Punishing Children

BEFORE WORLD WAR TWO, the border between Mexico and the United States was essentially open. There was no mass migration between the two countries, no fear of Mexico sending rapists and murderers north, and drug trafficking was of little concern, since there was no evidence of any great demand in the U.S. for illicit drugs of Mexican manufacture. The border was maintained quietly, and it was relatively easy for people to move back and froth between the two countries. World War Two changed all that. The fear was that the Germans might try to infiltrate the United States with paramilitary operatives, who could potentially do great damage. The Zimmerman telegram of world War One was still quite recent, in which World War One Germany had attempted to enlist mexico to instigate a war against the United States, but failed. Meanwhile, the United States, beginning under President Theodore Roosevelt, undertook a foreign policy in which it claimed the right, based partly upon the Monroe doctrine, to "police" Latin American countries, which in reality meant to economically exploit them. The twentieth century thus became a series of revolutions staged by American operatives throughout the region, in which duly elected socialist governments were replaced with dictatorships amenable to American corporate investment and exploitation. "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy", a seminal 1959 monograph by Wm. A. Williams, is still relevant. By 2007, there were actually more people crossing into Mexico from the United States than crossing into the U.S. from mexico, but the great recession of 2008 intensified northward refugee migration, as economic conditions worsened in Latin America even more than they did in the United States. There have been periodic mass deportations of illegal Mexican migrants from the united States. One, in the nineteen thirties under FDR, another in the nineteen fifties under Eisenhower, and most recently, under Obama, in which approximately two and a half million people were deported. The most drastic change in recent years has been under Trump, under whom the "zero tolerance" policy included the most inhumane treatment of asylum seekers yet: the separation of children from their parents at the border. Under extreme pressure, Trump finally signed an executive order eliminating this brutal practice, but the paperwork was sloppy, and to this day there are reportedly thousands of children who have yet to be reunited with their families, and thousands more being detained under cruel and inhumane conditions in detention centers. Recently the Trump administration argued in federal court that such children do not require basic hygienic necessities, such as blankets, proper nutrition, and blankets. Among the many false claims made by the Trump administration is that the practice of separating children from their families was begun under Obama. In fact, under Obama, children who sought asylum were detained only if they appeared at the border alone; they could hardly be allowed to roam freely in the United States, without care or supervision. Under Obama, families were not torn apart. Many Americans have seen the heart breaking videos of children, torn by trauma, screaming and crying for their parents. No decent person could possibly be unmoved by these images. Of all the arguably inhumane practices and policies of the Trump administration, and there are many, this is perhaps the most egregious. Every American should be ashamed that this has taken place in this country. Most of the "illegal immigrants' were merely seeking to be free from the grinding pervasive poverty in their own countries, and properly approached ports of entry, seeking asylum from conditions created, ironically, by the economically predatory practices perpetrated throughout Latin America by the United States, referenced above. A further irony is that president Trump's strongest base of support comes from the evangelical Christian community, which largely supports Trump's policies, and which seems to have forgotten to read the Bible, and to assimilate the teachings of Jesus into their personal belief systems.