Recent and growing turmoil across the nation stemming from the Trump administration’s cruel policy of zero-tolerance for asylum seekers and other international migrants is deeply and dangerously dividing our nation.

Images of families being separated at the border and young children being caged in detention, most of them in privately contracted facilities that lack basic necessities, have riveted the national conscience.

So too has the nation been rocked by the president’s continuing racist attacks on immigrants leading to his recent explosive comments that four dissenting American members of Congress who are of color should “go back” to the countries they came from.

Trump’s policies and mindset are affronts to essential American values and are, in any case, extremely counterproductive. The costs of supporting a zero-tolerance policy, and especially the use of private contractors to house refugees and migrants in poor and unsafe conditions, is too high—both from an economic and a moral standpoint.

American taxpayers are forking over nearly $800 a day per detainee to temporarily house the children who are currently in immigration-control detention centers. That’s nearly three times the amount required to house detainees in permanent governmental facilities.

This is an especially hefty bill to pay considering the subhuman conditions that have been manifestly documented at these centers over recent months, and the long-term impact this passage is likely to have on our national identity, as well as our place in the international community.

There can be no doubt that the Trump immigration policy—and Trumpism more generally—is significantly undermining our moral standing as a nation, as the whole world watches our once-great nation of immigrants succumb to the worst, rather than the best, of human instincts.

Interestingly, the most vociferous of those who defend Trumpism say they do so in the interest of national security, when in fact the hate that Trumpism has unsurfaced and unleashed across our nation over recent months and years is laying the seeds for the next Osama bin Laden to attack our nation.

Trump’s hate mongering and stoking latent racial prejudice is fomenting fears, opening old wounds, jingoistic divisions and social conflicts. By systemically marginalizing, demonizing and incarcerating “the other,” our current president is unnecessarily inviting future domestic division, violence and unrest. And by shrouding his laments in racial denigration targeted to immigrants and people of color, Trump is not merely playing politics; he is also playing with fire.

Who could honestly be surprised if the next major terrorism threat to America emerges only a few years from now in the form of some child or young person who is currently lonely, afraid and suffering in a cage somewhere along our southern border?

Doesn’t it stand to reason, however much violence cannot and should not be condoned as a tool for policy and power, that one (or even many) of these young people could one day find themselves wanting payback?

We have seen how the radicalization of young people around the world is a pathway to violence that so often begins in poverty and is paved by oppression. By not addressing the root problems at hand—the crushing poverty, collapsing agricultural economy and criminal threat that so many asylum seekers are fleeing—we are only giving rise to more and increasingly difficult challenges at our southern border and beyond.

Responsible American leadership would be mindful of the inevitable cause-and-effect impacts of extreme policy shifts that contradict traditional American policy and pluralism in our democratic practice. Trump is no such animal. He revels in the controversy and the conflict and is prepared to take anyone and everyone down around him if that is what is required for him to “win.”

In so many ways, the Trump immigration policy is unwise, unhelpful and un-American. Given the profound costs of proceeding along the track that Trumpism has put us on, can any reasonable American really say that this is making America great again?

Henry A. J. Ramos is a former appointee of Gov. Jerry Brown to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors. His recent book, “Democracy & The Next American Economy,” was published in April.