“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…†So entreats the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, overlooking the place where immigrants used to disembark to begin a new life in the United States. But I don’t remember any words from that great lady about having to give up your kids.
Think of all the special moments you experience with your child: her first step, the first day of school, a birthday celebration. Maybe a family vacation comes to mind, or just the joy of having dinner with your family. Even getting through a difficult time together, like the death of a loved one, can cement family bonds so they are stronger than before.
Now imagine someone ripping that from you, tearing your child from your arms, all because you have, at great risk, sought a better life for yourself and your child or children.
My column about the Trump Administration’s inhumane policy of forcibly separating parents and children at the border begins below. You can read the rest of it by clicking on the link at the end of the excerpt.
There is proportional and effective punishment and deterrent, and then there is cruelty and oppression. As a nation, instituting this policy puts us squarely in the second category.
On the U.S.-Mexico border, a policy of anguish
Two weeks ago, my family celebrated my daughter’s bat mitzvah. My daughter, a child separated from her parents at birth, celebrated this Jewish rite of passage in grand style. With a long history among the Jewish people, the bat mitzvah (or bar mitzvah for boys) is when a girl commits herself to the rights and obligations of a Jewish adult. It’s a time of ritual and prayer with family, friends and, frequently, large doses of nostalgia.
To say parents feel time’s passage as they watch their 13-year-old read from the Torah for the first time is an understatement. As I sat in the front row of our synagogue, I couldn’t erase my smile as my daughter led the 2½ -our service. Dressed in lavender lace, her long dark hair reaching down her back, this beautiful young woman chanted in Hebrew, offered her interpretation of her assigned portion of the text and in general kept me wondering where the days, months and years had gone. I remembered the sleepless nights, the first smile. The hundreds of crayon pictures, the dawn of reading, the tween who was the only one of all her friends who didn’t have an iPhone – where had that girl gone? Even as I write this, the tears well in my eyes for all those moments past and the teen moments yet to come.
How many more tears would I cry if someone had stolen all those moments from me?
This is the official policy of the United States right now: to steal moments like these from parents who cross the United States-Mexico border without the proper paperwork. Our government is forcibly removing children as young as infants from their parents – sometimes literally tearing them from their parents’ arms – then dealing with the children by sending them to foster care or warehousing them in former military barracks, or, in the word of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, “whatever.†Parents are often given little if any information about the whereabouts of their children.
Why is this barbarous practice now official United States policy? Read the rest at the Concord Monitor by clicking here.