If a parent treated his or her child like immigration officials are treating children at the U.S.-Mexican border, an arrest would be made for child abuse.
Today was designated a day for protests against our government’s treatment of these kids; hundreds of demonstrations were held across the nation. I joined one of those protests in Jim Thorpe. My sign said, “Not in our name.”
Unfortunately, those policies are in our name. It is our tax dollars that pay those private contractors who are running the detention camps. It is our tax dollars that pay for ICE raids, not against criminals, but against people who have families and jobs and have become part of their communities.
I also would like to point out that many of the men and women who deal with those children on a daily basis are also traumatized. They see the problems. They see crying children who lack basic necessities, who have no idea what happened to their parents. They see the problems first hand, but do not have the resources (or the permission) to make life better for those children.
Finally, I would be the first to agree that our immigration policies need to be fixed. The whole system is broken. Cruelty is not a way to fix things. All it is is cruelty.
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