On Tuesday evening my wife and I watched reports from Tornillo and Brownsville, Texas, where more than 2,500 children have been “separated” from their asylum-seeking parents. Most are fleeing Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, where drug cartels and other menaces make life for families perilous and unbearable. They travel to the United States border despite the possibility of death and the likelihood of failure. They are desperate and brave — displaying more courage and love than will ever be demanded of most of us.
Tuesday ended with a report of “tender age” shelters being hastily crafted to hold the infants and toddlers who have been torn from their mother’s and father’s embraces. We can no longer call ourselves a civilized nation. Our “free” press cannot see these children. Our advocates for justice cannot care for them. Even the employees of these facilities have been instructed not to comfort, caress or hold these babies and toddlers.
On Wednesday, Trump issued an executive order supposedly temporarily ending the barbaric practice. He and his lickspittles didn’t like the way it “looked.” Some observed that it was like the arsonist claiming credit for calling the fire department. But he doesn’t even deserve the arsonist’s mitigation.
Look more closely and see that he didn’t put out the fire. He is just blowing smoke so you can’t see the flames. The “order” says families will stay together if the “law” and “resources” allow it. The “law” (Flores v. Reno) does not allow children to be detained in the way Trump proposes. The “resources” are not there either. The children currently separated will remain in limbo — or worse. The continued “zero-tolerance” policy remains in effect, locking up people seeking asylum and others who have committed misdemeanors. Even if the “law” and “resources” allow it, indefinitely detaining children with families in dismal, concrete cells on military bases is nearly equivalent abuse.
The facts are indisputable. Both the original policy and the executive order are Trump policies, inflicted on innocent children to win a political battle to fund his border wall. He is an evil sociopath who sacrifices babies to feed his insatiable appetite for power. My grief and rage are inexpressible. My wife and I slept only fitfully, haunted by images of children our grandchildren’s ages, sobbing as they look up at stern uniformed men arresting their mothers, taking them away without explanation.
A human rights lawyer who has worked on the border for 40 years reports that thousands of these families are intentionally — callously — being turned away from entry points, denied their legal right to claim asylum.
They are left to languish on bridges and roadsides, sleeping on asphalt, afraid to go back and unable to go forward. Many are attempting to cross between entry points, often in the hands of coyotes — human smugglers — who capitalize on misery for profit. Many will be arrested, deported and lose their children forever. It’s like the police closing a crosswalk, arresting you for jaywalking when you cross next to it, and then throwing you in jail instead of giving you a ticket. Many will die. Children will starve to death or die of dehydration on the soil of our country. And it is our deliberate policy.
This is what our nation has become.
Trump, Jeff Sessions and their deeply immoral agents claim that this is necessary because of the dangerous immigrants who seek to — in Trump’s words — “infest” America. They allude to MS-13, a violent gang comprised mostly of Hispanic men. An official in El Paso County, the epicenter of this horror, said that in the past few years, precisely three — three! — MS-13 gang members have been arrested for violent crime — out of a population nearing 1 million. All three were born in the United States.
They claim that arrests are necessary because the previous “catch and release” policy allowed undocumented immigrants to avoid justice by not appearing for their scheduled hearings. An immigration official reports that less than 1 percent of these men and women have failed to appear at these hearings under previous practices.
They claim we are being “overrun.” In 2016, the last year for which data is recorded, 20,455 immigrants sought asylum in the United States. Only 28 percent — 5,727 — were from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador. We could generously support all of these desperate children, women and men for a year for less than we spend on one F-35 fighter plane. Our government plans to buy 2,663 fighter planes for $325 billion in the coming decades.
This is what our nation has become.
Trump’s immigration rhetoric and policies are pandering to his racist base. He and they don’t want more brown Americans. Trump as much as admitted this when tweeting that they would probably “vote Democratic.” That’s what this is all about.
We are the only member of the United Nations that has failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. That convention, if ratified, would have had the force of federal law. We just withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
This is what our nation has become.
The officials who crafted, implemented and executed this policy are complicit in child abuse and, inevitably, will be responsible for the possible deaths of thousands. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski laughed at the heart-wrenching agony of a 10 year-old girl with Down syndrome separated from her mother. Fox News star Laura Ingraham described the internment compounds for children as like “summer camp.” Right-wing media mouth Ann Coulter called the sobbing immigrant children “child actors.” Millions of Fox News viewers signaled their enthusiastic approval with tweets and Facebook posts.
This is what our nation has become.
For the first time in my life I wish I were a “believer.” Not to lean on faith as comfort during this era of unspeakable evil, but so that I could believe in hell and know that there is a special place reserved for Trump and all who are complicit.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. Email him at stevehutnelson@ gmail.com.