I have no desire to hear biblical quotes from Sessions. How he can call himself a Christian is beyond my understanding. He thinks it's ok to do this kind of thing to brown people because he thinks they are lesser humans than him. What a disgusting,cruel bunch are running the country now.
18
No child with a visa is separated. No child who wants to stay with a parent who stays in Mexico is separated. It is too simple for words. The Times is a false narrative. FAKE NEWS.
2
Is there a real difference between what Trump and the thugs in his government are doing in taking children from their parents, and what the Nazis did in taking children from their parents in the death camps, or what the slave masters did in taking children from their slave parents?
If so, please tell..and please be absolutely clear.
18
THIS MAN SHOULD BE IMPEACHED!
12
It seems that all of us lose track of the basis for all of this: these people made a choice to break our laws. We didn't tell them to do it. They did it.
Next it seems we have forgotten completely the rates of illegals entering by crossing our borders. It is a new, greater crisis to come. Yes, Trump is a pathetic liar, no argument there. But there are still a lot of people, right, middle and left, that do not want lawless open borders. We do not want the kind of crises that Europe is now facing.
I am a liberal, but I think this measure is an effective deterrent to slow the flood of illegal immigrants now crossing, even more effective that a wall, ask those who live along the border. It will make immigrants think first, and some will turn around. The NYT and all media have been extremely bias in reporting border activity. Every incident is grossly exaggerated or just plain false. It is time for everyone to start telling the truth for a change.
5
make hiring undocumented people a federal felony crime punishable with prison time and big fines. employers will not take this risk. no work, illegal border crossing decrease significantly.
8
It's not a simple as: "Okay, if you don't want to be separated from your kids, don't cross the border illegally." Parents are trying to get themselves and their kids into the US because they want safety and economic and educational opportunities, just like everyone else. People are crossing the border because the countries they are fleeing are not able to provide these things. The vast majority in the US are the descendant of immigrants. The "it's simple, don't come," people seem to have forgotten their own family's pasts. What's more, I'll bet their ancestors came to the US for the same reasons.
17
Having had several children and now several grandchildren, I can't imagine the pain, fear, and anxiety these families must be experiencing. As an ex-Christian, I would remind those "Christian" supporters of Trump to read their Biblical texts carefully. All the law is summed up by loving God and neighbor. In the Mosaic box, the command "love the stranger" is repeated as often.
I, too, am angry. Trump is a traitor of the American ideals.
24
"Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without
emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the
moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think,
and I already felt my father’s hand press against mine: we
were alone. In a fraction of a second I could see my mother,
my sisters, move to the right. Tzipora was holding Mother’s
hand. I saw them walking farther and farther away; Mother
was stroking my sister’s blond hair, as if to protect her. And
I walked on with my father, with the men. I didn’t know
that this was the moment in time and the place where I was
leaving my mother and Tzipora forever. I kept walking, my
father holding my hand.
Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Nearby, an
SS man replaced his revolver in its holster.
My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could
think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone." Night, Elie Wiesel
30
The craven cruelty of this policy reminds me of what Joy DeGruy PhD said about the effects of slavery on white people who thought of themselves as God-fearing Christians: They had to turn off their natural feelings of compassion and rationalize cruelty. This is what Trump, Sessions, Miller, Kelly et al are demonstrating.
19
45 is creating enemies North and South. We will pay for the psychological damage he has caused. There is always a bad apple who will try to get revenge for this suffering, and pass it on, generation after generation. This is how conflicts start. God help us.
12
I am totally shocked that this is happening again in a civilized country only some 73 years after the end of the Third Reich. We, the post war generation growing up in Europe, promised NEVER AGAIN. People never learn from history as long as it does not affect them directly.
22
Trump has tried to blame the Democrats for this. Nobody is buying that lie. What's likely next is that he'll blame Sessions for this policy and use that for an excuse for firing him. That would mean Sessions *and* the Mueller investigation would be gone in one stroke. Win-win for Trump, not so much for the rest of us.
6
This country will be judged how we are treating the least among us! The images of human beings in cages is so traumatic to see!
And what is even more unbelievable is experts that have to explain that this is bad for children and families. Any kind, thinking human being does not need to have an expert tell us that the separation of families is not right.
An abuser’s excuse is always they made me do it! Trump says I didn’t want to do it, but the Democrats made me do it. An abuser never takes responsibility for what they do. Always blame someone else. He is a master of deceit and deflection.
All of the people who voted for this man who made fun of a handicapped reporter, who talked about grabbing a woman’s private areas Must take responsibility for voting for Team Trump. They wanted a pro-life president. Is this what pro-life looks like?
Let’s have a huge protest in Washington so this practice will not continue!
14
Let me see if I understand this -
You didn't need Democratic support to steal a Supreme Court seat.
You didn't need Democratic support to pass a tax bill for the 1% and add $1.5 trillion to the deficit.
You didn't need Democratic support to gut the ACA.
But you need Democratic support to stop YOU from throwing babies into Baby Prison?
Really?
42
The childhood trauma caused by this WILL turn out to be extremely costly. As the mother of children who experienced trauma in the family, I know this to be true. My children, now in their 30's are dealing with what happened in their childhood as a result of divorce. At least some of the children Trump is ripping out of their parents' arms will suffer from mental illnesses, some will be violent, some will be abusive as adults, many will need social services - and so will their children. This is a crime against humanity.
13
first bush/cheney and war criminals. now we have trump and crimes against humanity. the gop has become a criminal organization. it has never been more important to register and vote.
15
Born in Germany just before the end of WW II and a refugee from the East to the West through a caring system before spending most of my life here as a US citizen, it gives me no pleasure to look at images of children in concentration camp like settings. Google for images of ‘children in concentration camps’ and the similarities to today are frightening.
10
Just when you believe Trump cannot go any lower, he somehow finds a way to defy your expectations.
The soul of America is at stake and the GOP members of Congress fear the wrath of the corrupt, clueless Trump.
Hope and expect Muller's report to be so damning of Trump and his associates that there will be a national outcry calling for impeachment.
Barring that event, we must vote in November to regain control of Congress and our national integrity.
13
Mr. Charles M. Blow and the NY Times, what is the solution to this global crises?
Parents are desperate for a better life. They enter the United States illegally with their children. Who will provide housing, clothing, food, shelter, medical attention, suitable employment, and education?
Please, help us with a solution and not another article or OP-ED column that ignites such raw emotion.
This crises is Global. The people will keep coming. Provide ideas and remedies that we can work with. Let us help the people, all people.
3
Hi AMERICA, this seems to be part of the defence strategy of your man in charge. When the investigation gets too close, there is a need for a deflection and something that is really creating attention for the whole nation too look the other way. What a distraction !! It works.
And for us watching from a distance we see this cruel policy as being part of the policy of your elected president. Shame on the white house.
13
What I find particularly sad, beyond the human tragedy, is the root cause. It isn't Trump. It isn't the Democrats. It isn't China (in this case), and it's not Hillary.
It's you, the American people, who can't stomach the will to work together to have a DECENT immigration system that addresses the economic and social realities. Tyson chicken, countless home cleaners and nannies, farm workers galore, etc. So many businesses just wouldn't function with a highly restrictive and/or bureaucratic immigration system. So supply tried to meet demand, and chaos ensues.
Pathetic.
Find compromise. Stop being so angry at each other. Cut a deal. WORK TOGETHER. Grow up.
You've contributed to the ruin of your own great country. I love America. I love the Statue of Liberty. I love the rule of law. I love having immigrants come to build a great nation together. Why can't you make compromises and build a system that works?
You are your own problem.
5
Immigrants don't pose an economic threat to native-born workers in that they do not compete for the same jobs. Immigrants do work the former won't do -- back breaking, low-paying work under harsh conditions.
Rather the issue is cultural -- there are, frankly, xenophobes among us who are absolutely incensed to see someone speaking a language other than English in public, without realizing that the very next generation will be fully acculturated, and American in every discernible sense, in the blink of an eye. In other words, the 3-4 year old child standing by his abuelo will be fully Americanized by the time he's 12.
What hasn't broken is the faith these ill-treated minorities still maintain in the American system. In this connection, I will reference the 442nd Infantry Regiment, in World War 2, composed of second-generation Japanese-Americans recruited from the internment camps at Manzanar, Minidoka, and Tule Lake, etc. Yet, despite this blatant discrimination, this primarily Japanese-American unit was the most decorated for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare. 21 of its member received the nation's highest award -- the Congressional Medal of Honor. The unit's rolls were replaced almost 3 times over due to staggering losses of life. The unit's motto was "Go For Broke!"
For all those who fell, what did we ever do, in word or deed, to justify their unwavering faith . . .
Riddle me that, Donald J. Trump!
7
Has the Mexican government posted warnings like those seen on McDonald’s coffee cups?
Entering the USA without approval can be hazardous to your health!
2
What I have been wondering for years...who is speaking to representatives of the Central American countries from which the desperate people are running? Is it too logical for the US to engage in cooperative efforts with these foreign governments to improve the lives of people before they are compelled to back up and leave their homes. No, Trump is inclined to increase the hardship of the helpless and further their hopelessness. What a strategy!
That said, Congress IS guilty of a dereliction of duty. If they can't step up and accept the responsibilities of the job for which they ran, they should step out.
4
Trump's cruelty was predictable, but the silence of Amb Haley and the lies of Sec Nielsen were not, at least to me. This is a Charlottesville moment. Let's see who bails. Come to think of it, some cabinet members griped on a non-attribution basis about Charlottesville but none quit. It will be interesting to see if Trump fires Sessions on the pretext that Sessions was mean to kids. Trump being Trump, he might blurt out later to a TV interviewer that the "Russia thing" was the real reason.
7
Trump supporters say he is "getting a lot done." On the other hand, the level of brinksmanship in trade and immigration reform really could boomerang. It will be a miracle if there isn't a class action lawsuit on this, once civil rights are violated and abuse is cataloged. Keeping families together, minimizes risks of abuse, sickness, and death.
2
In 1997, the Flores v Reno Settlement required the United States to transfer unaccompanied migrant children apprehended at the border to the Department of Health and Humans Services, which releases them to relatives or sponsors. Predictably, the decision caused a surge in the number of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the border.
In 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Flores v Reno Settlement also applies to accompanied migrant children. Predictably, the ruling caused a surge in the number of migrant children crossing the border with their parents.
In May, the Border Patrol caught more than 50,000 illegal border crossers. Since the Border Patrol estimates it catches only 54 percent off illegal border crossers, this indicates about 50,000 succeeding in sneaking past the border patrol To stop the tsunami of illegal border crossers, the Trump administration reversed the policy of not prosecuting illegal border crossers because not prosecuting illegal border crossers has encourage rather than deterred illegal border crossers.
The administration cannot prosecute migrant children along with their parents. It must comply with the court order and transfer them to Health and Human Services.
Once words spreads that the United Sates is prosecuting illegal border crossers, the number of illegal border crossers will drop, and the migrant children crisis will end.
5
I have angry thoughts. After listening to Mr. Sessions, complete with his famous little smirk, read from the Bible to justify this obscene policy, it occurred to me that he is probably a guy who would take a picnic to a hanging. That's something that I thought maybe, just maybe we had rendered to the past. He and Stephen Miller, et al, are despicable. That they have any position in our government is ghastly. Will we be sending people to showers that spew gas next?
11
People are not taking personal responsibility for their own actions. Enforcing the law is not the US ripping kids out of their parent's arms. The Parents who break this country's law and who bring their children with them are the people who are responsible for getting themselves detained and forcing the responsibility of caring for their children on others. "Illegal entry" screams being against the law by the very nature of the term.
Options are:
1. Follow the current laws - detain parents and care for the children until the parents are released
2. CHANGE the current laws - open more ports of entry so people coming into the country don't all have to funnel through existing ports.
3. Send the families back to where ever they came from
4. Keep the families together and provide them with transportation to the correct port of entry - give them a 'fast pass' while you're at it so they don't have to wait in line any longer than necessary
5. Enforce the border and build the wall so people aren't confused about which entry ports are official ports of entry.
Whatever is done, make the solution simple so it's easy to follow.
Separating families is a horrible occurrence, and no one is happy about it. Telling people that one group of people is happy about something bad happening is just as big a lie.
8
Don't confuse happiness with enthusiasm.
