Poop on the Floor

Regarding the exodus and re-entry of dorm B-1 which disrupted my class at the detention center; I discovered after class that the team was pulled out and reprimanded for the high incidence of pooping on the shower floors. The news was delivered sotto voce despite the fact that we were the only two people in the cavernous locked room, as if volume would lend momentum to the scatological crisis. The agent of the news took my silence for shock, and assured me that "it happened more than you would think."

I was not shocked at the news. I had a number of things run through my mind in rapid succession: the story of an 11-year-old boy who pooped in his pants every day when a difficult transition happened. The boy had never been potty-trained due to a difficult first four years in which he was shuttled between his birth mother (who relinquished her rights) and adoptive family. The adoptive family was naturally at their wit's end, but the boy's response came from fear and trauma, not from manipulation (from the book From Fear to Love by B. Bryan Post).

I thought of children who withhold bowel movements and became chronically constipated. It's one of the few aspects of their lives where they have power. And I thought of pets who get angry at their owners- for vacations, long work hours, etc. My college roommate recently told us about her former cat, who got so angry at the long working hours of the family that she peed all over the house, even on the car keys!

So what came to my mind when I heard the news was control, as in, the detainees don't have any. These are grown men who largely came to the US for work to support their families, and they are stuck in a situation where they have no voice, and no affect on their future. Our immigration system has made it so they're reduced to the act of small children to make their anger known. Their humiliation has to take a backseat to their natural anger and fear at being completely out of control. I hate nothing more than being out of control; it scares me and the fear makes me angry. If I had no other outlet I might poop on the shower floor, too.