Cages in the Cattails

I didn’t hear about it from the news. I heard about it from a friend.

His grandfather left Cuba decades ago - fleeing a regime that caged people for their ideas, for their protests, for their presence. He made it to Miami with calloused hands and a quiet rage for injustice. Voted for Trump every time. Believed in this country even when it didn’t believe in him.

And now, here we are. America building cages in the swamp.

ICE is opening a so-called detention center deep in the Everglades. Not on the edge of town, not near a courthouse or clinic. No, it’s out in the wild, where birds wheel over sawgrass and the heat presses down like a second skin. They’re not choosing that location by accident.

They want to hide it.

I was sixteen when I first drove across Alligator Alley. Stopped at Shark Valley, climbed the tall spiral tower, looked out over that impossible stretch of green and water. It was dizzying - beautiful and terrifying in its vastness. You could see for miles. Or maybe not see at all, depending on the storm.

The Everglades taught me that Florida has bones older than roads. That not everything is meant to be touched or tamed. It’s one of the last places where this state remembers what it was before the condos and cruise ships. And now we’re filling it with cages.

Not for panthers. Not for pythons.

For people.

We call it “detention” because “imprisonment” might make the donors uncomfortable. We say “processing” instead of “punishment.” But anyone who’s been paying attention knows better. These centers aren’t about justice. They’re about disappearance. About turning human beings into problems to be stored.

These aren’t terrorists. They’re not violent criminals. They’re mothers. Sons. People who fled violence or poverty or hunger or corruption. Some came here for hope. Some came here because they had no other choice.

And for that, we put them in boxes of barbed wire.

Out where the gators roam.

Out where no one will see them.

Out where screams are silenced.

I don’t care how you vote. I care what you accept. Because once you accept that human suffering can be hidden in plain sight - camouflaged by cattails and contracts - you’ve already surrendered something vital. You’ve already made peace with cruelty.

I keep thinking about that Cuban grandfather. How he came here to escape cages.

I wonder what he’d say now.

Because the America he believed in is building the very thing he fled from - and it’s doing it in the middle of the swamp. Hidden right in front of us.