With Out Papers

For those who read these essays regularly, I have an apology.  It’s been a few days since I published, and some asked me if I’ve taken a “sabbatical” from our political world. Like many of us, I’m trying to adjust to the deluge of Trump’s actions, almost all abhorrent to what I believe America is about.  Every essay can’t just be a rant against Trump. (Well, it could but that would quickly get old).  So I am trying to pick my battles, as we all will be required to do.  

At the same time it’s the heart of indoor track season.  While I am no longer coaching, I am officiating track a lot.  This weekend, it was a clinic for officials on Friday, a clinic for coaches on Saturday morning, a collegiate pole vault competition on Saturday afternoon, and a high school shot competition on Sunday morning. (Why does everything in Indoor Track start at eight in the morning?) Oh, and there was a total of 320 miles of driving in between.  So that was a big part of my absence from “Our America” the past few days.  But it’s Monday morning, and here we go! 

SOE

My Mom was a spy for the British during World War II, a member of the “Special Operations Executive”, Churchill’s personal spy organization.  Mom was lucky:  the fatality rate in her unit was beyond 100% (not everyone died, but most did, and so did a lot of their replacements).   Mom survived, even though she was in and out of Nazi-occupied Europe; France, Belgium, and even Yugoslavia.  

SOE did everything they could to protect their agents.  The details mattered:  making sure the clothes were made in Paris factories, down to the underwear.  The cigarettes had to be local, and so did the accent.  Mom was successful in part, because of her years of “finishing school” at the Sacred Heart Convent in Liege, Belgium.  He French wasn’t “French”, it was “Belgian”, and so were her clothes.  That gave her some leeway in the inevitable interactions with authorities.

Papers

But most important was the “quality” of her forged documents.  Authoritarian governments remain in power, in part, by controlling the movements of citizens.  They do that through a series of documents that every citizen is required to carry.  Sure there were the “standard” identity documents; proof of birth, age, height, weight, nationality, religious belief, work status.  In addition, she needed “permissions”, identifying that she was allowed to “move” throughout the country:  “passes” prepared by local authorities allowing travel.  

Each document was on “special” paper, signed and stamped by the proper person.  Regular cops and the secret police didn’t need to ferret out differences in clothing or accent; they simply had to find an error in the documents.  That was enough to trigger detention, investigation, and for many members of the SOE, death.

Watch any World War II spy or escape movie.  For the undercover operative, the scariest time was when some low-level authority made the demand: “Your Papers!!”.  

Black Shirts

One of the hallmarks of a free society is the ability to move about without permission.  We don’t need “passes” to drive from town to town officiating track meets (though we do, reasonably, need a license to operate a car).  No one has to give us “permission” before we leave.  And while authorities can demand identity, they are required to have some “reason”, some probable cause of a criminal action, to move onto further detention or investigation. If you’re not driving your car at ninety miles an hour trying to make the warmup start of the college men’s pole vault, you can travel unencumbered by authority demanding “Your Papers Please”. Sometimes you can even drive that fast as well.

But those liberties are changing under the new administration.  Today it isn’t whether your cigarettes were made in North Carolina or your sweatshirt by the “Champion” company.  No, today, some of the American authorities, dressed in the black shirts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), are looking at one characteristic; skin.  Ask the Puerto Ricans taken in a Newark, New Jersey ICE “raid” of a workplace.  They were arrested by ICE as “undocumented migrants” because they looked Hispanic.  

Swept Up

Check out your own driver’s license.  It doesn’t list a citizenship status.  It doesn’t note that since some were born in Puerto Rico, they are AMERICAN CITIZENS, even eligible to vote for the President if they are residing in New Jersey (Puerto Rican residents cannot vote for President).  They just get swept up in the crowd, some legal, some not, all scrambling to give the ICE agents their “papers”.

If you drive south of Tucson, Arizona, there are checkpoints along I-19 approaching the border with Mexico. That’s one of the places where ICE Agents are stopping cars and demanding “Your Papers”.  Whether you’re an American citizen or legal resident, or a migrant “with out papers”, you must prove yourself.  And for those without, even those citizens without, there is a high risk of detention, and possible deportation to some country where you might not have even been.

It used to be, like two weeks ago, that there was a presumption that citizens could travel freely, even close to the Southern (and now Northern) borders.  Now, even in church, or in school, or in the hospital; there might well be the demand of  “your papers”. 

That’s the new reality in Our America.