A Modern Parable
Tom Homan, Trump Border Czar, Fox News, July 2025:
“People need to understand, ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them. They just go through the observations, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
Scene 1: The Raid
The pre-dawn silence of a Central Valley farm is shattered by the low rumble of diesel engines. Unmarked ICE vehicles crawl down the dusty access road. A sudden flash of tactical lights. Barked orders. The field erupts in chaos.
Workers scatter like startled birds through rows of lettuce and beans. Shadows flit beneath the irrigation lines. A woman screams. A man falls.
The first canister arcs through the air, trailing white smoke. Then another. The acrid burn of tear gas mingles with the scent of overturned earth. Workers stumble, eyes streaming, choking on chemicals and fear.
Hector, broad-shouldered, quiet, sees only one thing: his son, Mateo, crouching near the equipment shed, toy truck forgotten in the dirt. Hector runs—faster than he has in years—dodging crates and shouting agents, lungs searing. A crushed weed clings to the cuff of his pants as he runs. He reaches the boy and pulls him close. They crouch behind a rusting disc harrow, trembling, Mateo’s small hands pressed to his eyes.
In desperation, Hector begins to pray aloud in Spanish through the burning air.
“Jesús, protégeme. Ten piedad de mi hijo.”
Out of the chemical haze, a figure approaches—not running, not afraid. A man in simple linen, worn sandals, dark hair, and a weathered face. His eyes are kind, though tears stream down his cheeks from the gas. He kneels beside them, placing one hand on Hector’s shoulder and the other gently on Mateo’s head.
He begins to pray—not in Spanish or English, but in the cadence of scripture:
“I was hungry and you gave me food… I was thirsty and you gave me drink… I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me.”
The sounds of boots crunching dirt grow louder. ICE agents round the corner through the dissipating smoke, rifles raised, armor clanking, gas masks covering their faces. They see three brown-skinned figures huddled together.
One agent hesitates. “Wait… who is—?”
Another cuts him off, voice muffled behind his mask. “Doesn’t matter. They match the profile. Bag ’em.”
The agents swarm. Zip ties bite into wrists. Mateo cries out as he’s yanked from his father, still coughing from the gas. Hector shouts in panic. The stranger offers no resistance—his gaze full of grief, not fear.
“Do not be afraid,” he says softly. “They do not know what they do.”
The agents drag them toward the transport van. No one asks the stranger his name.
Scene 2: The Hearing
A windowless immigration courtroom, sterile and indifferent. A fluorescent hum fills the air. The docket reads:
“JESUS — No Last Name.”
The defendant sits at the table, still wearing the dirt-stained robe from the fields. His feet are bare.
The judge, gray-suited and impatient, flips through forms without lifting his eyes.
“Do you have documentation establishing your legal presence in the United States?”
Jesus replies, softly:
“I have roots in this land older than maps. I have walked its fields and wept at its borders. I have come for the least among you.”
The judge sighs. “This court does not recognize mythology, metaphor, or messianic claims. Do you have a valid visa or asylum paperwork?”
“I was here before paperwork.”
The interpreter glances up but says nothing.
The judge shrugs, jots a note, and speaks without emotion:
“Absent documentation, this court orders your removal from the United States.”
He pounds the gavel. The sound echoes like a tomb closing.
The bailiff calls out the next name:
“González, Maria.”
Scene 3: Alligator Alcatraz
Deep in the Florida Everglades, forty-five miles from Miami, an airstrip rises from the swamp. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire stretch across the tarmac. Guard towers pierce the humid air. Beyond the perimeter, dark water reflects nothing—cypress knees and saw grass disappearing into mist where alligator eyes glide silent as death.
The official name is Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. Everyone calls it Alligator Alcatraz.
Inside the compound, heavy-duty tents and FEMA trailers house thousands. The hum of industrial air conditioning battles the crushing heat, never quite winning. Mosquitoes cloud the recreation yard. In the distance, something splashes in the canal—too large to be a fish.
Jesus sits on a metal cot, sharing his meal with a trembling boy whose parents were deported separately. He tends to an old woman’s infected foot with water and torn fabric. Around him, the detained speak in whispers—some have been here days, others weeks. No one knows when the final expulsion orders will come.
A guard leans against the fence, sweating despite the cooling units. “That one thinks he’s some kind of prophet,” he tells his partner, nodding toward Jesus.
The other shrugs. “Least he’s peaceful. Better than the ones who try to run.” He glances toward the swamp. “Though where would they go?”
That evening, Jesus stands at the perimeter fence, fingers resting on the chain link. Through the mesh, he watches the sun set over an endless maze of waterways and predators. Behind him, someone begins humming a half-remembered hymn. Others join in—Mexican ballads, Salvadoran lullabies, the songs of home, sung low through clenched hope.
Mateo sits nearby, no longer crying, but hollow-eyed. He stares at the fence, at the razor wire, at the guard towers with their searchlights that never sleep.
“He came to his own, and his own received him not.”
In a crack between concrete slabs, where a drainage pipe meets the ground, a single green shoot pushes through. Impossibly small. Impossibly resilient. The guards walk past it twice a day and never see it.
Jesus kneels and touches the tiny leaf with one finger.
He whispers something no one hears—a prayer, a promise, a word riding the night wind across the water, past the alligators and the pythons, past the razor wire and the searchlights, out into the vast American darkness where other hearts are breaking, other prayers ascending.
The detention facility sleeps fitfully in the swamp.
But the green shoot grows.
Northcoast Antiquarian 