Chapter 4: THE SCOREBOARD

And here it is. The final count. The number the conveyor fed, which the ICE machine processed, until someone with a spreadsheet could make it all make sense. ICE 2025. KILLED: 32 WHILE IN ICE CUSTODY. DEPORTED: 2,000,000. A scoreboard. Like baseball. Like a game someone is winning. The numbered ball heads, the ones that used to be people, are scattered now. Some burn in trash cans. Some roll on the ground unclaimed. The season is over, and next season starts soon. Thirty-two killed. Not all criminals. Not all saints. Some were citizens who looked wrong. Some were undocumented immigrants who lived right. Doesn’t matter now. Two million gone. The scoreboard doesn’t tell you how. It doesn’t separate the ones dragged from their kitchens at dawn from the ones who packed a bag at midnight because the knock was coming. It doesn’t count the families who self-deported, not because they were guilty but because they were afraid. Afraid of the ICE machine. Afraid of becoming a number in a bin