They do not want us to see.

That is why they put children in places that are hard to get to, hard to find. At Tornillo. At Homestead. At Carrizo Springs.

And when you get there, they do their best to make up rules that keep you from seeing. One lie they use is about the land under your feet.

It is private property. It is federal property. See that grass? We own that, you can’t stand there.

They even, quite literally, argue that you can’t look. And, if pressed, they might say, they have said, they do all this to protect the children.

The children, who have been separated from friends and family at the border and hidden behind the walls and fences, inside the tents and shelters, in these faraway places. Marched in single file, forbidden to touch, deprived of pens and pencils so they won’t use them to cut themselves, kept for month after month as despair floods their hearts.

They are protecting these children from us. And from the law, the Flores agreement, that says they can’t be held inside such places. Because of the damage it does. Because it breaks them, and they can’t be fixed.

They are protecting them from our eyes, from our waves, from our reporting to the world about the atrocity that is a prison camp for children. They are protecting their lies. That this is for their welfare, and not a massive act of racist hatred against desperate refugee children.

Come and witness, that the scales shall drop from our eyes, and the nation shall see.