You are incorrect. Every DA and prosecutor has discretion under the law in what charges to bring with what consequences. Both the Obama and Bush DOJ lawyers, within their lawful discretion, determined illegal border crossings were misdemeanors. Trump and team are now taking the extreme position all border crossings are felonies, and on that basis are cruelly separating families and warehousing hundreds of young children while they scramble to figure out what to do with them. Further, asylum seekers are legally here until their cases are decided; reports are legion this administration is doing all in its power to close this door as well, including with tactics that will likely be found to be illegal. They are also removing longstanding grounds for asylum. Any person in our borders, legally and illegally, also has basic constitutional rights. These too are likely being violated. The cruelty and brutality of using children as political pawns, as Trump is doing, should alarm everyone. This aspect is not a partisan issue.
8
We are becoming Russia/North Korea in terms of human rights violations. Other countries should condemn us just as we condemn those two dictatorships.
12
This is his wall. He can't build it, so this is what he does. Hey, Trump (and Miller and Huckabee Sanders and Sessions), I'd like to build a wall around you. I'll pay for it.
8
Just wondering what would happen to you or me if we smuggled a child into Mexico without any documents or government approval and demanded assistance and a job with benefits?
I’m thinking something far far worse than a court proceeding with social services would await us.
6
It occurs to me that between our American government and United Fruit, Central America was scrambled long ago without thought. Starting perhaps four decades ago we sent gang members originally from Central America, schooled in gang systems in our cities, back to Central American countries instead of keeping them in our USA prisons. What did we really expect would happen? Now, due to the violence unleashed by these aimless young men and the typical corruption endemic in parts of Central America's various governments, people flee or die. It is a possibility that the refugees feel it is better to run the risk of escape with all the unpleasantness of immigration policies of Mexico and USA than to stay? They and their children are safer even while in detention? Then while giving billions to Israel for example what have we done to raise up Central America, ever? I see absolutely no discussion about this problem being solved at the source over a long term. We seem to want short term solutions to problems we have helped create over several decades. We Americans seem to have this idea that there is no problem which cannot be solved with force of one sort or another when the reality is patience while contributing to the societies of Central America. However, we have deep reservations about contributing to our own society let alone that of another?
5
As to why churches and their leaders don't rise up with indignation at the brutal treatment of their fellow human beings, I guess the name and fate of Pastor Niemöller lurks at the back of their minds. Bravery in the face of thuggery is laudable, but in the real world it's a rare occurrence.
Thuggish regimes, such as what we are seeing develop in the USA are intimidating to most people, who simply want to get on with their lives. This is a tragedy. That a sizable slice of the country sees nothing wrong with current events, even cheering them on, is the exact way slow-moving coups always advance.
Will the USA become like Hungary, or Poland, or Venezuela, or Russia, or Turkey? Who knows? The one thing that is certain though is there is only one chance available to curtail this slide into autocracy and that is November's mid-term elections. If neither of the houses comes under the control of the Democrats at that time, then we are heading into a very scary place.
9
Time to build the wall is now!
When the border is under our jurisdiction there would be NO need to even permit unauthorized passage into the country much less separating families once they crossed illegally.
5
It pains me to read this and now again to ask my fellow Americans. What are we allowing ourselves become?
4
For years it has been policy to send children to CPS when adults bring their children when they break the law. It has been really amusing how this has been blown into something it's not. The simple solution is for the criminals not to bring their kids with them when they break the law.
7
They are people who are desperate for a better life.
Who would ever leave their home, if their home was safe and good.
Please don’t call them criminals until you’ve walked in their shoes.
4
“Amusing?”
Some of you just don't get it. The cruelty isn't a bug, it's a feature. Trump and Sessions have said as much. It is their stated intention to traumatize these parents to provide a disincentive for border crossing. It also does something that his base absolutely craves - it hurts people who don't look like them.
The cruelty is the point. They won't be dissuaded by arguments to humanity or compassion. The justification for their rule is vengeance against those who their base have been taught to blame, despise and fear. And it makes the liberals crazy. Always a plus in any exercise in Trumpian stochastic terror.
6
This is the nasty underbelly of getting tough on immigration. getting tough on the southern border is Trumps baby. he didn't create the order that separates children from their parents but its going to tarnish his administration if he doesn't act quickly. Photos and video always speaks louder than words, and we are a day or two away from one of those indelible photos that haunt a President and his presidency. A similar thing happened to LBJ when a reporter snapped a pic of a street execution during the Tet offensive. If Trump were smart, he would move quickly on this issue before fate moves in as it always does, and he and the party that has tied its whole destiny to his comes crashing down over one indelible image that will haunt him forever..
2
"he didn't create the order that separates children from their parents but its going to tarnish his administration if he doesn't act quickly." Yes, yes he absolutely did create this situation entirely on his own and he could end it in a heartbeat if he wanted to. But his criminal inclinations won't allow it, and he's just not intelligent enough to really grasp what he's doing.
2
Tragic and simple from our simple-minded reality TV Prez.
Anything good is his doing. Anything bad is someone else's fault. Though I hoped as a father and grandfather, traumatizing babies would be a line even Trump would not cross. I was wrong again.
6
People cross the border illegally because they are in dire straits and believe that this can solve their problems, safety as well as economic.
They also cross the border because our economy is built on having 20 million people, OK 12 million people and their children, work for substandard pay and benefits to support our economy. None of them are loafing around since they get no support from the government and soup kitchens just don't make the US that attractive. Both parents working long hours, and living many people in small houses. This includes all the things that allow people to work long hours like childcare, lawn care, eldercare, construction, slaughterhouses, etc. During the recession, people left the US in record numbers since living was better elsewhere. Now with unemployment at <4% which means "full employment" we once again need workers.
If we succeed in stopping this supposed flood of immigration, of poor people willing to do the work others won't do, this will not be an easy transition. You just can't commute from WVa to mow the lawn in a suburban development in northern Va. And, no, people really don't want these jobs (or if they did they would have them, maybe at below minimum wage pay and with no worker rights, but sure, they can show up).
Or well why not let 2 million more immigrants in legally every year including people willing to do this type of work ?
3
Uh... Why come here when there are other countries to stop in, or, find in the another direction? Why pass through or turn down countries that speak your language to go to another that doesn't? Why get further away from your property, birthrights, friends, family, and other persons of support to deal with complete strangers, different laws, different expectations, etc.? The United States isn't the only country people can enter, nor, very often the closest. It may only be the dumbest, easiest, and wealthiest one you can simply walk, drive, fly, hop, skip, jump, or, sneak into in a hidden compartment, and stay in, illegally - forever... by anybody who can get here - whether it's a distance of 2 blocks, or, 2 thousand miles. I don't see why, however, the United States has to stay that way...
4
Why are we seeing words like "dissemble" instead of lying. This President and Cabinet members seem to have a problem with speaking the truth and should be called out for it clearly and in simple, easy to understand English. A lie is a lie.
7
These children were kidnapped. There's no other way to put it. Trump wants 18 million for his wall, and these children are being held for ransom. In my book, that's a crime, and those responsible, beginning with the President ought to be arrested and proscecuted.
13
Finally, equality and justice for all - American style. We're treating immigrants and refugees the same way we treat our own black citizens.
The message is clear: you may still be poor, your wages may still be flat, but you're still white and it still counts for something. U-S-A! U-S-A!
3
It's time to start thinking about sending American officials to The Hague.
12
I keep thinking of Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, minus the extermination and without the choice.
4
Way to go Trump--children grow up and they will remember what you did.
6
Beyond wondering just how far down the rabbit hole Trumpists are willing to go--honestly, the last week's seen a real jump in their level of lying, scapegoating, self-cintradiction, and racist hatred--and beyond begging folks to vote this November, let me note a Golden Oldie:
Mark Twain's "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," written for the Anti-Imperialist League around 1900.
Make no mistake: Trump's an imperialist. And like all of that ugly lot, he's forgotten the simplest thing about this country.
We have NEVER been sorry when we have acted out of real principle, open-handed generosity, and faith in our values. Ever.
It's the lazy, pinch-penny, vicious, gutless stuff--slavery; Wounded Knee; Jim Crow; Father Coughlin; Korematsu; Vietnam; Iraq; Katrina--that we have always regretted, that has always, always, always, boomeranged back and smacked us right in the mouth.
And for you Bible-thumpers who think this ugliness is okay, some Lincoln.
"INdeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
8
What happened to "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore"?.
Embodied in Emma Lazarus's words, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty is the promise of safety, hope and a new start for those that come to our country. It is that promise that is being broken by the heartbreaking and wretched practice of separating these children from their parents. And Donald Trump is to blame.
How many of Trump's constituent's ancestors took advantage of that promise and risked everything to come here and start anew. With the action of Trump and his minions the very foundation on which this country was founded, those of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are undermined.
We will not soon forget.
5
Having lost family in the Holocaust, more than once I imagined myself being a mother in a concentration camp and I thought that the best that could happen to a child in those circumstances was to be killed in a gas chamber but in the arms of his mother.
I think this father was one of the lucky ones, being able to kill himself rather than having to live without his child. But his child is not that lucky.
This administration has been able to generate so much unnecessary pain, including our pain when we read the news. And for what? To win the next election? Or just for the pleasure of inflicting pain?
7
This practice is beyond cruel. It is evil. These families will suffer from this psychological trauma for the rest of their lives.
If Jefferson Sessions wants to quote the Bible, I would remind him that Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." He did not say "Make the little children suffer."
10
What’s next? Tattoo numbers on their arms so their parents can maybe find them someday? I am ashamed of what my country is becoming.
10
Author's contribution is not well thought out, so biased it's hard to take it seriously, and boils down to another irrational tirade against our chief of state who is following the Constitution, defending our borders--failing which we are no longer sovereign, and the interests of "petits blancs" as well as other sociological categories abused for generations. Why did the Democratic party lose the loyalty of working class Americans,nominate O with his condescending attitude towards the "clingers," HRC with her dismissal of us a "basket of deplorables?"Party lost touch with its working class base, became more concerned with the welfare of "indocumentados"than with the citizenry. Why is it that those always complaining about America and President Trump , about our "racist"policies are among those who make a nice living, often in the 6 figures. Were that my kith and kin fortunate enough to send their offspring to an ivy league institution,but "helas,"they are not, and correspond to that category of Irish men and women w/o a pot to .... in or a window to throw it out of," only a slight exaggeration!Author needs to have more faith in the Constitution, in our chief of state, and respect those who have not done as well as he in life, and, cease evading questions formulated on an aquaintance, Deray Mckesson who decamped mysteriously after deaths of those 5 police officers in Dallas 2 years ago.
6
Placing all the blame for his heinous, barbaric policy on Trump is misguided; Jeff Sessions has been waiting his whole career for the chance to eliminate minority immigration and stamp out civil rights for minorities. He puts up with abuse from Trump because he gets to work toward his lifelong dream of returning the US to a white supremacist autocracy/theocracy. He practically dances on his feet when he's at a microphone spouting bible verses that purport to support his loathsome views. Trump is enabling Sessions' bigotry, and vice versa.
8
This act of the Trump performance, and the many acts before and yet to come have revealed the hearts and minds of Republicans...long suspected, but now apparent. Hearts of stone, willing to justify and rationalize anything for some petty, small-minded purpose...like not wanting to see so many Mexicans when they go to Walmart. And minds of clay, ready to be forged into reactionary tools for the use of a strongman dictator.
5
Illegal immigration is a crime. Parents who commit crimes risk being incarcerated and losing custody of their children. This has been a very undesirable but predictable outcome for thousands of years throughout the world. Of course, processes that are in place to deter criminals do not victimize children more than their own criminal parents.
I find it very odd that Mr. Blow uses the term “Baby Snatchers” in the context of criminals who are apprehended while accompanied by their own (or someone else’s) children. I don’t recall him lamenting the deaths or molestations of innocent American children at the hands of illegal immigrants, or even the “snatching” of babies from their mothers’ wombs with the use of forceps. I’ll just say that Mr. Blow, like many of his more avid readers, is “somewhat complex”… and leave it at that.
5
It is Trump who should be locked in a cage and all those who refuse to do anything about this by not speaking out against his actions. Apart from the American Indians we all can trace our history to immigrants. I never imagined we would ever see anything as ugly as this.
5
Two words: Stephen Miller.
5
The great buffoon is an evil and hateful man. I hope there will be justice for him someday.
5
If someone doesn't have moral or ethical objections to these human rights violations, there are still plenty of other reasons to fight against this policy. Acute stress in children, particularly related to separation from parents, can have long-term negative (and expensive) health outcomes. The experience of traumatic events can lead to social, emotional, cognitive, and behavior changes that leave not only one individual affected, but others who are related to or otherwise interact with those individuals. These are society-wide impacts.
