Trump should go a step further
Children in detention centres must now be reunited with families
President Donald Trump has rolled back his policy of separating infants and children from their parents as part of a crackdown on illegal migrants following widespread outrage and condemnation, but there is no word yet on how thousands of children being held in detention centres will be reunited with their families. Trump had previously vigorously defended his “zero tolerance” policy on illegal migrants, saying it was needed to secure the southern borders of the US from an “immigration crisis”. But over the past few days, people across the world reacted with shock to images of children as young as eight months being separated from parents and held in structures that can best be described as cages at detention facilities run by the US Border Patrol. According to news website, ProPublica, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since the Trump administration launched its zero tolerance policy in April. Leading lights of the Trump administration even turned to the Bible to justify their actions.
A former head of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said he believes hundreds of these separated children will never be reunited with their parents. Experts have said such separation from parents can cause permanent emotional damage in children. The treatment of the children, made public largely through the efforts of Democratic lawmakers, even angered staunch Republican supporters of the Trump administration. Former first lady, Laura Bush, described the separations as cruel, and compared the detention facilities to camps in which Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. Clearly, the backlash made an impact on the Trump administration, but officials have shown little remorse.
As the elected leader of the US, Trump has every right to demand the building of a wall on his side of the border with Mexico. But to continue pretending that snatching children from the arms of their parents is the right thing to do will not wash. Such innocents cannot, and must not, become victims of a policy that is solely of the US President’s doing.