The Boy in the Bunny Hat

There is a powerful story that I have been trying hard to rediscover. In a European shtetl in the middle of the war, the nazis (lower case intentional) roll in and machine gun almost everyone. Inevitably, some villagers take refuge from their killers, hiding themselves in attics and cellars. But nazi cunning triumphs in the end. A German soldier who speaks convincing Yiddish, whispers at the windows and doors. “Come out dear Jews, the way is clear. You have nothing to fear because the nazis are gone.” Desperate, trusting, duped by the ruse, the Jews emerge one by one, only to be captured and led away to slaughter. They fall victim to the sound of a reassuring voice.

I wish I could find the original source of this narrative, but it has stayed in my psyche for a very long time. What surfaced it most recently was the ICE war in Minneapolis. Kristi Noem may be gone, along with Bovino and Lewandowski, but we are hardly done with the moral offense of deportation. It turns out that all the president’s men and women were lying to extract a political advantage. The deportation campaign is not about the worst of the worst, or even people convicted of crimes. It’s about waitresses and chambermaids and people who do roofing. All of them were working and paying their taxes, with no expectation of a return on investment. But there is nothing like exclusionary racialized nationalism to activate the base and win an election. That’s the very first page in the Trump-Miller playbook.

And so we have scenes like the boy in the bunny hat. When ICE ran out of coercive options, it positioned the child where his mother could see him. It meant that they didn’t have to ram the door, shoot someone in the face, or produce a warrant. All they had to do was wait. Sure as shooting, his mother came unglued while his father apparently fled for his life. The boy in the bunny hat was like a whisper of Yiddish. “Not to worry, Spanish-speaking parents. Your children are safe. All you have to do is come forth and claim them.”

Some things are simply too awful to imagine, but nobody had to imagine this. Using a child in a bunny hat as bait takes us straight to the bottom rung of Hell. It’s the nefarious strategy of uncivilized people employing the tactics of nazi savages to pull communities limb from limb. It’s the moral dismemberment of a social contract which deems children the locus of irreplaceable innocence and privileges the love between parent and child.

ICE has paused its savagery in Minnesota and asks us to believe in the good instincts of Tom Homan. We’re supposed to trust that he will be better, that the excesses of Minneapolis will not unfold again. But Homan is only humane in contrast, a single step up from the debasement of Bovino. Look for depravity in the next city on the list. I’m sure that there will be another child in a bunny hat.