This Side of Shame

An article by Nick Miroff, Amy Goldstein and Maria Sacchetti in the Washington Post on the failure of this administration to reunite migrant families by the court imposed deadline--excerpted below at length--is detailed and enlightening, but perhaps necessarily does not state the basic inference.  For the "core" of this "debacle" is not management incompetence but the attitude that these migrants are not fully human, that their children are not people and that they are not families.  In fact, as the Post story points out, one agency involved designated them as "deleted families."

The racial and socioeconomic contempt is clear enough in the antipresident's own statements comparing migrants, including those seeking political asylum and fearing for their lives, to vermin.  As "criminals" who end up being charged with misdemeanors, they forfeit their humanity, and their children will pay for it the rest of their lives.

There are many crimes committed by this administration against this country (including the equivalent of treason) and against this planet.  This is a crime against humanity.  Other policies and actions were and are tragic.  This earns shame.

Incidentally, at this end of this story, one of the Homeland Security Advisory Council members who resigned in protest, and who called this policy "child kidnapping" is the same Elizabeth Holtzman who, as a Member of the US House from New York, served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted articles of impeachment for President Nixon in 1974.  I remember being impressed with her then, and told friends I hoped she would run for President.

Here are the Post article excerpts:

"Compounding failures to record, classify and keep track of migrant parents and children pulled apart by President Trump’s “zero tolerance” border crackdown were at the core of what is now widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles of his presidency. The rapid implementation and sudden reversal of the policy whiplashed multiple federal agencies, forcing the activation of an HHS command center ordinarily used to handle hurricanes and other catastrophes.

After his 30-day deadline to reunite the “deleted” families passed Thursday, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw lambasted the government for its lack of preparation and coordination.“

"There were three agencies, and each was like its own stovepipe. Each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,” Sabraw said Friday at a court hearing in San Diego. “What was lost in the process was the family. The parents didn’t know where the children were, and the children didn’t know where the parents were. And the government didn’t know either.”

"Most of those parents [picked up at the border] were charged with misdemeanors and taken to federal courthouses for mass trials, where they were sentenced to time served. By then, their children were already in government shelters. The government did not view the families as a discrete group or devise a special plan to reunite them, until Sabraw ordered that it be done."

"One result was that more than 400 parents were deported without their children."

"It is the act of separation from a parent, particularly with young children, that matters,” [Sabraw] told the government in court proceedings.

"On June 28, two days after Sabraw’s reunification order, DHS officials held a conference call for members of the DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, a group of security experts and former officials who provide recommendations and counsel to the secretary. One member, David A. Martin, said officials had few answers when dismayed members asked how they planned to bring families back together: “They were saying, ‘Well, we’re working on it.’ ” Two weeks later, he and three other members quit the panel in disgust.

In his resignation letter, Martin said the family separations were “executed with astounding casualness about precise tracking of family relationships — as though eventual reunification was deemed unlikely or at least unimportant.”

Another member who resigned, Elizabeth Holtzman, said the failure to create records to track parents and children demonstrated “utter depravity.”

“This is child kidnapping, plain and simple,” she wrote in her resignation letter, urging Nielsen to quit."

"The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit that led to Sabraw’s order, said it could take months to track down hundreds of deported parents and make arrangements to return their children. Some parents may be hard to reach or hiding from the very threats that prompted them to flee their countries in the first place.

In the meantime, the government will try to place their children with vetted guardians. Otherwise, they will remain in shelters.

“It’s going to be really hard detective work,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants Rights Project. “Hopefully we will find them.”