Imagine for a moment that the unthinkable happened.

Humor me.

Let's say the virus is unmitigated wildfire and the White House has gone all in on its power grab.

Lethal munitions are authorized.

Despite thinking you were in a safe demographic, your family is a target.

Even though you thought you were safe, you still prepared.

You still made plans.

You kept a bug-out bag with all your important documents, supplies and cash.

You had a network of friends who could get you and your family out of your home locale.

You avoid secret police and gunfire skirmishes.

You successfully navigate your kids and family to a series of remote motels as you try to flee the country.

You do everything necessary to stay off the grid as much as possible.

And you get to the border.

Due to rampant Covid-19, the neighboring country has disallowed ANY entry for US citizens under any circumstances.

The local motel owner understands why you're there. It's why most of his clientele are there.

He gives you the business card of a guy who can sneak you in.

The motel owner is sympathetic to your cause and explains that he's got a great success rate.

If safety for you and your family is what's most important. The name on the card is what you need.

So you call.

The guy is super professional. Gets your info and will call back

Guy tells you that as long as you pay him the two grand that he needs to cover his risk, he'll smuggle you and his family across in his vehicle.

You are apprehensive and wary, but what awaits if you stay is unimaginably horrible.

So you pay the money and take the ride.

To your surprise, the whole thing works.

Your family arrives in the neighboring country.

The guy gives you some fresh ID documents, tells you where you can find food and someone who'll give you a job and wishes you the best of luck.

It has been a long, and harrowing trip.

But it has been worth it. Because your kids will get to grow up in a place with a rational pandemic policy.

And there's no bullets flying or improvised bombs exploding.

No paramilitary forces.

Just peace. Like you used to have.

You and your family are starving and make your way to the location the guy gave you.

It's teeming with people and the food smells delicious.

Your kids eyes brighten with wonder and relief.

You all sit down, tired and hungry to what is right now the best meal you've ever had.

You talk about what you're going to do next.

You talk about the life you're going to build.

You talk about how hard it was to escape the President and how glad you are to have made it.

And while you're talking you notice one of the waitstaff point in your direction.

Less than 30 seconds go by before armed men rush your table.

They beat you and your partner.

They grab your kids with the food still in their hands.

They put your kids into a vehicle and drive away.

They tell you that you may never see them again. They are going to prison.

You scream for your children as they are taken. You beg the armed men to let them go.

You promise you'll do anything if they just let your kids out of the vehicle.

You say that you've been running for months.

That you just wanted them to be safe

The men tell you they will be

You're then arrested and thrown into a detention facility.

You are given no lawyer because you are off the books.

You don't understand the laws or procedures but you hope that if you are compliant enough, that they'll realize you're a good person and let you go

You're wrong.

You plead and beg and explain that you've never hurt anyone in your life.

You've always worked a good job. Given back to your community. Tried to be an upstanding citizen.

They explain that only criminals break laws.

And crossing the border was breaking the law.

They tell you that you will be sent back to the disease and authoritarianism of America...

...eventually. Because procedure is difficult and complex. It could be weeks, it could be years. nobody knows.

You ask about your kids. If you can see them.

They say no.

They explain that in this country, they feel that criminals make bad parents and that the kids would be better off with any random citizen of their country than with you.

And so they will be adopted off...

...if they survive prison.

"If they SURVIVE?" you ask?

Your kids are 3 and 5.

Aren't they being taken care of? Nursed? Comforted?

"No" they say. They explain that they keep kids in concrete warehouses like cattle until the system figures out what to do with them.

You ask to hear from them.

No.

Honestly, nobody is ENTIRELY sure where they put your kids.

Or which ones they were in the first place.

Again. Procedure is tricky,

It's best to just get over them, they tell you.

You're gonna be in prison a long time probably, so settle in.

And as you're sitting there in your cell. Your partner in the cell next to you and you dream about your life, the one you lost. And then the new potential future you lost because that waiter pointed you out

And you start to wonder whether or not it was worth it to leave at all

As you sit there and languish, you wonder how anyone could ever let this happen to people.

What kind of depraved negligence and lack of empathy in society would allow this to innocent families?

And then you go 'Oh. Yeah.'

Cause it occurs to you that both parties back in the US had been sanctioning exactly this kind of experience for decades.

You realize that nobody cares who you are or what your story is.

Nobody notices you.

Nobody is thinking about you.

You know this because you didn't either

You realize that you'd voted for stormtroopers in the street when you voted to allow them to deal with "the immigrant problem"

To be fair, you weren't thinking of actual people. Just an abstract "problem". One that didn't affect you, so you didn't care.

You had sanctioned literally everything you were now experiencing in another country.

You began wondering how many parents had sat in prisons just like this in the US.

Wondering when someone would acknowledge their humanity... that they were just trying to save their FAMILY

But the longer you sat and thought, the more you realized that you knew how this story ended because you'd been watching it your whole life.

You realize the best you can hope for is that the bullets have stopped flying by the time they haul you and your partner back to the US

You realize that all you can do is hope that your children will make it out of the prison alive.

You abandon hope of seeing them again.

You hope that the people they are given to will be kind.

That they will try to love them as you do. And not harm them.

You hope.

You hope.

::NOTE::
As nightmarish as this may seem...

This allegory describes one of the BEST possible outcomes of this theoretical journey.

There are far worse outcomes possible at literally every step.

And they're way more likely.