I admire absurdity, especially political absurdity, but I’m finding it hard to laugh right now. As I write this (late Sunday, January 29), people with visas, and possibly with green cards—it’s not clear what’s happening right now, as opposed to what’s being said—with every legal right to enter the U.S. are being barred because they’re Muslims and from the wrong countries.

No, make that presumed Muslims, because I’m sure no one’s asking what they believe. I mean, c’mon, they might be terrorists, so why should anyone listen to them?

It echoes one of America’s moments of national shame, the World War II detention of Japanese-Americans, not because of anything they’d done, or even believed, but because their Japanese heritage meant they must be the enemy.

Is the current detention illegal? You bet your ass it is. It’s discrimination on the basis of religion. It’s refusing people who have a legal right to enter to country permission to enter the country. It violates a 1965 law that forbids discrimination against immigrants on the basis of their national origin.

Although several courts issued temporary stays of execution, Al Jazeera reports that the Department of Homeland Security said it would ignore them. The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security said it would comply with the rulings, but it would also enforce the executive order. Are both things possible? Hard to say. In a world of alternative facts, I’m not sure we’re supposed to care.

The Times also reports that it’s not clear how consistently airport officials are complying with the court order.

When I was a kid, we were taught that the U.S. Constitution’s checks and balances were a stroke of genius of the part of the nation’s founders and the reason for America’s stability. From where I’m sitting, on the far side of the Atlantic, it sounds like the Trump administration wants to throw all that out the window. The executive branch is ready to ride over a federal court because they don’t like what it said. Because they don’t have to. Because who’s going to stop them?

As we used to say when I was a kid, “You and whose army?”

There are bright spots in the picture. Lawyers flooded to airports, volunteering their help. They filed suits, they did all the things lawyers do, except they did them for free. In places they seem to have been allowed to see detainees. In others, they seem not to have been. Protesters also materialized at airports. And at New York’s JFK airport, cab drivers staged a one-hour strike in protest.

On a personal note, my goddaughter—Catholic by baptism, I’m no longer sure what by belief—is considering wearing a headscarf as a gesture of solidarity. I don’t know if she’ll do it—it’s not an easy step to take and she’s concerned that it might actually offend the people she wants to support—but her courage and her commitment are humbling.

If I lived in the U.S., I’d be advocating that all women do it, but I’m an ocean away and don’t feel I have a right to advocate an act I’m in the wrong place to take myself. I’m increasingly uneasy at not being where I ought to be right now.

The U.S. hasn’t slipped irrevocably into one-man rule yet, but the signs are chilling. We’re far out into uncharted waters, friends, and Captain Ahab is at the wheel. I don’t know how long we have to turn the ship around. Although I’m not sure how much impact online petitions have, I’m signing them like mad because it’s something I can do. Because we have to do whatever we can.