I also believe that there will be national security risks amplified by this inhumane policy. We as a culture may have a woefully short memory when it comes to some things. But I have little doubt that the affected individuals will recall these events for years, perhaps generations, which could negatively affect diplomatic efforts. All of these sentiments hold true for the U.S. support of Saudi Arabia while they perpetuate famine in Yemen, but that's another story.
It took me ten minutes this morning to sign a petition, donate to the ACLU, and call each of my 3 congressional representatives in an effort to stop this cruel and damaging policy. Here's hoping.
9
A policy that has existed for years and years is being singularly attached to Donald Trump, when he hasn't had anything to do with it.
The Democrats do not care about these kids. The Democrats do not care about these families. Their focus is Donald Trump. Their focus is damaging Donald Trump. If they cared about these kids and their families being separated, they would have done something about it when Obama was president rather than cover it up and hide it.
6
Please try to keep up. Sessions declared this administration's "zero tolerance" policy 6 weeks ago. This is Not Obama's fault. This is not the Democrats fault. This horrendous, cruel and inhumane policy was established 6 weeks ago!
I have lost all patience for the willfully ignorant supporters of the guy in the WH who believe his non-stop lies. I've lost all hope for our once great nation when a chunk of our citizens are so easily duped.
7
No matter how the narrative is sliced and diced, what Trump is doing is inhumane, cruel, and unconscionable. This is not about politics, per se. He seems to be doing this just so he can get a demented "kick" out of seeing people suffer. Perhaps it's a symptom of a psychological state sowed during his upbringing. Heaven knows what he must have had to endure as a child for him to become such a soulless individual.
7
I think it's more about what his family had to endure from him. He was farmed out to a military school for a reason.
someone please hold Senator Susan Collins of Maine's feet to the fire for her failure to take action against Trump's policies. Or to admit Trump lying about Democrats at fault. She spoke against family separation but REFUSED to take any action within her power as a senator to support legislation to stop it. Or anything. Just like she tricked us all on the tax bill. Shame on you Senator Collins! Shame on you!
12
No surprise that a man who recently referred to these helpless families as animals, would have no problem keeping their frightened children in cages.
11
This is the face of soulless cruelty.
11
A nation separates kids from their parents... Unbelievable... This is a serious crime whoever committing this. Even dictators do not do this. Come on America, raise your voice...
12
Trump is an evil child abuser. His policy of No Tolerance, which he alone imposed , has resulted in the most vile and violent attack on children by any President in my lifetime. In my estimation, this policy ,alone, warrants impeachment as it is both unbecoming conduct and dereliction of duty to safeguard families and their children. Not that he cares, but his policy of mistreating children denigrates and tarnishes our nation's claim to be a beacon of light and its professed regard for people seeking asylum and an opportunity for a better life. Impeach 45.
14
I don't imagine Trump had much to do with his own children when they were growing up and any affect he did have has been bad given their recent behavior. He doesn't display any emotions apart from disdain for most other humans, his treatment of all "Others" is a reflection of his personality. Given all of that this is not a surprise, he is a dictator and he has a very large propaganda network to back him up. Mr Blow your column as always is excellent and I could not agree more, Please keep bringing us the truth and everyone out there, VOTE. We have to rid ourselves of this dictator and the Republicans who support these truly ugly tactics.
8
To date I have emailed Senators Ryan, McConnell, Isakson and Purdue asking them to stop this nazi like Trump/Sessions policy inspired no doubt by Stephen Miller and applauded by Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders. What else can an ordinary citizen do? If we wait for the bishops and the other preachers to step up and forcefully speak out we will be waiting and waiting...
Is there anyone out there who knows how to stop this despicable policy of tearing children and even ripping babies away from their mother's breast, is there anyone who can stop this since we know Trump and his ilk will not. I do not believe Trump's base, as base as it may be, would want to see babies put into prison camps. Who is making sure that these children are not being molested or abused?. An NBC reporter has been inside Mccallen camp and there are only 4 social workers for 1500 children. This will go down in history as another atrocity akin to the Gulag, the Nazi camps where Jewish children were torn away from their parents with promises of a shower (is that not what the Texas border guards promised those children and mothers?) but as we know the parents never saw those children again. Is this what we want the world to know, that under Trump, Sessions, General Kelly and Miller that the people fleeing from terror are met with terror in this land that is said to be the home of the free and the brave? Under Trump we may not be free much longer.
12
Amen. This is beyond disgusting, and will be remembered at the ballot box.
8
Torture has been endorsed and now administered by tRump and his minions...!
7
There’s nothing more to say about this except that maybe this will bring around the people who’ve been so silent on everything else. I want to believe this was a huge miscalculation on their part, a catalyst that will unite us, no matter what our politics might be. We are people first. Good, decent, honest people who sometimes disagree.
There’s been an attack on all our institutions, the rule of law, civil rights, separation of church and state, science, our health, land, the environment, the economy, journalism, language and truth itself.
They’re trying to pit us against each other and to break us, until there’s chaos. What next – martial law?
Maybe it’s only us trying to hold on to our sanity that keeps us asking each other daily – how is this normal?
It’s not. I hope voting is enough.
6
Democrats need to be careful how they frame this issue. It is not a campaign issues- it is a human decency issue. Clearly it is beyond the moral capacity of the Trump Creature administration. It is indeed remarkable that while the Trump Creature hands out pardons to criminals like he giving away candy at a parade - Trump and Sessions are locking up children that have committed no crime.
If this does not make abundantly clear that this vile, vulgar an disgusting Creature is unfitted to represent the American people. Then nothing will - you are indeed members of a pernicious cult.
4
What makes this even worse is the sanctimony of Sessions quoting the Bible and saying Jesus made him do it, along with Trump of course who has shamelessly lied about this policy being rooted in legislation from other administrations (always happy to blame President Obama for his failings). He could change this with the stroke of a pen. He likes the idea of ruling by fiat, so why does he not do this? He is pandering to his base and their xenophobia - although likely 99% percent of them are not aboriginal Americans. The evangelicals with their pro-life, pro-child stances are very quiet. Could this be because these poor, desperate people are mostly brown and black? Separating children and infants from their parents is a form of child abuse. A toddler cannot understand this as anything but abandonment. Feeding and sheltering them in cages is not enough. They are being held hostage for Trump's stupid wall. This is not what America purports to stand for. Read the Statute of Liberty. Laura Bush is right. Even Melania is appalled. Congress and the Senate has to do a gut check and act.
4
America has created a monster. A man who avidly praises dictators is becoming one. Jailing and detaining people as he likes with a gutless GOP allowing it. If he keep this up, he will have to stop calling people in other counties animals.
6
I guess Mr Blow isn't aware of the fact that it was Pres. Obama who snatched babys and placed them in foster homes where their 24 hour care was paid in full by American taxpayers. After their parents cases were adjudicated most suddenly decided that they didn't even want their children back and as a result these kids became a permanent burden. And ALL OF A SUDDEN everybody's worried about family separation. Halarioysly hypocritical.
5
It’s insane that people actually believe this drivel. Facts don’t matter. All the mental gymnastics: “Lie! Trump isn’t separating immigrant children from their parents and putting them in cages!” to “Obama did the same thing!” to (and this guy isn’t quite there yet) “These immigrants broke the law, it’s their fault their children are taken!”
Being righteous, especially when you’re wrong, is physically and emotionally exhausting. Just give it up guys. You messed up. Trump is a heartless disaster. Admitting your mistake is the first step to sanity.
3
I think you better find a truthful news outlet other than Fox news bc you have their non facts being seen here
3
What the chump, Don el Dough Trump has done is clearly cruel and unusual punishment, under our Constitution, a "high crime" clearly beyond any mere "Ms. de mean her."
Every newspaper in the country should be running the same editorial in unison - that we need to stop Trump's fascist music and begin setting the stage for Trump/Pence impeachment - a good-bye one plus one equals two good-byes in one breath with the Impeachment result publicly determined in advance.
The world's peoples will see how the world's leading democracy (once upon a time) makes changes in its federal government without firing a shot.
Trump will show his rue true colors by demanding air time to harrangue his supporters to march on Washington, D.C. and bring their 2nd Amendment with them.
Expect Trump's marchers will be limited to the Charlottsville gang with their torches and "Jews will not replace us," slogan.
http://thegovernmentinexile.live
6
This government has crossed the line into total immorality. Until it returns to the rule of law I urge everyone to engage in non-violent protest. Be creative! Begin with the assumption that ICE, and similar agencies, are engaged in immoral acts. They have become this country's secret police.
This is how it started in pre-Nazi Germany.
7
President Trump and right wing Conservative and extremist American politicians; please note; If you would like to keep America a white peoples majority nation with rednecks and neocons in command; keeping poor at the bottom of the economic ladder; you must stop Wars with other nations, stop having any civilized relation with the other nations and enjoy your land, air and water. Take this nation not 500 but 1000 year behind and have your isolated and macho land. If that will be the America; no one will even imagine to come here, even birds will avoid our air space.
1
When half the eligible voters of a country choose not to vote, even for the office of president, Trump is the bump in the road that leads one off the path. The problem is this bump has metastasized, become enlarged to such an enormous degree it has not only slowed government down, it may have knocked it off the road completely. Trump has enlarged this bump, worsened it creating ever deepening divisions already inherent in this country. Trump is hell-bent on so muddling the government he will create the conditions where a civil war will become reality. It will be the only means of distraction that will salvage and perhaps prevent Trump from being convicted of impeachment. But even a civil war will not exonerate Trump from avoiding the wheels of Justice and finally getting caught up in its grinding outcome.
DD
Manhattan
3
This column (and many of the comments) fails to directly address the only rational argument made by Trump and his supporters in defense of the policy of separating children from parents facing criminal prosecution for unlawfully crossing the border - i.e. that this policy is intended to act as a deterrent to illegal immigration.
The appropriate response is that no matter how effective a deterrent separating children from their parents at the border may be (and that is not a given by any means) the harm and cruelty to the children and their parents far outweighs any benefit that the policy could conceivably produce, thereby rendering the policy immoral. The fact that Trump also happens to be lying about whether Democrats or Republicans are responsible for the existence of this policy or for the immigration "crisis" that this policy is allegedly designed to address is beside the point.
3
The core premise for many in the mental health community is that the stability of families and primary caretakers, most importantly mothers but fathers and others as well, creates the adult who emerges from all the moments throughout early childhood, actually from the moments before and after birth. Attachment research, theory and clinical practice applications are significant facets of this clinical perspective. The idea that the integrity and continuity and stability of families across generations has a profound impact on the course of life and the stability and competence of children and adults is also a well established and accepted clinical perspective. Trump's arrogant, abusive, cruel and inhumane treatment of children caught up in the immigration chaos is not only criminal in intent but utterly destructive to the lives of those children. The scars of that experience will last the lifetimes of each child caught up in that insane cruelty. If anything, Trump's egregious misconduct in treating children in this cruel and hateful manner will serve notice on the American public. He cannot and should not be allowed to stay in office. Such misconduct is one facet of a heartless dictator. America beware. What Trump does to these children, he will ultimately do to all who oppose him.
3
I don't know whether or not Trump will be held to account at the ballot box, but, if there is a God, he'll surely be held to account in a hot, hot place for a long, long time because of his treatment of children and for his unwillingness to tell the truth. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy!
2
Get to know your country's history: We have MS-13 and other horrific terror-based gangs BECAUSE the US funded right-wing governments & businesses throughout Central America and Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. The further irony is that the poor in those countries suffered then and created generations of poor because the land was ripped from families for coffee-growing families and 90,000 we killed or disappeared. Resulting Poverty and Violence causes people to flee. The US owes these people for our contribution to the atrocities of thirty years ago.
Good chance Kirstjen Nielsen would be asking for asylum if she was a Salvadoran, and have her children taken from her at our border. We need people/workers/families in rural US. How about for once we have humane immigration policy?
1
They're still waiting for Norwegians to show up at the border.
You raise a good point about the gangs. Think how many more of these kids might be "radicalized" by this treatment and separation from family members. If you have to pick a side, it might seem safer to join the gangs.
This is so much worse than I thought it would be. I underestimated Trump and the people around him.
