Human-beings deserve better.

Immigration and the politics of compassion

Nazi Germany and Fascist America

This week, America woke up to its own coercive forces ripping children from their families and placing them in detention camps. A U.S. Senator was denied entry into one of these detention facilities, and when reporters were finally let in, they discovered murals of Trump, children in cages, and heard what one manager described as an “orchestra” of wailing children. These separations have been defended as a deterrent, as legal, and even, as biblical.

I could go through those justifications point-by-point. I could show the absurd and disturbing lies Trump has tweeted to support them. I could argue, as many already have, that Jesus was a political refugee, and indeed, would have been taken from Mary under Session’s rules. I could show how indefensible, illogical, and immoral this policy is. Doing so, however, would require embracing a farce.

At the base of this horror is a simple question of morality - of humanity. This isn’t about legality, it’s not about policy, and it’s not even really about immigration. The most simplistic and essential question pervading this entire discussion is whether or not human beings deserve to suffer.

Mural of Trump, visible in a detention facility.

Oversimplified it may seem, the answer to that question resolves the entire debate. If human beings deserve to be happy - or at least, deserve to live without suffering, then there is no excuse for the suffering we are causing. There is no way to justify tearing babies from their mothers’ arms, no way to defend leaving refugees to face the gang violence and poverty they fled, no excuse for destroying food and water left for those crossing the border. If we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, then there can be no possible rationalization for animalizing, criminalizing, traumatizing, or vilifying other human beings. In this time of rising fascism and needless suffering, it is easy to forget that our world is simply as we wish it to be.

Slavery was legal for centuries. It had preachers who offered biblical justifications, scientists who rationalized it, and politicians who saw themselves as heroes for proposing incremental change. And yet, all it took was a generation of radicals to purge slavery’s abhorrent spirit. Abolitionists did not see society as a set of rules which could be modified, but as a series of injustices to be defeated.

And so, in the face of this newest, greatest, fascistic threat, we too must shed the farce of legality. If we believe that no human deserves to suffer, to starve, to die, then we must hold ourselves to that belief. We must show the world that our opponents hold no such belief. For we are not a species of nations divided by lines, not a world of communities meant to build walls and hide behind them. We are humanity. And human beings deserve to be happy.