Our View: No-tolerance immigration policy disturbing and disgusting

Pacific Daily News

Show Caption Hide Caption Video: Immigrant children housed at the Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry A look behind the gates of the Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, where immigrant children who were separated from their parents are being housed.

“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

— Nelson Mandela

In recent weeks, thanks to a draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy put into place by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April, the United States began to forcibly separate children from parents trying to cross the border.

More: Immigrant family separation policy reveals the brokenness of our political incentives

More: By separating immigrant families, we've caused irreparable harm. It's time to make amends.

More than 2,300 children were taken from their parents and put into what looked very much like the concentration camps the world had thought was a faded memory of the past. And the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families reported that as of June 15, 11,517 minors were in the Unaccompanied Children’s Program.

Many were put into what amounted to cages, as if they were prisoners, or animals to be fenced away, in one of about 100 shelters across 14 states.

Disheartening, disturbing and disgusting

While it’s understandable when law enforcement must separate children from parents in cases of neglect and abuse, or if a parent commits a felony and must go to jail, crossing the border is a misdemeanor offense. There’s no justification for ripping children away from the parents and causing untold emotional and psychological problems.

Previous administrations handled this situation, except in some special cases, by using detention facilities that allowed families to stay together, according to Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy.

The Trump administration’s break from precedence, in an attempt to show it’s tough on illegal immigration, is disheartening, disturbing and disgusting.

The no-tolerance policy has demeaned the United States in the eyes of not only the world, but many of its own citizens. Putting large numbers of children into prison-like conditions for actions their parent took, in an attempt to find a better life for their families, is heartless and un-American.

America is supposed to be better

America is supposed to be so much better than that. We are supposed to be the ideal of democracy and freedom and acceptance. We are the ones who are supposed to denounce human rights violations, not the ones perpetrating them.

It’s good that the president finally responded to this situation by signing an executive order, ending the practice of separating immigrant families. But this policy never should have even been considered, let alone implemented.

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