As the Trump administration desperately scrambles to push through damage control, amongst everything my thoughts are simply this.
Children should not be subjected to this.
Children should not be vindicated, ridiculed and shamed for things that are far beyond their understanding and control.
As I scroll through various news feeds, I see images that are beyond disheartening. I see children who are suffering, confused and honestly broken. Most articles describing these "living facilities" as ones with horrible conditions. I read about children who are not being allowed on some days food, or the option to bathe, brush their teeth, and are threatened with disease because of the widespread hygiene problems. It is in moments like these that we as humans have to ask ourselves ... why?
How did we as a country come to this?
As we have been made aware "In May, nearly 133,000 migrants, including more than 11,000 unaccompanied children, were arrested for crossing the border illegally..."
I can only imagine the strain that the parents of these children are facing today. To know that your place of habitat, your home, is so terrifying that you pack your family and as many possessions that you can bear and flee to a place where you feel that you will be safe only to be dehumanized in every aspect.
No being should be subjected to this.
The Huffington Post in a recent article captions the feed with a line powerful enough to evoke emotion in any reader. "Shuffling Kids Between Border Facilities Won't Solve the Border Crisis."
Elora Mukherjee, a professor at the Columbia Law School and the director of the schools Immigrants' Rights Clinic, recently interviewed with The Atlantic and described to them in detail recordings from children who were being held in such facilities: "Children were dirty, they were scared and they were hungry." This would come as no surprise as just last year, various lawyers also interviewed children who described "being physically abused by guards in Border Patrol stations and drinking toilet water to stay hydrated and being fed frozen food."
To date, at least seven children have either died in custody or after being detained by these federal immigration agencies at the border. To think that these families traveled to seek asylum in the United States but instead found suffering is mind boggling.
Here we ask ourselves, what do we do when the life of a child rests only in the hands of an administration who bears no sympathy to a bleeding heart?
We fight.
We fight for not only these children but the people. We fight with our words - there is indeed power in numbers and no voice is greater than the next. What if this was your child, family member or loved one? Would things be different? Would you fight any more or less? It is with this post that I choose to speak and fight for change.
So I ask ... How will you fight?
