Silent on Obama
With respect to Sen. Barbara L’Italien’s handwringing over Donald Trump’s border policies, (“Standing up, speaking out,” Aug. 12), where was L’Italien and all these other grandstanding “virtue signalers” and protesters while Barack Obama’s brutal and inhumane “rocket docket” policy was being carried out against mothers and children fleeing dangerous, lifethreatening conditions in Central America and other regions? Where was the concern for these innocent children? Where was the outrage?
For the uninformed, Mr. Obama’s “rocket docket” deportation policy expedited the deportation of mothers and their young children who, fleeing grave danger in their home countries, migrated to this country seeking asylum and refuge in the welcoming arms of America. In fact, between October 2013 and July 2014 alone, an estimated 63,000 children crossed the U.S. border from Mexico. The majority of the children came alone from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, three countries plagued by violence and extreme poverty. The primary reasons for the surge of minors were safety concerns in native countries, misinformation regarding the leniency of U.S. immigration policy and the desire to reunite with family already here.
Yet none of that seemed to matter to the Obama administration. Obama’s “rocket docket” policy was one of the darkest, most irrational and unjust immigration policies to ever be implemented in this country. It was loudly decried by immigration and human rights advocates for its sheer cruelty, brutality and inhumanity, in that it ostensibly prioritized the deportation of children over everyone else. Mothers and their small children who entered America out of sheer desperation were callously held in cold detention centers, with little to no access to phones and attorneys. And almost immediately, the rapid deportation process under the “rocket docket” policy began, expeditiously pushing these mothers and children right back out of America.
Astonishingly, and inhumanely, 70 percent of the migrant families were processed through immigration courts without legal representation, and many of the cases were decided against the migrants whether or not they were even at the hearing. Many of these families had legitimate asylum cases, but were given almost no time to find legal representation, prompting basic due process violations. The speed with which these cases were processed disenfranchised those that were most vulnerable — mothers and their children.
It was a dark and ugly chapter of the Obama administration and, indeed, for this country. Could not these children be considered “Dreamers,” too? Yet I don’t recall L’Italien or any of these grandstanders who are now so suddenly outraged over Mr. Trump’s allegedly inhumane treatment of children speaking out against Mr. Obama’s cruel immigration policy. No. Back then, they were conspicuously silent. In fact, none of the people who are now speaking out against Mr. Trump ever spoke out against Mr. Obama’s “rocket docket” policy or publicly decried its unfairness, cruelty and inhumanity. Not one of them. Not a single one.
Why? Were not the lives and dreams of those children important and worthy of protection, too? It would appear that L’Italien and other preening virtue signalers suffer from selective moral outrage. Perhaps someone should remind them that selective moral outrage is an outrage in and of itself. —Michael J. DiStefano, Jamestown, R.I.