Lake Conroe isn’t spectacular. There are no stunning views. The water is gray, crowded with boats and the houses on shore sit closely together. The houses are nice, modern and airy and there are, with lots of green between the porch and the water. There is less green between the homes themselves.
It was the closeness of the neighbors’ that made me check he distance from my brother-in-law’s house to Galveston when we gathered the Saturday before Memorial Day. We were celebrating my mother-in-law’s approaching 90th birthday. It was a surprise party. My wife and her sister decorated the house in Braves gear. Friends came from across the state. Her octogenerian 
sisters flew in from Bogotá with their families to complete the surprise. That’s why I checked the distance to the coast. If it was more than 100 miles, ICE would have to get a warrant to come on the property. I looked at Elisa, the two-year-old daughter of Pam’s cousin. She ordered everyone around, tolerated no dissent and proclaimed her righteousness. In Spanish. Most of the conversations were in Spanish. My mother-in-law, long a United States citizen is still more comfortable in her native language, so that’s what her children speak to her. About half the people there were either fluent or native speakers and some of the rest of us were trying to get by.
I sat in the backyard, watched the kids frolic on the grass, in the water and on the inner-tube behind the boat. Fear nudged me, softly, like breeze coming off the Lake. What if the neighbors, overhearing the Spanish from the new guy’s yard, called ICE? Did the Colombians leave their passports at my mother-in-law’s? What about my kids. They don’t have licenses and we didn’t bring their passports from Austin. Other than my wretched Spanish, I had no way to prove my citizenship. We’d have to write Nashville for my birth certificate. My family was in Texas before there was United States, but I’m not 100 percent sure we’ll be able to stay.
This is America now.
It’s not a long jump from taking children from parents because the parents seek asylum here. The next step has already been made. The administration wants to cull some naturalized citizens from the rolls. If my mother-in-law loses her passport, will they take my wife’s? Her father died before her mother became a citizen. Will there be a move to require both parents be citizens for the child to be a citizen? Will it be retroactive? It sounds crazy. A lot of things sounded crazy 513 days ago.
This is America now.
It’s a country where you have to worry about family members being ripped from you because someone wants to make a point or needs leverage. It’s a country where the leaders justify unspeakable cruelty to children by pointing to scripture. But never to this one. It’s a country where people call you out for not supporting a leader doing things that make you physically ill.
I’ve never been one of those people who believe it can’t happen here. I’ve read my Baldwin. I listen, actually listen, to East Texas. I’ve known it’s been there, just below the surface all this time. I’ve read enough history to know how this country was built. I’ve known it could happen, because I know it’s happened before. But I’m shocked at how quickly it’s happened. I’m shocked at how easily it’s happened. I’m shocked by how people I thought I knew revel in it.
I’ve thought about that a lot since Memorial Day weekend. I don’t know if these angry people are the dying gasp of America’s dark side, or if they’re going to gut everything we thought this country meant and paint their faces in the blood. Because they don’t seek truth. They seek comfort. They fear a changing world because they fear they won’t survive on their merits if they can’t rig the game.
Many of these people are strangers, friends of a friend who ended up on the same facebook post. But others were friends. People to whom I’ve been close. In at least one case, someone I considered family. What they’ve shown me is the lie. They were my friends as long as we agreed. They were there when the times were good. But if it ever goes bad, they’ll take the easy way out.
That’s the worst part of this. Not that it’s already happening to America, horrible though that is, but that the neighbor who calls ICE might be the neighbor I’ve known all along.
This is America today.
Oran Today 