Immigration at its worst
Last night after putting my 21monthold son to bed, I watched him sleep. I studied his long eyelashes, the curls in his hair, his little nose and mouth. I snuggled him. I held him tightly for a few moments and then laid him back down and studied him a little more. I felt grateful that he could sleep so soundly, peacefully and comfortably.
Then I thought about the children being held in facilities at the Southern U.S. border — the ones I recently saw pictured online in national publications sleeping between sheets of foil. I thought about their parents who were separated from their children, unable to snuggle them they way I was able to snuggle my own child. I imagined the agony they must feel, the holes in their hearts, the worry and sorrow they must feel over their missing children that were snatched out of their arms as part of the president’s Zero Tolerance immigration policy, which went into effect last year.
The policy was created with the intention of prosecuting people caught entering into the country illegally and included separating more than 3,000 children from their parents. Only a small fraction have been reunited. As of June 20, there were 2,000 children living in facilities separate from their parents, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The conditions of these facilities have been reported as horrific and disgusting. Aside from the overcrowding, children have been served raw food, spoiled food and dirty, dark water. The New York Times reported that children are drinking from toilets. There have also been reports of children being unfed, unwashed and sexually abused. Some have even died.
Friday night there were hundreds of vigils throughout the country, including in New Haven and Fairfield counties, to protest the inhumane way children and adults are being treated in these migrant facilities, which Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez called “concentration camps.”
I’ve always had a hard time understanding how certain Americans feel that it’s OK to shoot, kill or punish immigrants for entering this country. Europeans came to this country and stole it from Native Americans. They slaughtered them, beat them, killed them, spread diseases and raped them. Those were crimes. And yet this country celebrates the immigration of Europeans with monuments like Ellis Island.
Europeans sent slave ships to African countries and forced African people to migrate to the United States to work for free. Like the immigrants currently being detained in facilities and like the Native Americans, Africans were also abused, raped and forced to live in inhumane conditions. The ways that EuropeanAmericans treated African slaves in this country were also crimes.
I’ve received emails from older EuropeanAmericans who have read my columns and invited me to “go back to Africa” or claim that black Americans and other nonwhite people have ruined the country, forgetting that their ancestors brutalized people in order to inhabit the country. For some reason, they think the country that they stole belongs solely to them. This country, first inhabited by Native Americans and now inhabited by immigrants of a multitude of nationalities, belongs to all of us — people of color and white people alike.
The crime is not that people are coming here to live, but the way that the government is treating them once they arrive here. The way that we mistreat people who are different from us is immoral. It must stop. We each have to find a way to treat each other humanely and with respect.
To support the end of inhumane treatment of immigrants, we can participate in protests; we can contact our local, state and national representatives to protect the rights of children and adults who are currently detained. We can also provide resources to people in our own communities who are refugees, and we can visit, support and send items to immigrants in our local detention centers and support nonprofit organizations that are already doing this work.
If those options sound unreasonable, I urge you to look at your own children. Consider what it would feel like to have them ripped from your arms and put into a facility where they would likely be mistreated and harmed. Ask yourself how you would want someone to help them. Ask yourself: How you would want someone to help you? Do those things.