4
I notice Miller and Sessions don't advocate a crackdown on people who came here by air and overstayed their visas for months and years. Why aren't we rounding them up, detaining them, and taking away their children? Why are desperate people who walk in from the south different friom "illegals" who flew here from Europe on transatlantic jets and never went home when their stiudent or tourist visas expired. There's a big difference. It's called "bigotry."
9
This is disturbing and heartbreaking. How does the current law read? If the parents are arrested for breaking the law it seems reasonable that children could not be incarcerated with them so they are temporarily being taken care of in a safe place. Who is to blame for putting the children in this situation ? We have the best system in the world, laws must be followed and who ever voted these laws in must change them if they are unjust. I believe the wrong advice is being given to the immigrants and they are making wrong decisions based on bad advice. I don't believe American folks or the current administration or past administrations are heartless or cruel. We need an immigration reform that works for immigrants and citizens. My final comment is that it is tough to believe some folks' claims about how heartless and cruel it is for 'ripping babies' out of parents' arms when they have NO PROBLEM with ripping babies out of a mother's womb all the way up to birth. Science proves unborn babies are human people.
And, no, these people do not need to be charged. Many are seeking asylum. Why am I wasting my fingers on your tripe. You’ll believe what you want because you need to support your immoral decision at the ballot box.
2
Hey. Can we focus on sentient humans? Thanks.
1
All those who are "just following orders" to make this monstrous policy possible should face the same punishment due Trump and his enablers.
I don't favor capital punishment, but I wouldn't mind seeing some Capitol punishment in this case.
6
My fear is that this atrocious policy is Trump/Miller/Sessions simply testing the waters as to how far they can go with human rights abuses. How much will the American public stomach? If the GOP (and the rest of us) do not stop him, Trump et al. will continue to implement increasingly evil and immoral policies. Remember: "first they came for..." My fear is the Trump/GOP/Miller/Sessions horror show is just getting started.
7
This is a cruel policy and insane justification. Anyone that is a party to this intolerance (i.e. Trump administration and the "do-knowing" Republicans) will be made to answer by the almighty at eventually. In the meantime, this must change.
2
The statement Mr Blow makes that he is so outraged by the action of taking children from their parents that it makes him speechless, this is my feeling as well.
trumps decesion has brought to my mind all cuss words known to me and they are many.Feelings of removal from office that include not just Trump but every racist republican who offers him even minimal support continue through my mind.I would not say that any of this has ever entered my mind in the past and I’ve lived 80 years.My country is disappearing as I watch and I’m helpless to anything but support the ACLU, congress and lState
Legislators, and pray that Democrats who often committed other outrages will come to speak out and,
Say something which will inspire us to overcome the depression
Which spreads ,as Trump commits daily outrages against our constitution
Spreading in the USA?
3
KJM
Thousand Oaks
In one of our darkest times in WW2 when we incarcerated Japanese citizens and non-citizens alike, families were kept together. Children were not taken from their parents. The strength of the family unit got these people through an ordeal. How have we become so cruel? Didn't we listen when the orange oracle came down the escalator? He told us he would be cruel. We didn't believe and now others are paying for our carelessness.
4
Just now on Twitter, I noticed that most of the people replying to the photo of the two-year-old girl crying as she was separated from her mother saying things like "who cares," "her parents shouldn't have brought her here," "the libs were happy when Clinton signed this into law," "it's not Trump's fault," etc. One guy even said that this was probably a fake photo using a picture of a child crying at Chuck E. Cheese. What a callous, self-interested, immoral, heartless people fill our country. It makes me very sad. It's shortsighted, too. There is plenty of work that these immigrants could do -- jobs that American citizens don't want. Jobs that American citizens want to pay cheap wages for someone else to do. Figure out a way to get them health coverage and a place to live, and put them to work. Let them stay!
3
Show some fortitude! Should the law be overturned and our borders thrown open to unchecked immigration because sensitive Democrats can't stand to see it enforced? Or is it a cynical effort by Democrats to manipulate our natural emotional response to toddler's cries to advance their hope to regain power? What is their immigration policy? Do the have one? Or is their sudden concern for crying children just a ploy to win votes in the upcoming election?
3
The families can be detained together and deported. But they cannot be charged (or they have to separate the parents). The reason this administration isn’t doing this is because it’s not mean enough. It’s not a clear deterrent to future immigrants. Also, if the parents are separated from their children and charged with unlawful entry, the administration effectively uses their children as blackmail to force them into guilty pleas.
Get some fortitude? Shame on you.
2
The International Criminal Court has global jurisdiction, and can hold those political despots accountable for committing crimes against humanity. These vile and cruel actions executed for political means (a wall) by Trump, seems to qualify.
123 countries ratified the treaty setting up this court , but though B. Clinton finally agreed to join with the caveat that our troops over seas who committed atrocities would not be brought to trial, the Congress did not approve.
Only those in member countries can be brought to justice. Trump lucks out again.
2
We cannot wait until children are brutalized; abused;become grievously ill or are killed or take their own lives in detention. this situation is rife for abuse. Trump official doubletalk makes all of us complicit unless we take this action to the courts and to the House and Senate. the commentators here referring to the families and children as they or illegals reduce the status of asylum seekers to subhuman. We can do better. this is a Trump reelection ploy. May it end up unseating him.
3
The children are apparently hostages for T's border wall. What's next? Removing children from homes where the grandparents oppose eliminating social security and medicare? If this works maybe McConnell and Ryan will try that instead of the usual GOP cut taxes in order to force cuts to social programs. Remember, the Right knows who you are. They got the info from Cambridge Analytica (now conveniently bankrupt).
4
Why would a man put his family in such a position as to see that family broken apart at the US border? The same reason a man puts himself and his family at risk by boarding a rickety ship on the Mediterranean: where they are leaving is far worse than anything that they may face where they are heading to. The general public in North America is immune to this fact. The argument is framed in the context of "observance of laws". And yes, laws should be observed. However, as the writer notes, there is no law stating families should be separated.
This is not a simple question of, let's say a Canadian wishing to relocate to the US; the Canadian is not facing war, hunger, political persecution or any other imminent danger in their homeland. The same could be said for any number of other nations whose citizens would seek immigration into the US.
These families showing up at the southern border typically would not be in this same category. They are desperately seeking freedom, and are willing to do desperate things and face desperate consequences to start this new life. Framed in this context, the policy of family separation is doomed to failure: by the uproar of the US population on moral grounds, and by the fact that desperate people will still risk the consequences to try and make things better for their families.
8
Of all the issues related to immigration, this is the icing on the cake, but not sweet icing, but more like poison. Also, what it proves is that for over 20 years, Congress, with all the resources, staff, borrowed money, and the age of digital technology, has failed to adequately fix all of the immigration issues, from easy work Visa forms for businesses needing adequate numbers of workers each year, millions, from having a computerized program in place for tracking all of those on tourist Visas who come over, and intentionally overstay their Visas, and never go home, at least one million a year, to what to do about the almost 20-30 million who have come here undocumented(illegally) over the last 40 years, and how to both legally, and openly bring them, and their children out of the shadows, give them residence cards, and a future status as citizens, except in cases of convicted felons. No, Congress has been derelict in their duties.
6
Susan Collins and her ilk who won't vote their conscience because of attachment to office are the ones who separate children from parents because of moral indifference and posturing in place of action.
10
What a trump policy! Why america famouse of rule of law become so rude and simple in its immigration policy?
6
Trump and Sessions now have blood on their hands. How many people must suffer and some are driven to killing themselves due to this horrible policy. Yet Sessions can quote from the Bible that the Trump administration is being just.
10
Trump has essentially kidnapped and held children as hostages to get his wall. And...Republicans still grovel at his feet.
13
Yes- I hope enough Americans that have not subcumbed to his cult following understand that..
3
It's time to seriously ask that Stephen Miller, a reprehensible, thinks-he's-above-it-all brat, be removed from his post at the White House.
General Kelly should be ashamed of himself, allowing this young man to call the shots.
When it comes to actual policy making, we all know that Trump has no clear idea on the intricacies of putting policy in place. Miller is constructing the wording and processing, and since Trump does not communicate with Sessions, Miller rules.
What a horror.
November can't get here soon enough.
13
Don't wait for General Kelly, he's on the same team as Miller, Trump and Sessions. Scratch a bigot, find a fascist.
6
Notice that Blow offers no solutions. While no one wants children separated from their parents, then what is a solution to stopping ILLEGAL immigrants from crossing our border with their kids? Are they then supposed to get a free pass?
I don't like the separation, but the dems & left who are so loudly and vehemently attacking Trump, Sessions and Repubs need to come to the negotiating table and hammer out a deal. Unless of course the left wants open borders...
This wasn't a Trump admin law. It was put into place by Bill Clinton's admin and Obama separated families at the border as well. OR didn't you know that?
So let's come up with some answers instead of squabbling. Now, if we all agree that we need to protect our borders then let's do it and end the need for having to separate families or have ICE round ups. I believe the Dems would rather use illegal immigration as a political wedge than solve the issue.
1
Why can't we keep immigrant families together? They show up together, so why not have them stay in a detention facility together (so a mother can continue to breastfeed her baby or change that kid's diapers herself), go through a hearing together, and, if their asylum petition is denied, get deported together? We have moms getting deported while their kids stay here in foster homes and the moms don't know where their kids are! There is no reason for that. Laws can be followed in a humane way. We need only to get more money toward speeding up the whole petition process so that families are either given conditional acceptance or deported within 30 days.
8
Democrats would be more than happy to pass bipartisan legislation on immigration if that were on the table by the republicans. But NO, democrats don't want a stupid, wasteful, multi-billion dollar wall for which Mexico was supposedly going to pay. And tRump is tearing children away from their mothers as a bargaining chip to get his stupid wall. You and your ilk own this, Ralphie, but nice try, attempting to wipe your blood stained hands on others.
3
Seems pretty obvious to me, Heather. Not to mention easier all around.
But then, a lot of us have thought that it sould have, and still would, be easier to do things to clean up Latin America, a mess that is in no small part our fault.
Heck, I will bet that if somebody ran the numbers, they'd find out that a full-on Marshall Plan would be cheaper than what we're doing.
Instead, we've got people uttering inanities like "an admin law," and willfully distorting reality no matter how often the facts are shown them. Heck, no matter how often clowns like Stephen Miller TELL them, "Yup. We did this and here's why," on they merrily go.
There is no way to explain that level of madness without words like, "cult," and "fear," and "sloth" and "racism."
trumpie lies about every aspect of his administration. Ignore the Tweets, make him speak! Then challenge every lie in person without waiting.
3
These child detention centers are concentration camps, period. I would like some journalists to get in Sessions' and Huckabee Sanders' faces and say the words.
And I imagine they would respond, oh that's inflammatory and no comparison, because we're not beating or gassing the kids. Is that what it has come to? Not immediately killing them makes it all OK? Let's get someone on record as saying that. Come on, media! A little courage!
12
Let's march. We did it in January 2017, all over the world, by the millions. We can do it again. Let these inhuman leaders see the power and number of human beings of conscience. (Only please let's do it on a weekend, so more people can join!)
8
To everybody who agrees with the separation policy:
May your worst fears for your children come true.
7
I understand the anger behind this. However, we should not wish harm to the children of those advocating for and carrying out this inhumane policy. They are not responsible for their parents' errors.
1
These actions are simply child abuse; every single action! The law should be invoked to jail all of these child abusers, and the sooner the better.
4
I agree with all those crying out against this new level of horror. I also agree strongly with Henry Hurt (descendant of genocide survivors) that this is ushering in a whole new level of even more unfathomable atrocities. If you have dehumanized people to the point where you can rip babies from their mothers breasts, just what atrocity are you NOT capable of?
That said, the strategy advocated by most—all out for the midterms—is deeply flawed at best, a cop-out at worst. Why?
One, these horrors are happening now and cannot be tolerated for a few months! Two, what if the Blue Wave fails, either because of voter suppression, etc. or because the majority of voters actually are ok with Trump? Even if 90% of people supported these crimes, they would still be crimes Three, what if the Blue Wave succeeds, and the Dems continue their practice of bargaining & collaborating with Trump? The Dems would sell out the 9-year-olds & brag about all the 8-year-olds they had saved, and in our hearts we all know it!
WE are confronted with a moral crisis. When the Freedom Rides began the great majority supported Jim Crow. When kids started burning draft cards the great majority supported the Vietnam War. When Sophie Scholle & the White Rose began resisting Hitler, they had little chance, but gave their lives to try. These are the examples we should look to in opposing this regime.
