Above: that’s Emmanuel, center, the teenager who was wrongly detained by ICE and held for 48 days without reason. He had to have his appendix removed while in prison. Photo courtesy FIEL.

On Friday the Parzen family attended the FIEL “ICE out of Houston” rally and protest.

Our girls — ages 12 and 14 — would have much rather been at home playing Roblox and texting with their friends, as they would on any other Friday night.

Instead, they listened to the speakers at the rally: children detained without cause and separated from their parents; a doctor who explained that hundreds of people died in ICE custody last year because of lack of medical attention; a mother whose autistic 14-year-old had to have his appendix removed while improperly detained by ICE.

The whole thing took about 45 minutes.

But they got a sense of how members of our own community are being gravely affected by our government’s profiling of brown people.

They heard a young adult tell the story of masked men in unmarked cars arresting his father and then putting him in a chokehold after he asked them to show ID.

They were reminded that while we drive to school and come home to warm dinner, kids their own ages don’t even know if their parents will be able to pick them up from school.

That’s why we take them to protests: so that they will remember that we are “in it and of it” and that the change is only going to come when we all stand up for those vulnerable among us.

Please consider giving to or volunteering for FIEL, an immigrant-led group that provides resources and advocates for the immigrant community (disclosure: I work for them as a pro bono media consultant).