This is a piece about the new “policy” of separating parents from their children after they are picked up crossing the border. I put in the scare quotes because this is not a policy. It’s atrocity. It is a massive human rights violation being carried out every day in this country and it is ongoing because, I must assume, too many Americans think it matters that the people this is happening to are “illegals.” It does not matter. These are people who have fled their own countries because they are afraid their children will be killed there, and who come to the US to apply for asylum only to have their children taken from them. Then, they are pressured into pleading guilty to entering the country illegally, in hopes that they will then be reunited with their children. It is not clear that that’s what’s actually happening. Here’s a photo of one of the court proceedings at which this happens:
Caption:
A mass immigration trial in April at the Lucius D. Bunton federal courthouse in Pecos, Texas. (Obtained by Debbie Nathan for the Intercept)
This is not due process. This is not how any nation calling itself a democracy or claiming to be living under the rule of law should handle any court proceeding.
As with a lot of these pieces, the focus is on the agony the parents go through over the separation and the uncertainty. This practice would certainly be an atrocity for that reason and that reason alone. I mean do I have to explain that this is, in itself, torture? Even if you don’t have children, can you imagine? Here in the US we are conditioned as parents not to even let our kids walk down the street to buy a sandwich without us and we are, ROUTINELY, taking children away from their their parents at the border, incarcerating the parents, and letting them just wonder when or whether they will ever see their children again.
What nobody is talking about yet, for legitimate reasons in a way since some of this is in the future and some of it is probably already happening but can’t be verified yet, it that this will almost certainly lead to the neglect, abuse, and death of some of these children.
Because history has shown that when you put a large number of children into a facility run by adults who know that they will never be held accountable for what they do, and when on top of that you prevent those children’s parents or families from finding out what’s happening to them, that is what you always get. Neglect, abuse, and when one or both has gone on too long or been pushed too far, death.
This happens in all kinds of institutions, throughout history, all over the world. If it not already happening in the facilities where these children are now being held, well, it will. This policy will kill children. Nobody seems comfortable saying that in the mainstream media, but I do not see how this can go on for long without that consequence.
There is no need to do this. Nobody in Buttercup’s administration is pretending that there is. Sessions has been quite clear about the fact that this is supposed to be a ‘deterrent,’ which means that it is intentionally punitive. There is no stated objective to this so-called ‘policy’ apart from punishing the parents. They don’t seem to want to talk as much about how this is punishing the children–except for Buttercup, who is happy to call them all MS-13 gang members. But it is. And it will get worse.
Hearseeno 