12
Just to quickly clarify my earlier post--my point is not to argue for this or that particular tactic, but for the basic spirit of these earlier movements which took an uncompromising position that crimes against humanity could not be tolerated, no matter how many people disagreed or what the consequences were for them.
In fact, all the things I mentioned started very small and two accomplished great things over a period of years. We do have the advantage of tens of millions who already think this is outrageous, and they need to be moved to take to the streets, but the catalyst for that will be much smaller numbers at first who take a determined position and insists other people of conscience join in.
3
This is depraved. Lock Trump up--ideally, in an abandoned Walmart in south Texas--and free the children.
Someone should tell Trump there isn't a medal for behaving most like Hitler, even if that isn't true.
7
It’s no surprise that Jeff Sessions wants full enforcement of Trump’s executive order [not a law] to tear children away from their parents. He’s from Alabama which was one of the main states to drag black children from their parents, so they could be sold in slave auctions. By the time a black child reached ten years old, 30% had already been separated from their families.
There’s also no doubt in my mind he did not know the passage he quoted in support of this Federal kidnapping, was the same biblical verbiage used to justify slavery in the 1800s. St Paul who he referenced, never said to obey bad and oppressive leaders—Paul never obeyed Nero, because that was not what God wanted Paul to do. God said “suffer the little children to come unto me” and “unless you come to me as little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of God.”
4
Look at the photos and you see why the president regards the non-Fox media as public enemy #1. He knows that the way things look is more important than how they are, and thanks to fact-based news, things look pretty bad.
6
Democrats are totally at fault here.
Republicans are LIARS. This is a fact. But even if this was a Democrat law, these Republican losers and half-wit hypocrites have been the GOVERNMENT for almost TWO YEARS. They control all three branches of the government and Democrats let them get away with the claim that they are unable to pass legislation prevent this travesty. Democrats are letting Repubclicans lie to your face. Democrats are so ineffectual they are letting Republicans get away with it. Trump is right: Democrats are weak and piffling. America will not be saved by the Democratic party.
2
Your side is utterly unconvincing and will lose at the ballot box in November. Do you vote here in the States, or are you just mad that Trump was mean to the Canadian PM?
4
I don't have a side jgbrownhornet. I called Republicans liars and Democrats ineffectual, weak and piffling. But thanks for raising the issue of Trudeau. It's a good time to remind all the lyin' Republicans what it's like to have an adult in the room.
What more is there to say, this is our leader, this minute.
#TrumpForRICO
2
We must put a stop to this. We need direct, immediate action. Are we not Americans? So many of us are ready to resist but we need leadership and organization. I live in NY but I am ready to join the first march out west to put a stop to this atrocity. Freedom riders anyone?
7
This is a Christian administration with folks like Sessions, Pruitt, Perry, Carson picked by Pence, with God on his side, to lead our great nation. Trump doesn't care except when he can garner more votes or pander to his base. How hypocritical are they with these policies ? They don't know what hypocritical means. It's not in the Bible.
The Nazis have completely taken over, and they're doing so with Bible quotes interspersed with girlish giggles (Jeff Sessions) and mannish-browed scowls and disavowals (Huckabee Sanders). What fresh hell is this? (to quote Dorothy Parker). Thank you for articulating what we all are feeling, Mr. Blow, for your "inarticulation" is spot-on, as usual.
10
This practice started in 2014. Someone please show me the Blow column denouncing separating kids during the Obama administration. There weren't any? Wow, what a shock! Charles Blow is a hypocrite.
5
Brief and concise...and says it all. Thank you, Mr. Blow
1
To quote a previous NYTimes commenter;
"This is a stain on our country's reputation that history won't let the world forget."
Just imagine if your terrified, screaming young child was ripped from your arms. How could you tolerate the gut-wrenching anguish you would feel, 24/7, not knowing how your baby will survive without you.
7
Kneeling during the Anthem (to protest police shootings of unarmed victims) is the height of evil. But ripping toddlers from the arms of exhausted mothers is just keeping us safe. That's bonkers, you can't have it both ways. If you want to play the sensitivity card and be so easily outraged over slights to national symbols, you darn well better get your dander up when children's lives are ruined. If not, I'd say your contempt for humanity is showing.
8
Considering how much time Trump spends with his own young son - he'd much rather be golfing - it's hardly surprising he has zero empathy for parents torn from their children.
2
"Trump is lying, as he always does."
(Minor correction, Charles.)
1
Never in my life have I been so ashamed of my country and fellow voters.
8
"I have an idea," said Stephen Miller as a lightbulb appeared above his head ( joining with several colorful birds that constantly circle his head). "We should rip suckling infants from their mother's breasts, drive parents to suicide and inflict lasting trauma on children and their parents. That will bring the Democrats to the table and we can finally build that beautiful wall. The wall will enhance the natural beauty from the Pacific to the Gulf and stand as a monument to you, Mr. President. What do you think?"
"Do it," said the President. And it was done. RAW
4
Vote out these inhuman, greedy, heartless monsters--the GOP must GO!!!!!
6
Interesting, in a comment on a NYT article about this last week I used the term "Baby Snatchers" and compared it to how the anti-abortion people ofter refer to liberals as "Baby Killers."
The Times felt it was too uncivil, and it idin't get published.
Interesting.
2
Given the public outrage, next comes doing this and more, in secret.
3
Trump promised to Make America Great Again, and he’s showing us what he considers greatness to be.
Americans like being great, but most think our greatness stems from our goodness as a nation. Until we Make America Good Again, we can never achieve the greatness we once enjoyed.
7
Accountable at the ballot box, and possibly beyond that, in a court of law.
5
Trump and Sessions should recharged with manslaughter.
3
When even the articulate Charles Blow is outraged past all speech by Trump’s unforgivable treatment of immigrant children, I am deeply shaken. Of course we must take action at the ballot box, and before that, donate to the appropriate candidates we can still trust, make phone calls, sign petitions, and talk about this nightmare as passionately as we can, but how can we live with what is happening to the children and theIr families at our borders until November? Mr. Blow: What more can we do? What more can I do?
8
This is much ado and pearl clutching about nothing.
Liberals are embarrassing themselves.
2
This. I'll never understand this.
6
The destruction of families is nothing to worry about folks. David says so. We need to go back to screaming bloody murder about peaceful protests by athletes. That's the real crime, not state sponsored child abuse.
9
The neo-Nazi child abusers of Trump would be better held to account in the prisoners' box rather than the ballot box. Unfortunately, justice is dead now that the U.S. is a kleptocratic plutocracy which is the worst of all developed countries in supporting children. The Trump toxins are killing all ethics, so much so that Canadians are becoming enemies of the Trump crime syndicate.
8
It's sickening to hear Trump and his spinmeisters, where truth doesn't exist but is invented and manufactured on the spot.
Trump's early give away: I love the poorly educated.
It's white nationalism creating anti-immigration fervor sacrificing humanity by disappearing people's children.
6
The little girl in the red sweater abducted at the border instantly reminded me of Spielberg's little girl in a red coat.
A small group of psychopathic men - Steven Miller, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, and S. Bannon, (now departed but "spiritually" very present in the west wing,) - have neo-Nazi fantasies of Joe Arpaio-style concentration camps for their immigrant victims; the tent city has begun. Trump is too whacked-out to come up with any detailed scheme on his own, but he has been infamous over many decades for his sadistic proclamations, and unabashed preference for harsh punishment of people of color. He and his family are about to be exposed by Mueller, and he's willing to embrace any action that endears him to his depraved base. So now we're down to: the Wall, or the Children? And by the way: none of this is his fault.
9
Every time you think Trump has hit bottom with his insane ideas, he goes even lower, as we see here.
The big question is what will it take to wake up his blind base.
7
And who is next? My friend, Tom, a Korean-American? My friend, Sunni, an Ethiopian-American? My friends, Shannon and Lisa and Julietta, Mexican-Americans? My friends, Lowell and Venny, Filipino-Americans?
This. This is fascism. Upside-down. Backwards. Messy. Be careful, fellow Americans.
14
What a joke. The same things were done during the Obama Administration. Nothing but politically expedient lies and distortion from Blow and the Times.
3
My pain and that of so many with whom I've spoken with in the last several days is so high and yet comes nowhere close to what these families are experiencing. My anger and frustration at having to wait for an election to register my strong disapproval of these policies is also growing daily. How do we hold this man accountable? Why is there no way to stop this? Those questions keep circling round and round in our heads, and a lack of answers fuels the fire.
I also worry that this is partly what the human Dumpster Fire wants, a big fight with all of us who oppose him, so that we will come out into the streets and he can use force against us. And then my anger gets even worse and I'm mentally shrieking " I DON'T CARE! WE MUST MAKE THIS STOP!"
In the absence of other actions (I don't live near a border), what can help is flooding Sessions et al with phone calls, faxes. Leave a visible, large trace of our disagreement and growing frustration with their lack of humanity!
Here are the relevant phone numbers! CALL!
Jeff Sessions:202-353-1555
Kristjen Nielsen (head of DHS): 202-282-8495
Paul Ryan: tel: 202-225-3031; fax: 202-225-3393 -faxes are better & leave a paper trail
Mitch McConnell: tel: 202-224-2541; fax: 202-224-2499
Your own Members Of Congress (MOCs)-Senators and congress people. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121 and you will be connected directly.
This is not America. This is a nonexistent "solution" to a "problem" of this racist administration's creation.
6
Horsepucky, Mr. Blow. Obama was doing the same thing at the beginning of his administration. Then, true to form, he unilaterally stopped enforcing the laws Congress has passed.
We're not a country where laws are passed so then presidents can act like dictators and enforce what they like, disregarding the rest. The words "faithfully execute" mean something, and I don't think you know what it is.
3
Is there any doubt, now, that if this Fake President had the power and authority to do so, he and his fellow fascists would be employing deadly force at our southern border, directed at any and all people attempting to covertly enter the country, including children. An amoral monster sits in the Oval Office, elected by an immoral constituency, and abetted by a corrupted Congress. America's moral authority dissolves before us daily.
8
People, are you outraged? Instead of arguing with the usual NYT comment trolls, who just want to provoke you, call Congress, and make your views known. That’s what will matter. Call your Senators and your House member, and give them an earful. Don’t waste your effort tangling with mean-spirited antagonists you’ll never convince (most have no idea what they’re talking about, anyway, and are only satisfying their sadistic urges by poking fun at nice, compassionate people) and go straight to where it matters. Hold your elected representatives accountable. Get out of the argument mill and put your anger to good use!
8
If you need the number:
(202) 224-3121
#1 for Senator, then enter your zip
#2 for House, then enter your zip
Let it rip!
3
And you expect something difffernent by the sociopath in chief? A provocative statement calling him a sociopath? Remember this man was sent to military school because he was throwing rocks at a small child and had to carry a note to a meeting with the parents and children form Parkland High School to remember to show empathy. People even small children mean nothing to him unless they can be used to advance himself or his aims. I'm not sure his own children mean that much to him unless they are useful as props in the Trump Show. What's next? Concentration camps in remote areas that cant be easily monitored. Oh wait, that's already happening. No faux outrage please.
7
I know we are to be kind to. Mind twisted leaders but this policy of tearing children. away from their family reminds me of the gas ovens I dreamt of the end of the Second World War and seeing the pictures of Italy’s leadeer' naked, hanging from a lamp past.
How will we stop this immoral policy? The Barberians are not at our gates but inside.
2
I know what Stephen Miller is whispering to the president: if you give in on this, Kim Jong Un will think you are weak! And not qualified to be a dictator!
4
Holding children HOSTAGE is a NAZI technique. Please, NYT, tell it like it is. Trump is a Fascist roader on his way to destroying our Democracy. With a compliant legislature and a neutered judiciary, the next step is assured. Voters have a chance to derail this runaway train, but remember Hitler and Mussolini were both elected.
9
When I was about 5, my mum left me at home sleeping while she drove my dad to the train station, 10 mins away. She said she didn't have the heart to wake me as I was sleeping so soundly. Of course I was awakened by the car engine starting up and leaving the drive. I ran out and wailed in the driveway until they returned. To this day, I remember the pajamas I was wearing, the spot where I stood and cried, and my trauma about possible abandonment - all 20 minutes of it. Imagine the unspeakable anxiety these kids must be experiencing to be separated for weeks, possibly months, from those they love. It's reprehensible beyond measure.
