opinion

Why we can't let Trump's zero-tolerance immigrant family separation policy define us

We are a nation that seizes small children from their parents and keeps them apart under cruel conditions. We are that kind of people.

We started to say the opposite — that we are not that kind of people. We were going to say it indignantly, in protest of the current policy of separating children from immigrant parents whether they entered the country illegally or to seek asylum.

But then we faced the facts.

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The policies of President Donald Trump, his administration and the federal agencies that answer to him are the policies of the United States. That's us by extension, last we checked.

All of this is being done in our name and on our behalf, on our southern border, where the vast majority of immigrants are brown-skinned people from Central and South American countries. We are not seizing white Canadian children from their parents.

We can't just disown what is happening. The German people learned this lesson at the conclusion of World War II.

What amounts to a racist crime against humanity is a hard thing to own. We say it's Trump. Trump says it's the Democrats. He's being predictably dishonest and we are being dishonest with ourselves.

Contrary to Trump's tweets, he is not laboring under some ugly law passed by Democrats. This is a policy, his policy. He is correct, however, that immigration reform is a job for Congress that Congress hasn't delivered. We'll give him that.

We are not calling him out, or ourselves as a people, for enforcing immigration law with so-called zero tolerance. Identifying and dealing with illegal crossings is one thing, separating families that crossed together quite another. They can be detained and identified as either asylum seekers or here illegally — but as a family unit, kept together. We should be putting more resources into expediting these people's cases so that their stays in detention are shorter, for their sake and ours. Investing more in adjudication to save on incarceration would be compassionate and smart.

Separating the children from the parents does not serve a safety or security purpose. It's just punitive, making the children and parents suffer for the parents' decision, whether the decision was to sneak in, or a justified decision to seek refugee status from verifiable danger.

No one, including church groups, has protested loudly or effectively enough to force Trump to change this ghastly policy or force Congress to pass meaningful immigration reform. Trump should be hearing unbearably loud reminders from Christian groups that Jesus was a refugee before he learned to walk and talk. Until that message gets across, we as a nation will continue to do harm to children.

Separating children from their parents no doubt will cause would-be immigrants to reconsider coming here. But, like Trump's wall, it will be a minuscule solution. The vast majority of illegal immigration results from overstay of legally obtained visas, not from illegal crossings. That's a problem that can be solved with better administration.

If the purpose of separating children from their parents is to send the message that this is a cruel country where no one should want to move, then mission accomplished. We are the only ones who haven't absorbed the message. We are in denial.