We are seeing through the green-tarped fences that surround the Homestead prison camp for migrant children.

For a long time now, we have been able to see through their motives. The punishment motive that lashes out against children for daring to escape the violence and poverty of their homelands. The greed that has found a way to line the pockets of cynical policy makers.

And we have been able to see the rolling expansion of the prison camp, the tents going up, the trailers going in to supplement the ragged collection of broken down buildings from a disgraced and ravaged Job Corps site, sitting on federal land. On federal land, the technicality that allows the for-profit operators to avoid even the modest state standards that would forbid an unlicensed operator like Comprehensive Health Services from getting anywhere near children in the state of Florida.

And we have seen, standing up on step ladders, looking over at the eerie regimentation and orderliness of teenagers at an age when we would expect inner chaos and exuberance.

What we could not see, and what we feared, and what some of us knew in our hearts, is what went on in the dark recesses of the overcrowded dorms and tents and trailers and nooks and crannies of the prison camp, and in the darkness of the children’s hearts, and the deep evil in the institutional heart of Homestead.

But we now have a glimpse, and some are shocked and some are not. Some are horrified and some are not. Some knew. Some didn’t.

Some don’t care.

Some do. Let’s hope enough do.

Shut it down.