Four or five times a week, on my way home from the gym, I see them, a literal embodiment of our national disgrace, and a challenge to our integrity as a city. Do we still feel? Do we even know what’s in our own self-interest?

There, sprawled out in the lobby of the Town Hall 19th District police station, are immigrant refugees, a few adults but mostly kids, babies to pre-teens, a volleyball in one corner, maybe a donated bike in another. The lucky ones have a mattress; others sleep right on the floor or have a thin futon. Except for a few weeks, the slowly changing mass of faces has been there since spring. And despite the rigors of getting here from Venezuela, Guatemala or wherever, they show no sign of wanting to go back.