Tag Archives: ICE

The ICEman Cometh

By Robin Bates | Published: April 20, 2025

ICE’s attack on immigrants brings to mind Frost’s “Fire and Ice,” O’Neill’s “The Ice Man Cometh,” Stevens’s “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” and Niemöller’s “First They Came.”

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Kafka and America’s Disappeared

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2025

America is “disappearing” people, bringing to mind the fate of K in Kafka’s “Trial.”

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Stephen King and Detention Centers

By Robin Bates | Published: September 9, 2019

Stephen King’s latest novels unconsciously reflect contemporary events, with kids imprisoned in detention centers.

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Children Dying in ICE Custody

By Robin Bates | Published: July 11, 2019

Friday Testifying before a Congressional committee investigating inhumane treatment of asylum seekers, Yazmin Juarez’s gave the tragedy an all too human face by recounting how she lost her baby daughter due to “neglect and mistreatment” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I share an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet to acknowledge her heartbreak. According to an […]

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Migrant Kids in a Dickensian Nightmare

By Robin Bates | Published: June 25, 2019

Wednesday As the Trump administration’s treatment of children at the border continues to horrify the nation, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist comes to mind. There you have another child caught up in a nightmare where ideology overwhelms basic humanity. Whereas most of us see the death of a child as overwhelmingly tragic, it serves the agendas […]

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