Saturday, June 23, 2018

Less than Human

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The big news this past week, in fact, the pervasive news of the past week, was the Trump administration's treatment of immigrant children and families.  For nearly two months agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been forcibly separating refugee parents from their children, and this week some of the personal horrors brought on by that government-sponsored inhumanity began making themselves known in the media.   News photos began circulating showing frightened children sobbing as they stood bewildered among armed, uniformed strangers, and recordings of immigrant children screaming and crying for their parents also echoed off of the national landscape.

Americans, by and large, were appalled.

And while Trump tried to stand firm on the practice of child-snatching, falsely blaming it on Democrats and falsely saying that he had no power to end it, in the end - and after a tremendous public uproar - The Donald folded like a cheap card table and signed an executive order intended to end the practice.

In addition to Trump's continuing lies that he had no power to end the practice and that he himself was against it, at various times during the crisis he or members of his administration also indicated that the practice was an intentional travesty designed to deter immigrants from trying to enter the United States - and a bargaining chip to help Trump get money from Congress for his vanity wall along the southern border.  It was repeatedly cited as part of Trump's "no tolerance" policy toward immigrants.

As the week wore on several state governors announced that they would no longer send troops or equipment to the U.S.-Mexican border to aid in border security.  A couple of airlines also said that they would not be involved in transporting migrant children to internment centers.  American politicians made news when they tried, usually unsuccessfully, to gain access to their child detention facilities.  One congressman played a tape of frightened children screaming for their missing parents on the floor of Congress, and a group of protesters  played that same horrifying tape, loudly, outside of the home of the Secretary of Homeland Security.

One Guatemalan mother managed to get into court and obtain an order from a judge to be reunited with her child, and other attorneys, including the one representing Trump nemesis Stormy Daniels, began volunteering services to immigrant parents who had had their children stolen by the American government.

All living First Ladies of the United States, including Melania Trump, spoke out against the policy of removing immigrant children from their parents, and mental health experts began educating the public on the serious and long-term consequences of pulling young children away from their parents.

All in all it was a helluva week and in the end Trump, a man who leads his supporters in chanting "animals" when he is discussing immigrants and talks about "our" country being "infested" by people seeking asylum and opportunity, changed a policy that he said he could not change.  Children will no longer be taken from their parents - and now entire families will be detained together in makeshift internment camps.

So far there have been no announced plans for returning the 2,300 children who were already separated from their parents.

But. don't worry, America.  Brian Kilmeade, the host of Donald Trump's favorite television program, "Fox and Friends," told us this week that the kids living in crowded confines away from their parents "aren't our kids."  They aren't white, middle class kids from suburban America - they are other people's kids from other parts of the world - presumably "shithole" countries - and that makes it alright.

As long as attitudes like those expressed by Brian Kilmeade exist, this will never be over!

Hunker down, America - there is going to be hell to pay for the way we have treated these children.   We are all members of the Family of Man, and "those kids" ARE our kids!  Anything less is less than human.

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