11
Trump once cut off medical insurance for his infant nephew to extort his own relations over a contested will.
Now Trump's cruelty and immorality is visited upon thousands, as he orders children taken hostage in a bid to extort Congress to pay for that damn waste-of-money wall.
7
That Trump and Sessions would do this does not surprise me in the least. What is truly horrifying is that there appear to be more than enough of our fellow citizens who are cruel and heartless enough to carry it out.
4
I have never been more ashamed of my country. My fear is that we have not yet seen the “worst” that Trump can do. What is even more scary is that we are being held hostage by a GOP majority led Congress that is afraid to do the right thing because of Trump and his supporters or they are as callous and cold-hearted as their constituency. My only hope right now is that there are enough voters who will stop this downward spiral into the abyss.
7
I was employed at an institution for children in the late 1960s and early 70s. Though this was a fine, well-run institution I was proud to be associated with, I felt I could not make up for the trauma of children’s separation from their families.
I recall one notably introverted seven-year old boy was overheard by childcare workers singing Blood, Sweat and Tears' “Spinning Wheel” on the day he entered and the day he left:
“You got no money and you got no home
Spinnin' wheel all alone
Talkin' 'bout your troubles and you, you never learn
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel turn.”
The boy’s despair and resignation haunt me. To subject hundreds of children to trumped up, makeshift institutionalization is completely unconscionable.
5
While I was at the gym today I said to a woman isn't it awful about those poor parents and children. She said to me that "they are rapists and criminals and should not be allowed in the country. Trump is doing the right thing" My mouth dropped open and I didn't know what to say. When I finally gathered my thoughts I said to her "These are children". She said "I support the president". So there it is folks, the Trump base speaking out. Are we going to allow his base to control our country? Sorry I can't stand by and let this happen. I am voting in November and it won't be for Republicans.
17
Charles is correct and, since I live in "Zion", otherwise know as Salt Lake City, I am reminded of the LDS Church's recent policy/revelation requiring the children of gay couples to renounce their parents prior to being allowed to "progress" within the organization.
Both are despicable policies, un-Christlike if you will, and created by old pious white guys (and I'm not referring to deity or, in the case of Trump's distorted personal view, royalty).
4
Trump continues to appeal to his supporters with the big lie that the separation of children from their parents is not his fault or policy, but the decision of his political opponents. He is an absolute monster and unbelievably cruel. Where is the outrage from Democrat leadership? How can those in the Trump administration responsible for lying about the truth or, worse yet like Sessions, justifying the abhorrent policy as an effective deterrent, live with themselves? Trump has successfully put the country on a slippery slope to authoritarianism with his appeal to hatred, xenophobia and racism. Only voter participation can change this outrage.
4
I attended a seance the other night, during which the medium managed to summon Saddam Hussein from the Underworld. When Trump's family separation policy was described to him, he said, "Whoa! That's harsh! Wish I'd though of that!" He also said he's looking forward to meeting Mssrs. Trump, Sessions and Miller in person, as he surely will someday.
7
We have a big problem in SF with the homeless who are now insisting on keeping their pets with them at all times as a human right. These people need mental treatment and there is no hospital to take their pets or jail that can accommodate the pets when they break the law.
I’m not saying children are pets, but, you do endanger others when you make very bad choices!
3
Let's not be naive. This is not about the particulars and logistics of immigration law. Trump, playing to fear and hate, allows his base to duck under the lie that it is merely "illegal" immigration they object to. Sure it is.
This is ALL about racism: brown people seeking to enter the country.
Trump's legions of xenophobic whites are in such an uproar because they are terrified that they will be outbred, outcompeted, and eventually marginalized by people of color. This, to them, is imminent, and every person of color allowed in is an enemy.
A simple thought experiment: if today's immigrants were white and of European heritage, how would they be treated at the border?
In fact, the Trumpers often bring up the situation in Europe, where they believe that largely homogeneous white countries are being destroyed by immigrants of color. To Trump's base, there is virtually no treatment of the Mexican and Central American immigrants that is unacceptable. If they are prevented from entering, that's a victory.
4
The Republican Party of Trump survives on the elixir of hatred that is derived from the subjugation of others. They will never stop.
5
This is all about the wall. Trump assumes the democrats will be forced to vote for whatever bill is brought to the floor by leadership. The wall. Period.
4
Mike Pence just proves the old adage that there's nothing Christian about a Christian politician.
8
this separation nightmare is a policy AG Sessions has supported and actively sought for years. he claims it will help dissuade mainly brown people fleeing for their lives from turning to the USA for salvation.
Trump has fulminated, but has not actually fired Sessions, despite his fury at Session' recusal in the Russia investigation, and because Sessions hasn't gotten the message that protecting the President is his main job at Justice.
Sessions was an early and vigorous Trump supporter and served on the Trump campaign. he met with Russians in that capacity and then conveniently forgot about it or lied in sworn testimony ( your choice).
Sessions has the goods on Trump and the President's go ahead on Sessions' vile, racist immigration tack was a blackmail payoff from the Heartless One to the Grand Dragon.
if there weren't a staffing crisis at federal pens, I'd say lock them up. but sending them into exile in some cesspool country would be okay, too.
1
Our president is ought to be snatched & put in jail for all the continuous crimes he is committing .
A men without morals, scruples and any humane qualities.
He is sinking all of us in to his own swamp. and making America worse it has ever been.
3
Trump's behavior has been PURE EVIL.
5
So let's get Stephen Miller's mug on the cover of Time Magazine as the mastermind of this evil practice. That will upset Trump and Miller will be gone in nano seconds.
7
Anyone supporting this policy and practice has sacrificed their humanity. Of course, that's no surprise given that the same people endorsing this willingly and proudly refer to themselves as "deplorables." These are people for whom cruelty and bigotry are positive virtues.
They are fundamentally terrible people.
3
What next for Trump? Gas chambers his next move?
I never in my life felt so ashamed of our government.
Where is the Republican party? Are they really so drunk with power that they will do anything to stay in office?
7
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
― Emma Lazarus
5
Nostalgia?
It is difficult to say which aspect of this inhuman policy is the most disgusting. Is it the casual cruelty that is shown to other humans by ripping their children out of their arms? Is it using other people's lives as tools of oppression? Is it the off handed and easy way that Trump lies when caught being a monster? Trump can blame others all he wants but any rational American knows who is causing this. Each and every day that this animal remains in the White House further degrades the United States and turns me away from a country that I once respected and served. I am appalled and anyone who is not, is just as evil as Trump and his minions.
7
Trump is a mean,nasty man.So easy to punish innocent children for the sins of their parents who are simply seeking a chance for a better life in America. Like generations of refugees before them.The lessons of the St. Louis long forgotten. Shame on Trump. Shame on Sessions. The Statue of Liberty has become a forgotten symbol of American compassion.Trump has his Wall.
5
Children as leverage means snatching children and holding them in detention/hostage in order to blackmail/extort Democrats into supporting inhumane Republican policies? Seriously, Republicans?
4
Trump's separation policy is but the latest example of how he will do anything to appease and retain his supporters. Let's watch his approval rating polls NOT move as a reaction to this latest round of lies, idiocy and cruelty. That will be a good indicator of the fear, racism and hatred "real" Americans have.
8
"I am simply outraged beyond my ability to articulate it."
Babies and toddlers and children, stolen from their parents, put in American concentration camps....To the people saying, yeah, right on, make it worse, whatever it takes to stop them from coming--what's next, heads on pikes? Machine guns? Crucifixion? You think these desperate strangers are breaking a law? You've broken much more than that.
8
How low can you sink? Still a long way to go United States to atone for the wars, genocide, slavery, homo economicus, and last but not least the only country to drop a nuclear bomb (when it wasn’t necessary). And this doesn’t include the corporate thievery and false meritocracy.
Where is the good American soul? Can there be one after all this greed and hatefulness.
3
These are not "refugees." Refugees go to a U.S. embassy in their home country and all for asylum, or they arrive a port of entry and all for asylum. Refugees are EAGER to be adjudicated by authorities and establish their legal status, not going out of their way to evade authorities.
1
Americans voted for border security. This issue would be solved with a wall. The Democrats are obstructing the passage of a comprehensive immigration bill because it needs to include a wall. Full stop.
1
Let's give credit where credit is due. The immigration policy change which has led to all these detentions and family separations is cruel and cynical but is also well crafted to achieve several goals that serve Trump and his domestic and foreign allies.
1 The Trump base is energized by this kind of move and that's important in advance of the mid-term elections. Many in the Republican base now enjoy inciting liberal anguish and hand wringing as much as they used to enjoy professional wrestling and monster trucks.
2 This story displaces all the other news about Trump collaborating with foreign adversaries, dismantling EPA regulations, increasing the budget deficit, cutting taxes for his friends, alienating allies, his bromances with Putin and Kim, etc.
This team has mastered the techniques of using deception, distraction and chaos to conceal ones true actions and motives. This mastery belies the characterization of the Trump team as incoherent and chaotic. Rather, it seems to reflect a disciplined use of disinformation techniques that governments have used against opponents both domestic and foreign for years.
3
These acts hypocritically justified by Jeff Sessions as the word of God, follow the pattern of the Nazis during the Holocaust. No decent human being can support Trump and those that rip children from the arms of their parents- it is racial hatred personified. Human compassion demands that we redouble our efforts for the removal from office of Trump and his Republican enablers. This is not what America is about.
8
Define, please, whose "God" is in charge here.
Holding children hostage is a tactic used by the Nazis and should be a war crime. Why not call it like it is.? Trump is turning us into a pariah nation. Stand for the flag? I think not.
4
In the beginning,
there was faith, which is childish;
trust, which is vain; and illusion,
which is dangerous.
Elie Wiesel "Night"
#NeverAgain2018
#StopFascism2018
#VoteBlue2018
November 6, 2018
7
Pure evil.
3
A callous policy but a policy which makes the whole world wonder how a country like the USA enabled a racist totalitarian to take over the country and is doing little to contain him. As Germans were complicit to Hitler so are Americans complicit to their commander in chief. American the beacon of the free is no more. Perhaps self criticism and direct non violent action to change things will enable the emergency of a new America. Nothing exceptional is expected. An America lining up with Western values espoused by many other countries will be enough. Otherwise it will remain the America that cherishes money and corruption as supreme values dictated by a president who seems to be a model role for many. No place for compassion towards children in this America. Sanctimonious declarations by First Ladies or ex First Ladies are not enough. You do not ask an authoritarian racist dictator to respect basic human rights. You only try to ensure that he and his accomplices get out of office. Will the American people show compassion for the the snatched children in the Mid-Term elections or will it reaffirm its commitment and loyalty to a fraudster they admire because of his money?
4
You paint with far too broad a brush. I vehemently opposed Republicans before Trump. My dislike for U.S. conservatives has cost me my chosen profession, my immediate family, and virtually every friendship I had. It isn't easy to be on the right side here and reading your comment that assumes all Americans are somehow responsible for Trump is infuriating.
2
What kind of a lowlife will use children as pawns in his nefarious plans. Worst yet what kind of people who support thst buffoon.
12
I can see one horrendous precedent to this absolutely shocking actions : what the nazis did to the Jewish families arriving at the concentration camps. All civil servants and administration agents blindly implementing such dreadful instructions should be held morally responsible and accountable for what they take part into. This is pure madness ! If there is one moment in life when they should disobey, this moment has arrived. How will they ever be able to look at their own children if they don't ???
9
SHAMEFUL!!!!! This president, his policies, the cowardly politicians who REFUSE to stand up to him and admit that “the emperor has no clothes,” and his misguided base!
7
Please take action on this atrocity. Contact DOJ/Sessions and tell them to stop!
https://www.justice.gov/contact-us
Contact DOJ and Sessions:
The Department may be contacted by phone at the following:
Department Comment Line: 202-353-1555
Department of Justice Main Switchboard: 202-514-2000
7
How were the parents of the children involved responsible enough to continue to have custody of their children while engaging in a risky and illegal activity? Not only was there no assurance that the family, or the individual unaccompanied minors would be allowed into the US , there is an actual law against it. Why should US law be forced to accommodate irresponsible people who think that they have the right to enter the US on their own terms? Any means short of violence is acceptable to correct the situation.
3
What a travesty !
What would happen to these children snatched away from their mother`s arms ?
trump is a vile person always spoke ill of others while all his children have become just like him liars and cons.
These little children could be in the hands of sexual predators and Jeff Sessions or Donald J. trump will not be around to see the heartbreaking outcome they created.
