545 more reasons for a change at the top

We’re learning that when a government institutes a policy based on cruelty the ramifications of that policy can last long after the practice has stopped.

A few years back the Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy concerning those seeking asylum at our border. The result was that children were separated from their parents and, in many instances, the parents were deported to locations in, for example, Central America, without their children.

Now we’ve learned that those tasked with identifying and finding the families of those children say that they’ve been unable to local them. According to a court filing from the American Civil Liberties Union about twothirds of those parents were deported to Central America.

I know we have a lot going on right now, and our concerns are overwhelmingly selfish, whether about our individual health or the health of the country.

But we should be better than this. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project said, "There is so much more work to be done to find these families. People ask when we will find all of these families, and sadly, I can't give an answer. I just don't know. But we will not stop looking until we have found every one of the families, no matter how long it takes. The tragic reality is that hundreds of parents were deported to Central America without their children, who remain here with foster families or distant relatives."

One of the great shames of the past 3½ years is that those at the highest levels of the United States government didn’t understand that child abuse is NOT border security.

But ... they didn’t.

Or worse. They understood and didn’t care.

Last year, a report by the inspector general’s office of the Department of Health and Human Services, said the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which separated families at the border, left many of the migrant children, who already were dealing with the trauma of having left their home countries, with what one expert described as “an epidemic of physical, psychosomatic health problems that are costly to society as well as to the individual child grown up. I call it a vast, cruel experiment on the backs of children.”

At one point there were almost 9,000 children in shelters. There were instances of self-harming, suicidal behavior or suicide attempts. Very few of the shelters actually met government standards.

The story faded from the news, new horrors replacing old ones.

But we’re learning that when a government institutes a policy based on cruelty the ramifications of that policy can last long after the practice has stopped. It’s evidenced now in the missing families of those 545 children.

It should never have happened. An argument over public policy on the border should not, in any way, have ended up doing harm to children.

Child abuse is not border security.