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were searching for in that angry press conference this week. It’s not from Romans 13 (in which Paul tells Christians to avoid crossing the government in order to stay alive). It’s from Psalm 137. I’ve updated it to reflect contemporary GOP concerns:

By the Potomoc and in rural Wisconsin, western PA, but mostly in the suburbs of Kansas City,

we sit and complain

as we remember how much better our white grandfathers had it than we do.

Today, women and people of color and immigrants ask us for rights,

like to food and education and health care and gun-free schools.

 

How can we be happy when things have gone so badly for us and our status is threatened!

If we stop venerating the Confederacy or stop singing the praises of Ayn Rand or Ronald Reagan,

may our right hands forget how to steal from the poor!

If we forgot how good we had it, in the days of legal segregation and redlining,

back when you could fire a woman for getting pregnant,

or intern people in concentration camps and steal their land,

may our mouths forget how to lie!

 

Remember, Lord, what Mexican immigrants have done.

No, Lord, not their work in our fields and meat factories or their contributions to our Social Security or our tax base. The BAD things they’ve done. 

Like taking our jobs, the ones we don’t want and prefer that they do for very low wages.

And coming into our country, just to destroy it by

speaking Spanish

and having brown skin

and having children who will have brown skin, even if they speak English.

God, damn those immigrants!

People should take pleasure in killing them!

Happy is the one who repays them for daring to dream of a better life!

Happy is the one who seizes their infants

and dashes them against the rocks!*

****

Rebecca

*The last two lines are, in fact, from the psalm.