It’s the little things you notice. The small pot of roses planted in the mud, herbs someone planted in a water bottle and little girl with perfectly braided hair.

I went to Matamoros, Mexico, recently to witness the effects of Donald Trump’s immigration policy. The Orwellian-named Migrant Protection Policy, or MPP, denies asylum seekers the ability to stay in the United States while they wait for their asylum cases to be resolved. These people, who have followed the law by voluntarily presenting themselves at a port of entry and requesting asylum, are forced to wait in squalid tent camps, where the only means of survival comes either through their own resilience, tents made of garbage bags and sticks, ovens made of mud or help from a myriad of volunteer organizations. Most of them are families with small children, running from gangs that torture, kidnap and murder, and most of them have been living there for at least five months.

The fact that the policy has been called illegal by immigration officers, the United Nations and the Ninth District Court has not deterred the Trump administration. Rather than abide by U.S. and international law, Trump is doubling down, deporting mostly mothers and children either to Guatemala or El Salvador, two of the countries with the highest murder rates in the world. Many have died or disappeared after deportation.

These facts are horrid enough when they’re read. But, to be there is to witness the human toll and its everyday impact on real people. As I walked through the tent city, I got a sense of why people leave their homes and of the misery they endure.

We met a man who wanted to practice his English with us. His wife came out of the makeshift tent. She forced a smile, but looked utterly exhausted. I asked how many children she had and how long they’d been there: four kids, five months. They had a little mud stove under a tarp, and had made a shelf to hold some basic food supplies. I thought about my own daughter, and wondered, how do you raise four kids in a tent city? How do you keep them clean with no running water? What do you do after the sun goes down and there’s no electricity – what’s bedtime like? How do you maintain any privacy when your nearest neighbor is feet away and can hear every word you say? How do you protect yourself from the gangs that have shootouts with the police feet from your tent, as happened when I was there? And most of all, how do you keep panic at bay, hearing that others before you, who finally got their day in court, were deported to the very place you ran from?

We met a man who had had a good job with a Mexican-American import company in El Salvador. He and his wife had built a good life; he was a mid-level manager, she was a businesswoman. Their success made them targets for extortion. They paid for a while, but it was never enough, so, when his kids and his parents were threatened again, they ran for their lives. He told us, “I’m not looking for a handout. I just want to be able to live and work somewhere and keep my family safe. I worked hard, played by the rules, paid my taxes. I’m doing what anyone would do; putting my family first again and again.” He knows that he has almost zero chance of being granted asylum under Trump’s immigration policies. But, as he told us, “All I have now is hope.”

I met so many caring people from my own country, volunteering daily to provide food, clean water, port-a-potties and basic supplies, but I couldn’t escape the sense of shame I felt at my own country’s cruelty. I walked past a group of children who were screaming with joy because some volunteers were handing out candy. They looked like any group of kids anywhere would. One little girl and I smiled and waved at each other. She jumped off her bench, ran to me with a beautiful smile, and handed me her candy. My heart broke right there and has stayed broken.

How can my country do this to innocent children? The little girl in the camp was probably better off than the uncounted numbers who are in “detention centers” – jails for children – all around the country. I saw three in the little town of San Benito and one large one for teens in Las Fronteras. These house the children who were taken from their families as a result of Trump’s family separation policy. Many of them have been crying for their moms and dads for over two years. They may believe now that they’ll never see them again, and they may be right. I couldn’t get inside any of these centers, and without my local guide – a religious sister who ran a shelter – I wouldn’t have known what they were. They looked unremarkable from the outside. Only the high fences and guard towers gave them away. As I peered through the fencing of one “tender age” facility, I spied a toddler-sized sliding board and swing set. It was a jarring sight for a prison. They’re funded by U.S. taxpayers, at $750 a day per child, and are run by private, for-profit companies with ties to the Trump administration. They’re often one of the few employers in an economically depressed town. Taxpayer dollars are enriching private corporations for taking children from their parents.

This whole system, like a giant spider web, ensnares desperate people running from violence, their children, unemployed or under-employed Americans who enforce the policies, and the many complicit Americans, including me, go about their daily lives while the spider gets fat off the profits of human misery.

Every action taken makes a difference. Educate yourself. Join the Facebook groups Grannies Respond, Witness at the Border, Team Brownsville, Raices or Angry Tias and Abuelas. Many of these groups coordinate trips to the border, where you can witness, or provide humanitarian aid. Donate money. Educate your friends. Call or write your legislators. Get involved with campaigns locally and at the national level. Ask the candidates to explain their position on immigration and ask what they plan to do about the children in detention. Vote.

I brought some art supplies to the camps, and the kids drew pictures of the homes, relatives and pets they left behind; of flowers, and angels and soldiers and of the camps themselves. One pictured the border wall, with crying children behind it. They were showing us their lives.

Don’t look away.

Tess George is a resident of Nashua.

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