Immigration injustice seems unending
All Americans who value our shared experiences know the importance of speaking out against injustice. In these days of President Donald Trump, it is important to be unafraid to protest when necessary. At the same time, to be always complaining about Trump and his policies or actions is to risk becoming background noise. Still, when it comes to his administration’s latest proposals for handling immigrants caught trying to cross the border without proper papers, we must resist. Loudly. Repeatedly. Forcefully.
This government should not be routinely separating parents and children simply because they were caught trying to cross into this country in search of a better life. Not in 2018. And not in the USA. Trump administration officials defending this policy should be ashamed.
As a nation, we should be ashamed, not just for having elected a person who delights in stigmatizing immigrants but for the vile sentiments his election seems to have unleashed.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced lasst week that the Justice Department would seek to criminally prosecute all individuals caught trying to cross the border without documentation. This “zero tolerance” approach is a different way of dealing with immigration issues.
For much of U.S. history, the government dealt with immigration violations as civil matters. That changed in recent decades, with more criminal prosecutions going forward. Now Sessions wants everyone caught prosecuted as a criminal. That would flood the federal justice system. This is not just an unjust policy; it is bad policy.
The announcement is just the latest push by Trump to crack down on immigration offenses, focusing on penalizing people rather than overhauling a bad system — an endeavor in which Congress needs to join. Under Trump, crackdowns by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement have increased, with longtime, law-abiding residents deported.
His administration wants to reduce the Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands, making illegal the continued residency of people from such countries as Honduras, El Salvador and Nepal.
Then on Wednesday, the president’s own language once more crossed the line, with Trump calling some border-crossers “animals.” At a meeting in California on the state’s policy of offering sanctuary to immigrants here illegally, Trump said, “These aren’t people. These are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a rate that’s never happened before.”
Others in the Trump administration are defending the new “zero tolerance” policy, and, in the process, denigrating immigrants. Witness the comments of retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, now White House chief of staff. Like so many who are associated with Trump, before taking on the post, Kelly was admired widely.
Today, however, he makes comments like this one in a recent NPR interview: “They’re overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — fourth-, fifth,- sixthgrade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak Englishl obviously that’s a big thing. They don’t speak English. They don’t integrate well, they don’t have skills.”
No, he went on to say, “they’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.”
When asked if separating parents and children is cruel and heartless, Kelly said: “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of — put in foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”
From our perspective, we hope this “technique” is not put in place. Despite Kelly’s protestations, separating children from parents is cruel. It would punish the vulnerable for the actions of adults. It could cause permanent damage to family ties and to the souls of children and adults. It is unnecessary. We are better than this. Or we used to be.