It happened again.
This time it was a two-year-old girl, an American by birth, carried off to a place she had never chosen, by a system that doesn't even pretend to recognize her anymore.
No trial. No hearing. No real process at all.
They bundled her up alongside her undocumented mother and put them on a plane. Just like that. As if the small, stubborn fact of her citizenship didn’t matter. As if her belonging here was some kind of clerical error that needed correcting.
A federal judge caught wind of it later. He seemed stunned. Maybe even angry. He called for a hearing. Demanded answers. But by then, the damage was already done. She was already gone.
It’s not just her.
A few others too. Young kids. American citizens. Deported. Some sick. Some barely old enough to understand what was happening to them. All of them casualties of a machine that's been sharpening its teeth since the new regime took hold.
They call it enforcement.
They call it national security.
But when you peel back the slogans, all you’re left with is the quiet, brutal truth:
The collapse isn't coming.
It's here.
Not with tanks in the streets or flags on fire. Just this slow, grinding betrayal of the things we were told would always be sacred.
Due process.
Rule of law.
The right to be here, if you belong.
You can almost hear the old promises cracking if you listen closely enough.
And the worst part?
It's not a mistake.
It's not a clerical error.
It's the system doing exactly what it means to do, under new orders, with new permission.
Somewhere tonight, a little girl is falling asleep in a strange country, probably scared, probably confused. Somewhere tonight, the people who did this to her will close their laptops, punch their timecards, and go home thinking they did a good day's work.
The borders aren’t just lines on a map anymore.
They’re moving. They’re seeping inward, invisible and arbitrary, until one day you wake up and realize you’re standing on the wrong side of them.
Even if you were born here.
Even if you did everything right.
Even if you believed, once, that being American meant something durable.
It used to.
Until very recently, it still did.
But under this regime, under this hollowed-out flag, even that has started to rot.
All I know is this:
If the system can erase a two-year-old citizen with a wave of its hand, it can erase anyone.
And it will.
Not with sirens. Not with fanfare.
Just quietly, relentlessly, one life at a time.