Columbia Blinked. ICE Didn’t.
As elite institutions cave to Trump, toddlers are being rushed through asylum hearings—while the system learns how to make due process disappear.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
— W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919)
“It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
The Fast Track to Disappearance
What we are witnessing is not a collection of isolated acts. It’s a throughline. A test of our resistance. And a quiet war on reality.
Columbia caved. Skadden complied. CBS retreated. One by one, our institutions have chosen to adapt rather than resist—to prioritize contracts and convenience over courage. They’ve shown the regime what’s possible when fear beats purpose.
And this week, we saw what that surrender buys.
Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a U.S. resident and father, was deported and has vanished. Others will follow. This is how authoritarianism spreads—quietly, bureaucratically, with forms and file numbers and institutional assent.
Unaccompanied children—some too young to know their own names—are being railroaded through their asylum cases. No counsel. No safeguards. No chance. Fast-tracked toward deportation under the watchful silence of a system more afraid of crossing Trump than of crushing a child.
In They Took the Lawyers. Now They’re Coming for the Children, we issued a call: Sign the letter. Draw the line. Refuse to normalize this. Today, we re-platform that post. Because the erosion of justice for children is not a detour. It is the main road to dictatorship.
You don’t have to wait for it to get worse.
You can sign the letter. You can show your coworkers. You can join us.
Because when they come for the children, and nobody says no, the rest of us are next.
Read, Sign & Share:
They Took the Lawyers. Now They’re Coming for the Children.
The U.S. government is fast-tracking unaccompanied children into asylum interviews with no attorneys, no interpreters, and no time to prepare. Many of these children had legal counsel—until March 21, 2025, when the Trump Administration terminated all federal funding for their representation. Now, they are being rushed into life-altering legal proceeding…
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