It is hard to believe that anyone could have thought that separating children from their parents at the border wouldn’t lead to a tragedy.
Yet, the Trump administration ignored warnings that nothing good could come from this policy, and now, after much chaos, the deported parents of 545 children, including about 60 under the age of 5, still have not been found.
That’s a clinical way of saying that parents and children may never again see each other, and that U.S. immigration policy has effectively broken apart families. Former first lady Laura Bush called it “cruel” and “immoral,” and others called it child abuse and torture.
Begun unofficially in 2017 as a pilot program in El Paso, Texas, to deter families from entering the country illegally at the U.S.-Mexico border, this zero tolerance policy quickly became the most toxic aspect of the administration’s strategy to curb illegal immigration. The policy called for charging parents with immigration crimes, which would then lead to separating them from their children (who would be sent to shelters).
The policy of separating families became even more tragic when the administration failed to enact an adequate process to reunite them. Neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept effective records. Only after court orders required disclosure did the nation learn that over 5,500 families had been separated.
The administration now says that while most of the children have been reunited with their families, some children have been moved out of shelters and into the care of relatives, family friends or foster families. In other words, the policy of forced family separation policy predictably produced a cruelty that may never be set right.
During Thursday’s debate, we found it depressing that President Donald Trump showed no regret for this failed policy and falsely claimed that the children were brought to the United States by smugglers, cartels, gangs and “lots of bad people.” While smugglers are a reality on the border, the truth is that many parents arrived with their children and his policy created trauma for thousands of families.
It is important that this nation secure its borders. However, security can and must be achieved without Machiavellian strategies that rip children from parents. The separation policy has ended; its impact is a great stain on this nation.
America has long needed to reform its immigration system to address those who are here and those who wish to be here. The nation has failed repeatedly to even address the easiest and least controversial part — the granting of legal status to the young adults whose parents illegally brought them to this country as children.
Words cannot adequately express how excruciating and shameful the separation policy had been. Our toxic immigration politics continue to erode the decency, common sense and respect needed to forthrightly deal with those who seek this nation for a better life.
—The Dallas Morning News
