By Prem Gongaju

I

“Someone must have slandered Joseph K. for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” – “The Trial” by Franz Kafka

“ICE detains Marine Corps veteran’s wife who was still breastfeeding their baby”
Jack Brook, Associate Press, Sun, June 22, 2025

Unlike the prosecutorial bureaucracy of Kafka’s Trial, judge, jury, and executioner – all are out in the open in America.
‘No one person is judge, jury, and executioner in this country—that’s what the legal system is for.’
And yet some people play dumb, seemingly confusing habeas corpus for heavy corpses. Just for a few laughs.

So, someone must have slandered Paola Clouatre . . .

In Paola’s case, it’s the poignant aftermath of her mother’s failure to appear at an immigration hearing.
“She was not aware of the removal order,” Paola’s husband Adrian Clouatre said, “so she was not knowingly defying it,” he said. “If she had been arrested, she would have been deported long ago, and we would never have met.”

They met, they fell in love, and they were married. Holy is their union.

Set asunder by the long ICE-y arm of law, they are united in each other’s arms, the arms bearing each other’s tattooed name. Holy be their names.

Let us rally for the Clouatre family before their names get re-tattooed into numbers.

II

“ICE detains Marine Corps veteran’s wife who was still breastfeeding their baby”
The AP Headline shepherded my mind to Virgo Lactans, for the act of breastfeeding exults Madonna del Latte.

And Adrian worried about the loss of formative contact between Paola and child.

“When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He’s worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.”