Nightmare at the border for children of migrants

The migrants arrive here as families, but when the parents are arrested under the government’s “zero tolerance” policy the children are taken away and classified as “unaccompanied.”

It’s a cruel lie.

They aren’t unaccompanied. We unaccompanied them.

It’s a nightmare for the parents and for the kids.

And it’s difficult to know how many children have been removed from their parents. An article by The Arizona Republic’s Rafael Carranza reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said that during a two-week period in May agents took custody of 658 children from 638 adults.

An April article by the New York

Times reported that data reviewed by its reporters indicated that more than 700 children were taken from adults since the previous October, of which more than 100 were under the age of 4. Preschoolers. Toddlers. Babies. Many of the migrants being impacted by the Trump administration’s new policy are from Central America.

Our American law-enforcement and immigration system, involving the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement is overwhelming to them.

And it’s nearly impossible as well for the lawyers who try to navigate the system for them.

Jessica Ruiz, a defense lawyer for Operation Streamline in southern Arizona said of the Guatemalan parents she has represented, parents separated from their children, “You could feel the chaos and the desperation in the clients speaking to you. And also feeling the desperation that you couldn’t give them any answers.”

Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission told the “The idea of punishing parents who are trying to save their children’s lives, and punishing children for being brought to safety by their parents by separating them, is fundamentally cruel and un-American.”

Yes. It is.

Trump has suggested that migrant children are a threat, possibly being used or recruited as members of the MS-13 gang. He said the gang may be “exploiting” loopholes in the immigration system.

“They look so innocent. They’re not innocent,” Trump said.

The president tweeted:

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue

building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

That’s odd, because Carla Provost, the acting chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, told Congress that of the 250,000 children taken into custody between 2011 and summer 2017, only 159 had or were suspected of having gang affiliations.

Six years, 250,000 kids and only 159 who were affiliated or suspected of being affiliated with a gang? This is a severe threat?

And what about those 100-plus children under the age of 4 who were separated from their parents then classified as “unaccompanied?”

Is there a big need in MS-13 for gangbanging preschoolers, toddlers and infants?

The Washington Post reported that a Honduran father committed suicide in May after being separated from his wife and 3-year-old.

After the cruelty of the current policy got some public attention, Homeland Security is said to have established a hotline through which confused, despairing arrested parents might be able to locate their children.

Perhaps the department could set up another hotline to help the administration locate its humanity.