Biden approach no better than Trump’s

A plexiglass cage is still a cage: President Biden's policies separate and cage children.

We were horrified when the Trump administration separated children from their families and placed them in cages in Border Patrol jails and private detention centers. Imprisoning children to punish the actions of refugees is never right. But Donald Trump was not the first to try; President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried this deterrence approach and then discarded it when faced with public outrage and a media fiasco. Subsequently Obama gave the job of working with Central American governments to find immediate and long-term solutions to his vice president.

Facing the inevitable arrival of refugees, now President Biden is detaining and jailing children instead of placing them with U.S. family members and sponsors. Repeatedly turned back at the border and forced to remain in danger, families face a terrible option: send kids alone.

Biden's response is separating children from families before they cross, crowding children together on the floor in plexiglass cages, and assigning a new vice president to try to solve complex issues many decades in the making and resulting from U.S. policies. A flawed approach will never succeed. A plexiglass cage is still a cage.

Leo Garofalo

Waterford