To this day, when I can't find my mother in a supermarket there is an initial sense of terror. I am a twenty-year-old woman, who has already moved out of her home and away from her parents, and yet when I can't physically see my mother I am still afraid. It's the oldest story in the book, but the sentiment remains true. It's not faked, it's real, and that's as someone who knows that I will see my mother again.
As I type this, children are being separated from their parents. Those same children are sleeping under foiled blankets on hard concrete floors. Mothers and fathers are pacing their cells, worried sick about kids they don't know when they'll see again. Little sisters are crying out to unresponsive guards as confused big brothers do what they can to reassure them and keep it together.
As I type this, entire families are being torn apart.
When I hear the words zero tolerance I think of drinking and driving. I think of mid-day assemblies about designated drivers. I think of drug abuse. I think of terrible, destructive substances. I think of harmful and dangerous things that cause a threat to our society. I don't think of hardworking fathers and dedicated mothers. I don't think of children, regardless of their residential status.
Trump has passed yet another discriminative and prejudice policy and this time, children are physically paying the price. This is no longer an issue of repealing programs such as DACA, where the effects aren't as obvious. This time we have pictures of tear-stained cheeks, we have videos of pleading parents, we have tangible evidence of the pain and the suffering.
Have we become so heartless as a nation that we've gotten so caught up in the Republican versus Democrat feud that we're blind to the cries of children?
Despite your stance on immigration, despite who you voted for, despite your political stance – there is no party for the mistreatment of children. There is no constitution that implies torturing families.
This isn't an issue about immigration anymore, this is an issue about compassion and our complete and utter lack of it. It's about the preservation of children's innocence. This is about the fact that we are a broken nation that cares more about a flimsy citizenship than a human life.
And no, there is no convincing me that it's about simply enforcing the law. Because if this was a matter of enforcing the law, about enforcing the 'rules', there would be a level of respect for one of our longest standing constitutional traditions – the preservation of a person's right to live.
Because isn't that what supposedly puts us apart from everyone else? Isn't that the quality America so prides itself in?
Trump's Tent City in Texas is an abomination. It is a violation of basic human rights, not to mention devastatingly familiar to the worst parts of history we supposedly abolished. And the heartbreaking part is that the justification is that 'they're not American'. That is why it's okay to hurt and traumatize children – because they're not American.
News flash – most of 'Americans' are not American. We are a melting pot of cultures and backgrounds and if we did a census of how many people's grandparents ended up here legally from Europe (because everyone is always 2% Scottish, ¾ Irish and 90% British), we would be building tents for half the country.
So no, this is not an immigration debate anymore. This is not a 'war on illegal aliens', this is a war on empathy. This is a defining part of history that will dictate the kind of country we are. Are we the kind of country that fixes this? Or are we the kind of country who will forever be known for having a complete and utter disregard for children's lives.
