Barefoot children. In diapers. Choking on tear gas. Mothers running in terror.
Now a 7 year old girl--Jakelin Maquin--has died from dehydration and exhaustion in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody. The ACLU blamed “lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP” for the girl’s death.
This is inhuman. I can’t shake the sense that the ground is cracking under my feet. I want to share what this makes me think and feel - I hope you stick with me here.
Trump gave the order to use CS gas on families and children at the border. I saw the pictures, and felt outrage. Then Trump distracted the media with his personal reality show. The photos were knocked off the front page with the next crisis.
I’m not OK with this. I’m guessing you aren’t either. But we are not powerless.
In June, I
went to McAllen, Texas with my then-five year old son on Father’s Day. There is another picture that seared into my soul there - toddlers looking out of the armored windows of a bus as it left the detention center and their parents behind. I will never, ever forget the fear in their eyes.
My son went to the front door of the Ursula Detention Center, the largest site for family separations in the nation, with twelve-year old Leah from We Belong Together and Julian Castro, the former Mayor of San Antonio and HUD Secretary under President Obama.
The kids brought cards and stuffed animals for the children locked inside. No one opened the door. Bus after bus drove more kids out of the detention center taking them away into the unknown.
Asking for refugee status by walking up to the U.S. border is not a crime. Lobbing tear gas at civilians across an international border is a war crime. Tear gas was banned in combat by international treaties in 1993 for a reason.
“I felt that my face was burning, and my baby fainted. I ran for my life and that of my children,” Cindy Milla, a Honduran migrant with two children told the Wall Street Journal.
Last week we helped people send 21,979 emails to Congress to demand that they stand up to Trump and not throw away $5 billion dollars on his wall of shame.
Trump is throwing a tantrum. He’s threatening to shut down the government if he does not get what he wants, now: a Wall. An expensive, wasteful, wall. Don’t we have better things to spend $5 billion dollars of public funds on?
The wall is not an immigration policy. It is a symbol of fear. If Trump gets the money to build his wall, it will embolden the white supremacists in his fracturing base. Trump thinks the wall is his last, best shot at victory, even as his closest advisors start heading off to jail, one by one.
This is not easy, but sometimes I try to imagine what happened to Trump that he could give the order to forcibly tear children and babies from their parents arms. What allows someone to order tear gas against hungry, desperate refugees and their children? Is he so insecure, so unloved that he thinks this is a game, one he can win? The truth is chilling no matter what.
I am passionate about immigration because I know how my family came to the United States. My mother’s Irish great-grandparents came here when they were being starved out of their own country by the English. They were poor, and did the only work available for the Irish at that time -- my great-grandfather first went down in the Pennsylvania coal mines when he was 8 years old. My great-grandmother was a seamstress in a sweatshop by the time she was 12.
I believe in immigration policy that keeps families together and free. America was at its best when we welcomed people fleeing war and poverty and opened up opportunity for them to start businesses, buy houses and send their kids to college.
America’s still imperfect experiment in democracy is stronger when we are open to the talents and imagination of those who are willing to risk everything to come here. They need us, and truth is, we need them, too.
If Trump continues to build a wall, you can count on me and my six year old son to go back to the border. But this time we’re bringing a ladder.
And thanks for listening today.
My son went to the front door of the Ursula Detention Center, the largest site for family separations in the nation, with twelve-year old Leah from We Belong Together and Julian Castro, the former Mayor of San Antonio and HUD Secretary under President Obama.
The kids brought cards and stuffed animals for the children locked inside. No one opened the door. Bus after bus drove more kids out of the detention center taking them away into the unknown.
Asking for refugee status by walking up to the U.S. border is not a crime. Lobbing tear gas at civilians across an international border is a war crime. Tear gas was banned in combat by international treaties in 1993 for a reason.
“I felt that my face was burning, and my baby fainted. I ran for my life and that of my children,” Cindy Milla, a Honduran migrant with two children told the Wall Street Journal.
Last week we helped people send 21,979 emails to Congress to demand that they stand up to Trump and not throw away $5 billion dollars on his wall of shame.
Trump is throwing a tantrum. He’s threatening to shut down the government if he does not get what he wants, now: a Wall. An expensive, wasteful, wall. Don’t we have better things to spend $5 billion dollars of public funds on?
The wall is not an immigration policy. It is a symbol of fear. If Trump gets the money to build his wall, it will embolden the white supremacists in his fracturing base. Trump thinks the wall is his last, best shot at victory, even as his closest advisors start heading off to jail, one by one.
This is not easy, but sometimes I try to imagine what happened to Trump that he could give the order to forcibly tear children and babies from their parents arms. What allows someone to order tear gas against hungry, desperate refugees and their children? Is he so insecure, so unloved that he thinks this is a game, one he can win? The truth is chilling no matter what.
I am passionate about immigration because I know how my family came to the United States. My mother’s Irish great-grandparents came here when they were being starved out of their own country by the English. They were poor, and did the only work available for the Irish at that time -- my great-grandfather first went down in the Pennsylvania coal mines when he was 8 years old. My great-grandmother was a seamstress in a sweatshop by the time she was 12.
I believe in immigration policy that keeps families together and free. America was at its best when we welcomed people fleeing war and poverty and opened up opportunity for them to start businesses, buy houses and send their kids to college.
America’s still imperfect experiment in democracy is stronger when we are open to the talents and imagination of those who are willing to risk everything to come here. They need us, and truth is, we need them, too.
If Trump continues to build a wall, you can count on me and my six year old son to go back to the border. But this time we’re bringing a ladder.
And thanks for listening today.
People's Action
No comments:
Post a Comment