Do Family Values Stop at the Rio Grande for Conservatives? →
As we prepare to celebrate America's Independence Day, it's important to stop, reflect, and remember what it is that America stands for. Shikha Dalmia, writing for Reason.com, offers a hint.
For months now, the Trump administration has been literally kidnapping children from parents arriving at the border in search of asylum and sending them off to prison-like detention camps thousands of miles away. In one particularly egregious case, authorities seized the 7-year-old daughter of a mother fleeing violence in Congo. Without offering her any explanation, they dispatched her little girl to a Chicago camp while holding the mother in San Diego. The mom wasn't being punished because she was trying to sneak in illegally. She presented herself to immigration authorities exactly as she was supposed to and even passed an initial screening to determine if she had a "credible fear" of harm in her home country. It took the ACLU four months of dogged petitioning before the distraught mother and the traumatized daughter were finally reunited.
In another case, an 18-month-old boy was taken away from his Honduran mother, who arrived at the Texas border. She showed the authorities copious records to prove that she was in fact the infant's mom, but they didn't care. They ordered her to place her baby in a government vehicle and drove him away to a San Antonio facility while she wept helplessly and her terrified son screamed inconsolably. She herself was detained in a facility in Taylor, Texas.
The administration pretends that these are isolated incidents but, in fact, a _New York Times_ investigation a few weeks ago found more than 700 cases of parents and children separated just since October, including 100 under the age of 4. The ACLU has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the parents.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
(Addendum: Yes, I'm aware that this article is 2 months old. It's still a good introduction to this particular horrible policy, for anyone who's been living under a rock. And I like the way Shikha Dalmia framed the issue.)
This entry was tagged. America Donald Trump Government Immigration Policy