As Secretary of State, Hillary Admits to Deporting Orphaned Refugees to Send Message to Warlords Not to Let Them Flee Holly Wood Follow Feb 12, 2016 · 3 min read

MILWAUKEE— Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted during Thursday night’s Democratic debate that America’s cruelty towards Central American orphaned refugees has been justified. “I made it very clear that those children needed to be processed appropriately,” said Clinton. “We had to send a message to families and communities in Central America not to send their children on this dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers.”

I have written about these children before:

Now, though, we have over 70,000 starving orphans marching on foot from Honduras, Guatamala and El Salvador, fleeing civil disorder and drug wars that have killed their parents, leaving them bereft of property and community, unable to care for themselves…these kids had the shit luck of being born under failed states we pretty much did everything in our power to destroy for them…After they march through thousands of miles of warfucked wasteland and finally reach our border, they’re treated as worse than criminals…

The landscape of hell these kids are escaping cannot be undersold. Here are just two accounts from refugee children who have made it, walking, to America from El Salvador:

I am here because the gang threatened me. One of them “liked” me. Another gang member told my uncle that he should get me out of there because the guy who liked me was going to do me harm. In El Salvador they take young girls, rape them and throw them in plastic bags. My uncle told me it wasn’t safe for me to stay there. They told him that on April 3, and I left on April 7. They said if I was still there on April 8, they would grab me, and I didn’t know what would happen. — El Salvadorian refugee, Age 15

There are problems in my country. The biggest problem is the gangs. They go into the school and take girls out and kill them. They were killing them in nearby towns, like in San Miguel. Sometimes girls are involved in gangs and other gangs kill them. Or sometimes girls are dating boys who are in the gangs and members from other gangs kill them. Or sometimes gangs hate a girl’s family and they kill her because of that. I used to see reports on the TV every day about girls being buried in their uniforms with their backpacks and notebooks…There was nowhere else I could go where it would’ve been safer. — El Salvadorian refugee, Age 14

So when Clinton dropped that line about sending a message back home, Sanders very correctly lost his shit:

“But in terms of the children, I don’t know to whom you’re sending a message. Who are you sending a message to?! These are children who are leaving countries and neighborhoods where their lives are at stake. That was the fact. I don’t think we use them to send a message. I think we welcome them into this country and do the best we can to help them get their lives together.”

What do we do when the orphans of our war crimes risk smugglers, traffickers and racists to cross hundreds of miles for our help? Could you find something more karmic than this state of affairs? What does a good nation do in this scenario?

And I think this instinctual lean towards expanding our national sense of compassion is the major distinction between the two candidates.