5
Not to say separating families is the best route and has no negative affect on child development, etc. but these types of actions are not new.
A study covering 2009-2013 stated:
"A smaller group of children—perhaps several hundred thousand—have been separated from
parents as a result of detention and deportation."
And...
"According to one estimate, about 5,000 children in foster care in 2011 had a detained or deported immigrant parent, but in most of these cases the child went into foster care before the parent was detained. Once in foster care, the child’s reunification with the immigrant parent may be interrupted because parents in prolonged immigration detention often cannot attend child custody hearings, and those who are deported cannot easily return to the United States to attend these hearings. Parents’ rights may be terminated when they cannot comply with court requirements such as regularly visiting with their children, taking parenting classes, or gaining employment."
The study is "Implications of Immigration Enforcement Activities for the Well Being of Children in Immigrant Families" by the Urban Institute and the Migration Policy Institute. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-exhibits/...
2
The forceful separation of a child from their parents is cruel beyond measure. And stupid, as personified by Trump and Sessions. That they are blaming others, finding scapegoats, distracting us, from their 'criminality' is to be expected. They are snakes poisoning the political debate, and trying to justify the unjustifiable by appealing to the bible. Revolting! Trump and his minions, a real mafia now, are an awful example of a decaying democracy when those in charge abuse their station.
6
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions even had the gall to invoke one of the same Bible verses used to justify slavery to justify the current policy."
And this surprises you because . . . ?
5
For this administration and many Republicans the ends always justify the means. They will inflict terror on immigrants until they stop coming as the end goal for these people is to stop the browning of America. They want a racially pure state, sound familiar?
5
Issue du jour in the ongoing anti- Trump campaign. This will be in the forefront until the opposition can unite on another subject.
It gets old, and fairly predictable. Do you think we're stupid?
2
Don't let the sun go down today without calling your two Senators and your House Representative and letting them know that your are outraged by this policy and want it stopped. Tell them you will keep calling until they get off their cowardly behinds, raise their voices, and demand a vote on a bill that will make this practice illegal from now on. If we stay silent, Trump and his haters win and this separation continues. Don't let the sun go down on your outrage today without doing something about it. Don't stay silent and complicit.
8
There is a saying where I’m from!
If you can’t do the time; then, don’t do the crime. Since I speak so-so Spanish I’ll attempt to translate for you...si no puede dedicarse tiempo en carcel, pues no lo haga.
5
It would seem such child abuse ordered by the President of the US verified and note by international agencies is good grounds for impeachment! DJM
4
People who watch Fox News today are like the Germans who listened to the BBC in 1943. The New York Times is simply state media.
4
I can not understand your statement. Please elucidate.
I'm vehemently against sending children to concentration camps.
That this is evil would seem to be rather obvious. I find all trump supporters to be deplorable. Clinton was spot on.
5
And as always, Melania and Ivanka are complicit; Melania by repeatting the Trump lie, and Ivanka a silent bystander. What a disgrace these mothers are. Be Best? What a sick joke!
Moderating influnece? Nonexistent.
6
Why are you giving the Trump men a pass? They’re fathers.
1
Not laughing or being sarcastic, but it may be good the NRA has stood so steadfastly in favor of automatic weapons.
If, in November, we don't peacefully begin to rid ourselves of the fascists now running this nation.........
........we may need them.
1
What does America expect from a "father" who expressed lust for his own daughter. Do you think he has any compassion for the parents whose hearts are being ripped out. To Trump they are no more than vermin. Anything he does to crush them is not enough. Taking away their children so they can be "better Christians" sure Sessions will say amen to that.
6
Trumps America is Hitler's Germany. Separating children from their parents - putting parents in detention - then using another big lie to blame others. No way to ignore the comparison any longer. Being 1/4th German, my grandmother coming over at the end of Bismark's rule - I never could wrap my mind around how a country could go so wrong. Now I understand and we need to rally and not let this go any further lest the evangelicals and conservatives succeed in their perversion of the American 'dream'.
6
This morning Chuck Todd had KellyAnne you-know-who on his show. He asked her wasn't it correct that Trump is using the children to pressure the Dems? Sure didn't sound like she denied it despite her usual nonsense and obfuscation. Stephen Miller no doubt is enjoying how this strategy is shaking up the country. Trumpism at its best. And don't you know, his core supporters are absoutely deee-lighted.
3
The Boston Globe is reporting:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/06/17/joe-kennedy-protests-t...
[US Representative Joe] Kennedy and [US Representative Beto] O’Rourke spoke to officials who were staffing the tent city facility in Tornillo, but were denied entry to inspect it. The officials told Kennedy they took very good care of the children.
another story satates:
The Associated Press report found traumatizing conditions, with children huddled together inside chain-link cages with no toys or books, and staff who yelled at a group of 5-year-old children for playing together in one of the cages.
... The 16-year-old girl assumed care of the girl, having to teach the other children in their cage how to change the girl’s diaper to take care of her, Brane said.
---
Donald Trump says he is "upset" about these events, but it is his administration, specifically John Kelly, Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions (Miller's former boss when Sessins was a Senator) that decided to take kids hostage as a "negotiating tactic."
Maybe we need the Swiss rep from the Red Cross to go inspect, just the way they did with American GIs held as prisoners of war by the Germans in WW II.
Trump, Kelly, Miller and Sessions are pathetic little Nazis.
16
We all know this is inhumane. I don't care about the argument.."well, if they didn't come here, then it wouldn't happen", or ..." since when should we feel sorry for these kids- their parents did it to them". What I want to know is this: so when the parents are forcibly repatriated to their country, and the children remain behind, what happens to them??? are they sold off to body-snatchers? Given away to "loving Christian families"? Left to rot at an old Walmart? Put on a plane alone to somewhere? I am sick at heart how similar this all is to Nazi treatment of Jewish and other "undesirables" (like gays, gypsies, etc). We will pay for this in the end somehow, by our lost standing in the world's view, the new gang members to be recruited from these disaffected kids, or something we can't yet see but will visit us, and we will wonder, now why did they do that to us?
At least if we must be cruel to the parents, let's keep their kids with them. Tearing suckling babes from mothers' arms is sickening.
8
Those men and women carrying out this evil policy, from Trump to government contractors, must remember that the world hunted down and convicted Nazis at all levels for more than 60 years after the end of WWII.
10
If your home is on fire, you grab your children and, no matter what, you will make the desperate attempt to get out of your home safely and fully intact as a family.
Well, areas in the south and central American countries are, in many ways, fully engulfed in the conflagration of drug violence, violence against women and girls as a matter of course, to say nothing of poverty and starvation. They are on fire! People are fleeing for their lives, and then Trump steps in and takes their children from their arms! My stomach twists in agony as I imagine this. But what I imagine it is nothing compared to the agony of these families when their children are taken from them. It's agony! The etymology of the word "agony" here:
late 14c., "mental suffering" (especially that of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane), from Old French agonie, agoine "anguish, terror, death agony" (14c.), and directly from Late Latin agonia, from Greek agonia "a struggle for victory."
I believe we must protect these children as their families seek safety and freedom. Our collective voices can do this. With all the crazy and disgusting things Trump et al. has done...this is something right out of the Dark Ages. Right out of Volume I of Hitler's playbook. I don't mean to sound so hyperbolic but I'm incredibly upset about this. After all, this is the United States of America! What the heck are we allowing these politicians to do in our name, as citizens in "The Land of the Free"?
5
What cancer has invaded and eviscerated the Republican Party? Well, the short answer is Trump but the long and complicated answer is difficult to pinpoint. Much of the support Trump garners comes from ignorant, suffering, uneducated people who don't possess the mental ability to see or understand who and what they are supporting. They are the result of long years of corporate capitalism ripping the guts out of this country for profits. For greed.
They are desperate and are following in the same steps that the German people took in supporting Hitler. How will it end? Will the country survive? What will it look like when this nightmare is over...if it ever is? Your answer?
5
These grieving parents or children could hang themseles from the Statue of Liberty and Trump would blame Frederic Bartholdi for designing it and Gustave Eiffel for building it.
11
It is no longer over-the-top hyperbole to compare Trump's administration to Adolf Hitler's Germany. This "policy" is foreign to the America I thought I knew. This imposter, this Russian stooge we have as our president, needs to go. His reprehensible henchmen, Stephen Miller and John Kelly, have their fingerprints all over this "policy". They drew it up, and our Russian president enacted it. The shame, and the outrage, are almost too much this time. It has to be brought under control, and November has to bring a change. If not, we're finished as the America I once knew.
4
The misnamed statue of liberty is missing a noose tightened around its neck.
5
It amazed me that Melania came out of hiding and breathed a few words. She needs a better writer.
7
Finally Trump's lying through his teeth is not going to fly. At the impromptu questioning in front of the White House reporters were quick to challenge him about his policy. He shiftily shushed them seeking to repeat that Democrats were at fault. The press wasn't buying it.
The general public isn't buying it either.
Trump the proto-authoritarian and professional liar is so thick that he may not realize what is happening.
For the love of God, may this turn out to be the issue that finally makes the public's hair rise up on its back and to bear its teeth and rise up in anger.
May he finally be seen as the cheap, scroungy, cheapskate cheater, who lies in the face of those whom he supposedly is serving.
Hell hath no fury like someone seeing a lying president trying to justify and shift blame for a needlessly cruel and pointless policy. Worse yet, children are being used as leverage to extort support for the Republican retrograde immigration bill.
May the public express their anger and may it make the grifter in the White House suddenly see his party's chances in the fall becoming a monumental disaster in the making.
People who make comparisons to Hitler though should think again. It is possible to sound the alarm about budding fascism and authoritarianism without invoking the worst mass murderer in history. It is trivializing what happened to so many people.
3
So this is the best practice the "best and brightest" could come up with? This is an abomination. This is the stuff the US would normally condemn...maybe even threaten an intervention.
But under Trump and his racist minions, we get to devolve into child snatchers. If these were the right color children, Trump and his Klan would be welcoming them.
If this is what the best and brightest can come up with; hard core brutality...I want the old worst and dullest policies back...at least then I can feel better being an American. As it stands now...Im ashamed.
And more angry at the Trumplodites.
3
Why aren't ANY of these migrants seeking refuge in Mexico? Under Mexico's Migration Law of 2011, it would:
The new law guarantees that foreigners and Mexican nationals will receive equal treatment under Mexican law and decriminalizes undocumented immigration, reducing it to an administrative infraction, punishable with a fine of up to 100 days' worth of min. wage. Under this equality principle all immigrants, regardless of status, nationality, or ethnicity, are granted the right to education and healthcare and are entitled to due process. Elements aimed at promoting family unity were also added. Moreover, before the gov't takes action (e.g. deportation) with respect to migrant children and other vulnerable individuals (women, seniors, the disabled and victims of crime), their specific needs must be prioritized and adequate services must be provided. Migrants are also granted judicial rights that they were previously denied, such as the right to due process. In addition, the law also calls for establishing a Center for Trust Eval. and Control which will be charged with the task of training and certifying immigration personnel in hopes of curtailing corrupt practices. All Inst. of Migration officials are to meet the same standards as the rest of the country's security agencies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/opinion/trump-and-the-baby-snatchers....
3
Here's the correct (Wiki) citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_Mexico
2
What is remarkable, is that the people who get the orders to carry out the policy, actually do so. Despite of being parents themselves, I'm sure, most of them. This is how 6 million Jews ended up dead, as did millions of others for being gay, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, etc. The damage of nazism was done by ordinary people carrying out orders they knew were immoral. It pays to quote Niemöller, a Founder of the Confessing Church in Hitler's Germany: "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
Because this indeed how dehumanization begins. People are turned into objects, then discarded...
Hitler (and Stalin) would have looked ridiculous, standing on a soapbox, ranting. It is they who chose to do out their bidding that killed (but first they arrested and separated).
13
Mr, Blow, I could not agree with you more. I just wrote to my congressman (Adriano Espaillat) about this issue, before reading your piece. I used similar terms, and found myself near the limits of articulation in expressing the outrage all this causes me and so many of us.
Just to underscore one of your points: the gall of the administration to blame its nasty policies on the Democrats as a law they'd written rather than on the administration's own brutal political calculus. The question that haunts me, beyond the terrible damage being done to the families separated is of our national integrity. How will we have anything even resembling a republic if the administration in power feels it can tell lies that are so easily proven false with such an apparently breezy sense of impunity?
