It was Family Separation and the cries of “kids in cages” that first drove me to the US southern border to see for myself what demagogues and the media refer to ad nauseam as “the crisis at the border.” At that point, I went to bear witness to the inhumanity Trump and his anti-immigrant acolytes had wrought. But it didn’t take me long to realize that Trump & Co’s policy of deliberate cruelty was already the fifth way in which the US government has practiced Family Separation for decades, implicating politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Then, while researching and writing Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands, I found three more ways in which the “broken” US immigration system routinely separates loved ones, breaking hearts, destroying family ties, and throwing children under the bus.
On Tuesday, November 14, 2023, you can speak out against this crime against humanity — paid for with your tax dollars.
Join American Families United and the American Business Immigration Coalition in Washington, DC, as they march to the White House to demand that President Biden expand:
- Parole for long-term immigrant contributors, including
- DREAMERS without DACA,
- Spouses of US citizens, and
- Long-term workers;
- Temporary Protected Status (TPS); and
- Deferred Enforced Departure.
Click here for more information. But before you do let me explain the six, no seven, no eight degrees of Family Separation practiced by the US federal government, every day…
It begins with migration stories as old as recorded time. A parent takes off first to blaze the trail to safety, in search of opportunity and a better life for the family. Once settled, they send for those they left behind. This is Family Separation 1.0.
With Family Separation 2.0, we see mothers and fathers making the horrible, dreadful, heartbreaking decision to kick their kids out of the nest prematurely, sending them to safety as “unaccompanied children” to save them from such impending dangers as forced military or gang conscription, death squads, bombardment, and village massacres; starvation, climate-related devastation, and abusive fathers; corrupt authorities, displacement by transnational extractive industries, land depletion, and more: conditions, like climate change, created by decades of foreign and economic policies mandates of wealthy nations, like the United States, that privilege global north families over their southern counterparts.
Family Separation 3.0 takes place when adoptive parents or other non-parental relatives, including grandparents, older siblings, aunts, uncles, and guardians, show up at the US southern border only to have their beloved charges taken from them because culturally biased rules written into laws, however well-meaning, like the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, define “family” narrowly as mom, dad, and the kids. In places devastated by war and gangs and Transnational Criminal Organizations, however, families take on many shapes and sizes.
Family Separation 4.0 occurs when flawed policies enacted by policymakers too far removed from the human fallout pull familial networks apart; even if it means falsely labeling children as “unaccompanied” and sending them into a bureaucratic purgatory from which there is little escape; even if it means loved ones might never see each other again. This has been going on at the border since the 2003 inauguration of the Department of Homeland Security. Under Bush 43, the younger, families were separated until the public found out. When the public did find out, Bush 43’s response was to pay prison profiteers to build “family residential centers,” aka “Baby Jails.”
Family Separation 5.0 ups the ante on Family Separation 4.0 by putting the resulting human pain and trauma on public display, which is just what Trump & Co did in 2018 when they ordered border agents to separate families for the cameras — and they did! It was the ultimate marketing message: Do Not Come. Do Not Come. It was cruelty for cruelty’s sake.
When the courts put the kibosh on Family Separation 5.0, Trump & Co took a different cruel tack: they forced asylum-seeking families to Remain in Mexico, pushing them back into US State Department Level-4 “no go” zones, so designated because they are cartel-controlled. There, families and children were sitting ducks for kidnapping, rape, extortion, sex slavery, conscription as drug mules, torture, and even execution. Parents were forced to weigh only heartbreaking choices:
Do I keep my kids with me despite the hunger and the stress of daily threats, where I am helpless to protect them? Or do I send them across a bridge on their own to a future I cannot see?
It’s called a Sophie’s Choice. And it is torture. Untold numbers of children came to the border accompanied. But they crossed unaccompanied, throughout the Remain and Mexico and Title 42 years (2019-2023), because their parents could not. They walked across an international bridge alone and turned themselves into US Customs and Border Protection. Separated. Sometimes, many times, forever. This is Family Separation 6.0.
Simultaneously, north of the line, ICE is separating families all the time. The agency’s job is to hunt people down and deport them. They raid homes, kidnap parents from school bus lines, arrest Brown people for jaywalking, and more, all to remove as many of the 11 million US residents living in the shadows as possible, even law-abiding, tax-paying spouses of US citizens. This is Family Separation 7.0, a tragedy from which US citizens, even Trump voters, are not immune. Like Jason Rochester, pictured above with his son Ashton. Their wife and mother, Cecilia, is now living in exile in Mexico. Even when Ashton was diagnosed with cancer as a five-year-old, the Department of Homeland Security apparatus refused to grant Cecilia a humanitarian visa to be by Ashton’s side as he underwent surgery and chemotherapy.
The Trumpsters and MAGA-hats will tell you that people must immigrate the “right way.” But even these folks wait in a long, invisible, interminable, unmoving line to adjust their status, during which time they are denied the freedom to travel and visit the family members they left behind. As a result, their children will never know their extended relations. They are the link broken: Family Separation 8.0.
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Did you know… The last time the US Congress enacted anything even close to immigration reform was 1986. That’s nearly 38 years ago!
We, the people, can fix this. We, the people, must fix this!
And while we’re at it, let’s all agree to do our part to force the Democratic Conference to include Immigration Reform as a platform plank in the coming presidential campaign season.
We gotta stop giving the Trumpsters and MAGA-Hats the last word on this issue. The only “crisis” at the border is the hardening of the human heart. As they continue to crank up the cruelty and destroy the lives of good, hard-working people, why are not more people speaking up and speaking out?
If you can’t make it to Washington on the 14th, please insist that your members of Congress sign onto the bipartisan American Families United Act. It will provide discretionary waivers to the spouses and children of US citizens and lead to the reunification of Cecila, Jason, and Ashton.
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