World Refugee Day

Photo Credit: Pixabay

June 20th was World Refugee Day, and to honor this holiday, I feel the need to express my horror and disbelief over what my country is doing to refugee families seeking asylum in the United States.

The Trump Administration has created a policy that allows the United States Government to separate children from their parents as they cross the Mexican Border into the United States.^[1]

These innocent and terrified children are being ripped from their parents’ arms. Some are only a few months old, while others are far old enough to be forever traumatized by the brutal and inhumane treatment they are receiving. According to some accounts, parents are being told that the children are only being taken away for baths--never to be reunited again^[2].

My country is creating unaccompanied minors by tearing families apart when they are already at their lowest. Some parents are even deported while their child is left in the care of strangers.

Strangers that, according to PBS, already have a poor track record of providing care to “unaccompanied” minors. 1,475 migrant children were unaccounted for out of the 7,635 that arrived between October and December of 2017. While this might only be 20%--we are talking about human children that could be in potentially dangerous situations. In 2014 PBS discovered that at least 8 unaccompanied immigrant minors had been sold into human trafficking rings in Ohio. ^[3] Who knows how many others have fallen to the same tragic and horrific fate?

While the case has been made that these children are probably safe and just hiding from the authorities--they shouldn’t be forced to hide from our government. We shouldn’t be prosecuting them for escaping from dangerous home lives. Crossing into our country should be safer for them.

Safe does not mean “living in hiding”.

Moreover, our government’s response to such an outrageous atrocity is to produce more “unaccompanied” minors by snatching innocent children away from their families as they seek asylum.

If we couldn’t properly handle the amount of unaccompanied minors to begin with, why do we have a policy that creates more? According to Liz Goodwin of the Boston Globe, in the first two weeks of the “Zero Tolerance Policy” alone, over 650 children were separated from their families.

Photo Credit: NPR [1] 

And don’t even get me started on where our government has decided to place these children after they’ve been separated from their parents. Refurbished Walmart buildings, tent cities, and other unfriendly places more akin to prisons than shelters, where workers are asked to eliminate as much humanity and emotion as they can is no place for a family, let alone scared children.

Click here for an article with audio recordings of children crying for their parents after being separated. Their sobs are heartbreaking.

Why can’t policymakers see that these children are suffering? Our treatment of them is inhumane. We are emotionally torturing these innocent children that didn’t even choose to cross our borders, but came with parents seeking our help--parents that had nowhere else to go because staying behind in a violent and war-torn country wasn’t an option.

The hardest part to stomach is that policymakers can see the festering wound they’ve created. In fact, they’ve chosen to make the situation even worse. They know they’ve created modern-day internment camps. 

Furthermore, Trump is purposefully using language to strip the immigrants and refugees of their humanity, forcing negative stereotypes on people just looking for help. One New York Times article goes so far as to say that, “Mr. Trump’s descriptions of those trying to enter the country illegally have been so sharp that critics say they dehumanize people and lump together millions of migrants with the small minority that are violent”.^[4] 

Our vicious and cruel treatment of refugees seeking asylum must stop.

Please know that it is not illegal to cross into the United States and ask for asylum. An immigrant has 12 months from the time they cross the border to turn themselves in and seek asylum^[5].  And yet the Trump Administration is literally removing children and arresting asylum seekers as they set foot onto US soil.

Furthermore, the offense of crossing into the country and not pleading for asylum is considered a minor misdemeanor if they don’t comply within 12 months. Children are being kidnapped and permanently separated from their families over a misdemeanor. They aren’t even committing a felony until they attempt to cross the border a second time without stopping to ask for asylum.

Don’t believe me? Check out How the United States Immigration System Works.

This whole crisis just breaks my heart. Sometimes the truth is ugly and it hurts to look at. But we can't fix something we refuse to examine. And this, this is an issue that needs remedied immediately.

So how can you help? 

Here are a few places to get you started:

●     https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

●     https://politicalcharge.org/2018/05/26/wherearethechildren-how-to-help/

●     https://www.mother.ly/news/how-to-help-immigrant-children-separated-from-parents?rebelltitem=10#rebelltitem10

While temporary “fixes”, such as Trump’s latest Executive Order, might be in the works^[6], let’s make sure this problem get’s suitably fixed. Continue applying pressure to insure that our government follows the United Nations humanitarian laws and treats all people with respect and decency.

Indefinitely detaining entire families in cages or Walmart prisons is not the right answer to our current problem.

We are talking about people that have nowhere else to go, people who literally could not stay in their home countries because of the danger that resides there. Regardless of where any person comes from, they deserve just and humane treatment. Families belong together, especially through the trials refugees are currently facing. 

They deserve our help, not our imprisonment. At the end of the day, we’re all just human. And in order to survive, from time to time, we have to be able to rely on one another.

Do not stand idly by as our country abuses those in need. Have courage and be the voice for those whose voices have been stripped from them.

--Larkynn

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[1] Domonoske, Camila, and Richard Gonzales. “What We Know: Family Separation And 'Zero Tolerance' At The Border.” NPR, NPR, 19 June 2018, www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border.
[2] Panich-Linsman, Ilana. “'Children Are Being Used as a Tool' in Trump's Effort to Stop Border Crossings - The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com, The Boston Globe, 10 June 2018, www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/06/09/borderseparations/Z95z4eFZjyfqCLG9pyHjAO/story.html.
[3] Miller, Lelia. “HHS Official Says Agency Lost Track of Nearly 1,500 Unaccompanied Minors.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 26 Apr. 2018, www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/hhs-official-says-agency-lost-track-of-nearly-1500-unaccompanied-minors/.
[4] Baker, Peter, and Katie Rogers. “In Trump's America, the Conversation Turns Ugly and Angry, Starting at the Top.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 June 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-language-immigration.html.
[5] “How the United States Immigration System Works.” American Immigration Council, 19 Apr. 2018, www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-united-states-immigration-system-works.
[6] Johnson, Kevin, and Jessica Estepa. “President Trump Signs Executive Order on Immigration, but Says 'Zero Tolerance' Will Continue.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 20 June 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/20/homeland-security-drafts-plan-end-separations-border/717898002/.