Children’s treatment shocking US blight

Any positive image machinations President Donald Trump may have managed to pull off with his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been all but dismantled by the heart-wrenching migrant family separations on the USMexican border. The world has watched agog and with accelerating outrage as terrified children have been taken from their parents and held in cage-like enclosures – images reminiscent of some of the worst human rights abuses committed in the past century.

Although the fierce backlash forced him to do an abrupt about-face and move to halt the practice, it has become arguably the most acrid and divisive policy the Trump administration has conjured yet – one which has rattled Americans and forced them to do some serious soulsearching as a nation of oft-touted guardians of democracy.

But worrying is the fact there is no immediate plan in place to reunite the 2 300 children already separated.

We all know the issue of illegal border crossers was one that Trump used to successfully pave his campaign trail with his vision of a yet-to-materialise wall with Mexico a point of derision among his detractors.

But now Republicans are locked in a partisan battle over the “zero-tolerance” illegal migrant policy and how to move forward – detaining children with their parents is by no means a satisfactory solution.

The White House has pointed an accusatory finger at families who would deliberately risk being split up by entering the US illegally, but has failed to recognise the utter desperation and fear they would have faced in their oppressive homelands that would force them to make such an agonising decision.

One thing is for certain. What the stories and pictures from those detention centres have shown us is there can never be any excuse for subjecting children to that kind of anguish and inflicting such helplessness on their parents.

Alternative answers must be found by lawmakers who wish to stem the tide of migrants which has become so overwhelming globally due to conflict zones. Sacrificing the sanctuary of an innocent child is not one of them.