7/7/21

By Josh Rubin

Our enemy is legion. It wears a thousand masks, and must be unmasked a thousand times before we are done. That is why we witness.

Fort Bliss is an army base that holds a prison that wears the mask of a shelter. Its mask is flimsy, but it is held up with fences and guards and distance. It is kept out of sight. The children held there are never seen. All we can see are faraway tents.

But witnesses see with more than naked eyes. We see with our hearts. We listen for the sound of beating hearts. And the cries and stories are carried to us on the desert wind. And each glimpse, each sound, each report tells us what we need to know to pull down the mask of our enemy.

In coming weeks, we will gather at the perimeter of Bliss, and we will share with the world what we learned from Tornillo. What we learned from Homestead. And what we know about the deep despair inside the tents that our enemy has erected to hold children against their will.

We will close it. And we will not be done.