Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Pure evil
Last Friday a friend of mine suggested that I read an article in the Atlantic magazine. In her text she wrote, “It’s truly unbelievable that we live in such a time that this is possible. It is truly beyond comprehension that one person can have this much power.” The article that she was reading was by Caitlin Dickerson, a journalist with an extensive history of writing about all things Immigration related. The subject of the article is the birth and development of the US government’s policy to separate immigrant families at our Southern border. The article is 42 pages long.
I have spent the weekend reading through these pages. There is so much information, and so many people who had a hand in launching the “Zero Tolerance” policy of 45’s administration, I can only read it in chunks of time. My impression is that, as with anything related to government, there are multiple layers of decision makers. This was true in this case but my attention is caught by two of those layers: the top policy makers and the families at the border.
In between those two levels there was so much jockeying and manipulation and misinformation that the people “on the ground” who were to carry out the despicable mission were not given the resources or the guidance on how to take children away from their parents. As a result, each Border Patrol station employed their own tactics. In locations all along our Southern border, infants and young children were literally ripped from their parents’ arms and removed. Parents were not told where their children were being sent, or when they would see their children again. In many cases, kids removed from parents in Texas facilities were sent as far away as New York and Chicago. This was done so parents could be “prosecuted” for illegally entering the United States. This was done in order to “deter” people from migrating here.
HHS, Health and Human Services, was to be in charge of the welfare of these children. However, no one from that department was included in the top layer of decision making. No one bothered to ask HHS how they would handle an influx of potentially thousands of children, from infants to teenagers. There was no communication link between the Department of Homeland Security and HHS, so that careful records could be kept about the whereabouts of both parents and children. As a result, by April of 2018, there were 856 separations that were documented.
There were reasonable people in these government meetings who spoke out against the policy. Their voices were not given any import, in fact, they were ignored or replaced by people who would support this “Zero Tolerance” policy. While this happened on 45’s watch, the primary driver of this method to “deter immigrants from coming to the US” was a man named Stephen Miller. Miller succeeded in insinuating himself into a top advisor position. He wrote the negative speeches that 45 gave about immigrants coming to our Southern border. 45 was simply not smart enough to be the architect of such policies, but he was certainly cruel enough to give his stamp of approval. Miller is demented enough to use his powers to keep America white.
At the human level, where the separations occurred, Border Patrol officers were so out of touch with their own humanity that they had nicknames for immigrants: “guats” and “hondus”. When people are categorized as unimportant, or less than human, their rights can easily be denied. This was the case as child after child was removed, screaming and crying, from their parent’s side. As a parent, myself, I cannot imagine the agony imposed on them by the main perpetrator of this policy, Stephen Miller. As the article unfolds, it is clear that Miller had no idea about conditions on the ground, and really didn’t care as long as the separations were happening.
I have written before about our broken immigration system. Any effort in Congress to update immigration laws and practices goes absolutely nowhere. This is why the disastrous policy of family separation, one that violates all Human Rights, could be created in the first place. For a country that was created by immigrants it is unbelievable that the approach to certain immigrants is cruel and unusual. It is no accident that these immigrants are primarily People of Color.