Bordering on cruel

U.S. values require compassion for kids

The practice of separating children from parents who crossed the border at Mexico illegally was bad enough in concept. The actual implementation of the policy appears to be downright inhumane and even cruel.

Reports filed by observers and interviewers as part of a legal case in federal court in Los Angeles have described children sleeping on concrete floors, served cold sandwiches to eat, kept in overcrowded caged areas and provided with inadequate sanitation.

Advocates said the government isn’t complying with the decades-old Flores agreement, which lays out detention conditions and release requirements for immigrant children. The Trump administration says it is.

Dozens of volunteer lawyers, interpreters and other legal workers fanned out across the Southwest in June and July to interview more than 200 immigrant parents and children in holding facilities, detention centers and a youth shelter.

One can only hope that these reports are highlighting the worst of the worst, or are maybe even exaggerated a little. One would expect advocates to describe living conditions in the most lurid terms possible.

But if any of it is true, it is shameful.

The U.S. government didn’t invite undocumented immigrants to sneak into our country, and if they don’t have a right to be here, or can’t prove they deserve asylum, they should be returned promptly to the places they came from. The adults who violate American law have some responsibility for the situation they find themselves in — and put their children in.

But if the Trump administration is going to separate children from their parents, the Department of Homeland Security should treat the children with compassion.

Our refusal as a nation to settle issues relating to illegal immigration contributes to this problem of families spilling across the border and putting themselves at the mercy of immigration authorities, a problem that antedated the Trump administration. We still need the grand bargain: a path for the Dreamers, more legal immigration and a wall.