Ad Campaign

By Estelle Wong
12th grade | William Fremd High School | Illinois
Finalist, Information and AI category

With lines from “The Future of the Border Is Even More Dystopian Than You Thought” by Lauren Markham, a Pulitzer Center reporting project

We the people of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect union,
insure domestic tranquility

            (using wires, bullets, and robot dogs)

provide for Our defense

            (expand and externalize endlessly east to west)

promote the general welfare

            (for Us not Them)

secure the blessing of liberty to Ourselves
and Our Posterity,

            (by way of force and control)

do ordain this Constitution

            (and establish an electric wall
            of towers and drones and artificial eyes
            made by industry partners)

for

            (watching and waiting,
            because everyone is a suspect,
            everyone an immigrant,
            everyone a criminal in—)

the United States of America.

This message was paid for by the
Department of Homeland Security.

Estelle Wong will attend the University of Iowa to study English and Creative Writing and prides herself on her ventures across multimedia modes of storytelling. She often writes about humanity, immigration, and marginalization. She wrote “Ad Campaign” in critique of the American obsession with border security and its perpetual paranoia toward immigrants.

Read more winning entries from the 2025 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.