5
That Jeff Sessions was low in his use of the Bible Verse, is something that as a Christ Follower I have to protest. He is invoking something that He as an individual can invoke, but as a government officer Can NOT USE.... He is not a member of a theocratic state. He is a person hired by the citizens of the USA we are NOT a theocracy that is controlled by the Bible.
It therefore is not Gall, BUT outright treason for him to invoke the words of Paul in any Official manner. And as a Lawyer he should have known that, He must not use that as an excuse.
Then there is the other matters of #EvilDJTrump using his POTUS status to fuel the agenda of steven miller that is to make the USA as close to a Nazi Dictatorship as he can with Trump as the Dictator, because trump already wants all that power in his own hands like his new friend Mr Un of N K.
We as Free citizens still must fight these people till they aren't in office any more. They are the bane of our other freedoms as well as vile in their actions toward other peoples.
4
When a regime harms the least of us, the most defenseless of us, it’s time to realize they will do anything. This is not an anomaly. They said it all along, and we are here. This is a disgusting mess made more repugnant by the GOPs complicity.
Get on the phones, get candidates elected that will fix this mess. Turn the energy of your outrage and despair to positive, forward motion actions to rid this country of this evil.
2
Just wondering when that pack of lying criminals will be kicked out of the WH?
4
If it's a matter of enforcing immigration law, fine. But improve the laws. Until that happens, you come up with compassionate, creative ways and devote resources to dealing with these people who beg us at our borders. But Neanderthals have no creativity. They fight the bear or the lion just as they did yesterday, based on what they know and have seen, nothing more. They never learn. Since World War II, politicians, who knew about it, never hesitated in pointing out the horrors of the Holocaust or godless Communism, which included the barbarism of tearing children from the arms of their mothers. These people today, we know their names, have not only forgotten history, they eagerly embrace the barbarism. Fully believing they are not only doing the right thing, but doing what they have rationalized to themselves as being the will of the people, or at least the people who provide them with perverted approval. Want to talk about immigration? Read up a bit on how Trump's grandfather, imagine, gamed America's open borders to evade mandatory military service in his homeland. He traversed this country the scammer, scheme after scheme. If someone had tried to steal his babies, I'm not sure Trump would have cared. Those children being unfortunate results of the absolutely required distribution of the manhood Trump believes was given to him personally by God himself. You can't get through to people like that. Ever.
2
Trump is responsible for this barbaric policy, authored by Stephen Miller, his frighteningly soulless immigration enforcer. Miller seems capable of pushing people onto the boxcars or into the internment camps, were this the 1940's. Have we learned nothing? At what point will people turn in revulsion from this basic affront to human decency? At long last, have you no shame?
3
I was ripped from my mother's arms. You never ever ever trust humans again. I'm 74. You lead a wary life.
Both innocence and hope are crippled. You don't talk about it. It's your secret secret. You become the master of the 'brave face' eventually. However, here is no hour of your life not affected. It is an indelible cruelty.
6
Wendy, I am so sorry for your experience. Thanks for talking about it here. It may help some people understand the true cost of this unnecessary and cruel policy
Canadian authorities do not break up the families crossing into Canada illegally. I have never been happier than today, that my tax dollars support this.
2
what is going to happen to these children? does anyone believe that there is enough forethought/competence on the part of the administration to be accountable for all them. The child predator hawks are circling. I am truly afraid for these innocent kids
4
Today, I am deeply ashamed of being an American. What is happening is horrific!
Where are this country's leaders? Have we no one with a moral voice loud enough to be heard?
Ia m tired of the talking heads! Something must be done.
Is there no one of character to go face to face with this poor excuse for a president and demand that he do the right/just/compassionate/humane thing?
4
I really wish writers like Chuck Blow, would attempt to craft articles with more substance and less hyperbole - which appears to be the stock-in-trade of most of the media talking heads telling us what we're supposed to think. The more hyperbole, the more they turn off the very people they are trying to sway and influence.
4
It's quite bad enough that it's so difficult to figure out what to say to people who spray accusations around the room, constantly change their story, casually lie in the most obvious ways, and contradict themselves every five seconds.
I mean, who ARE these cheerleaders for "open borders?" Which is it--the wise policy of separating families that Miller and Sessions say it is, or something evil Democrats did?
And what's with the latest pack of lies about the Ninth Circuit Court, which the intoners didn't trouble themselves to check?
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/14/us/politics/ap-us-immigratio...
But worse is the willfull refusal to notice how these countries got so fouled up. Worried about Puerto Rico? How'd they end up American? Ticked off about, say, Hinduras? Well, the loot from selling arms to crazy Iran went straight to death squads, which killed the doctors, nurses, lawyers, priests, politicians, teachers, who were making the country better.
And I am not even gonna mention United Fruit.
But the very worst is the vicious refusal to learn what Mark Twain taught more than a century ago: we have NEVER regretted acting with generosity and hope.
Know what we have always regretted?
This stuff.
2
Makes me wonder about the psyche of the border people who can stomach doing this.
Just doing their jobs? Sad to have a job that forces inhumanity and immorality.
Sounds like the kind of jobs our dads and grandads went over to Europe to combat.
In addition, Melania needs to just go back to bed. Her weak, public statements are embarrassing. She’s married to a narcissistic tyrant who has ruined this country here and in the eyes of the world.
2
For what, 25-30 years these kids have disappeared into America with little to nothing known of their fate? Some were never even the children of the adult who was with them. Some were trafficked to pimps, others dumped in a foreign country to fend for themselves. And now the liberals complain that we are actually actively caring for them. What a convenient morality based on an amnesia of the consequences of past practices.
2
Evil is what evil does. These people have blood on their hands. History will not judge them kindly.
2
Trump never admits that he is wrong, always searching for someone else or a host of someone elses to not only blame but vilify.
In his warped mind, the disastrous policy of separating families from their children must be the fault of someone else. He can't blame Obama, who didn't do it. Nor can he blame the Clintons for it. He is trying desperately to blame the all-incompasing "Democrats", which only flies with his brainwashed and/or ill informed base of Trumpers.
How on God's good earth can a person get on national television to say how horrible a policy is that he himself created and has the ability to chance in a heartbeat? It's beyond comprehension.
8
Trump & Co. is totally beyond Comprehension !!
2
If your representative doesn't cry out against this policy, don't vote him back in. He clearly has no family values.
5
How long do you think it will be before Trump comes up with a final solution on immigrants? And do you really think it will stop there?
I see no end to the ruinous behavior of this administration and its sycophants. They will stop at nothing to destroy the US and the planet itself to feed their immense greed.
God help us.
5
Look - the law is the law, and these immigrants are breaking the law.
Now, since the new regime is so insistent on prosecuting lawbreakers, how about prosecuting trump for all the laws he has broken?
"First, do no harm" is an oath far above Trump's pay grade.
3
Sure, he committed "suicide".
Interesting how often this happens to prisoners who cause trouble...
1
Charles, why is it people like you always want to castigate law enforcement in order to push an agenda? Responsibility for the separations clearly falls on the shoulders of the adults who illegally brought the children here. Citizens of this country who break the law are separated from their children everyday, so where was your voice for them?
3
Thanks goodness that this never happened during the Obama administration. Oh, wait: it regularly did. Of course, Obama will now claim that he only knew about it when he read about it in the NY Times last week.
3
These are crimes against humanity - the antithesis of our country 's stated objectives through the years. Any other country would be denigrated for "snatching children" from their parents' arms and putting them in cages as if young children and babies are criminals. Shame on the GOP, all of whom are as complicit as Trump and his administration for this cruel and unnecessary behavior. The administration is not enforcing the law either civil or biblical, but rather acting out their own cruelty to use as political leverage.
3
America, welcome to your new normal.
2
Maybe you should direct your angst at these parents who knowingly cross our borders illegally. They are suffering the consequences of their own actions. We have laws and they are to be abided.
Democrats are making a political issue they hope will land them more votes in November. That's outrageous as well as disingenuous. The majority of Americans do not want open borders. They also want our laws enforced.
3
Charles Blow says he is incapacitated beyond his ablity to describe (my words) the horrors and despicable tactics used by the current regime to torture even infants in order to force people to lose the will to live.
But he describes most eloquently, at least serviceably, the daily exhaustion we feel in El Norte to become not the land of opportunity but the land of exclusion. Where do these money barons think they will replenish their hoards, where will their spawn suckle, when they have made their products poison to the rest of humanity?
4
Why isn’t the Trump administration going after the gun runners on the American side of the border who supply arms to the Mexican drug dealers with the same fervor? Sessions should be shutting down gun shows not taking children away from parents.
5
Next rally:
"I could grab babies from their mothers arms in broad daylight and I wouldn't lose voters" (and not loose any sleep)
Next act:
2
There is no law that requires the separation of children from their parents. It is simply a policy instituted by the Trump administration in their zeal to discourage illegal immigration. Never mind the human suffering involved even by children. Taking heat, Trump takes the coward's way out and blames Obama. That's a stupid argument, Even if Obama had instituted the policy, Trump could end it in a heartbeat but doesn't because he approves of it. Make no mistake. Trump is solely responsible for this cruel practice and should be held accountable at the polls.
2
President Trump wants his useless, vainglorious border wall, and he will continue to abduct children as a bullying tactic until he gets it. He wants something really big with his name on it, something akin to the Great Wall of China that can be seen from outer space. Why don’t we just let him erect a pyramid in honor of himself? It might mitigate his need to be so cruel. Still not big enough?
1
Treating refugeesin this fashion is a crime against humanity. I go on record as opposing it. Those who are silent make themselves guilty by proxy.
4
Seems like Trump has some sort of fetish about locking people up, rather guilty or not. Doesn't matter - just lock them up - political foes, innocent children, asylum seekers - doesn't matter, just lock them up. Next it'll be non-evangelicals, gays,...do we see a pattern here????
1
Sad to hear and see these kids taken away. Native American Indians were treated 100 times worst and still they are losing there lands, suicide is higher then in group of people, so were are there outcry support?? History will repeat it self this time it's a different group of people.. :(
6
There is an assumption that the men involved in this true travesty are in fact civilized. They are not.
They are not savages in the sense they eat the children they capture or force the young women taken into unwanted sexual relationships, but they do practice a form of barbarism.
Separation of families hearkens to our and any other conqueror's historical involvement with slavery. Call it anything one wants it is nothing less than savage to isoate children from their mothers.
The images of parents and children, women and men, aged and young, being separated as they left the cattle cars which brought them to Auschwitz are inescapable.
This is a page that can never be erased.
A shameful tear stained page, citing the blocks upon which slaves were sold.
A page which will never be torn from our history.
2
This practice of crossing the border illegally must end. Problem solved.
1
This shows just how low this fiendish fraud of a President will go.
Holding children hostage to acheive his petty goals and lying like one of his cheap, yet overpriced suits, over and over again about how it is the fault of the Democrats.
America invited this demon in and it needs to throw him out.
He probably wants to send back the Statue of Liberty, as we no longer are a beacon of hope, and replace it with a statue of himself.
4
When the kids are separated from their parents, both are incarcerated. We could incarcerate them separately or together, so why separate? Trump is using this for leverage only, to get his wall to appease his base. He is a sick pup.
3
Gee I am going to take m children and break some laws in another country....and be indignant if they prosecute...
2
Trump's argument that he can't change it & it's the fault of the Democrats is instantly negated by himself when he says that he'll halt the separating of families if he gets funding for his asinine wall. If he can't change it, how can he change it?
4
The question is, why is this falling on Trumps's desk. The Democrats had eight years with Obama to write laws concerning this problem as well a the Dreamers. In fact Trump met with Pelosi and Schumer about the dreamers in 2017 and told them that if they had a bill to deal with that, he would sign it. I haven't seen anything that they even proposed a bill. As one of the comments says, this separation is a result of a ruling in 2016 of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Trump wasn't president then. There was plenty of time to pass legislation to deal with this. Nothing happend. So why is there is all this concern? The answer will be explained by looking at November of this year. It is being dealt with now for either maintaining power or return to power. There was plenty of time in 2016 and the years before to have established legislation but nothing was done. There is not a lot that those looking to regain power can run on. Not the economy, not unemployment, not increased employment in ever group including the handicap who were losing jobs. They can't run on reaching out to attain peace without nukes in Korea. So they jump at this as an issue to use. If these steps had been taken at any time in the years before Trump, we could be proud of the effort. But there was none until politicians looked to November 2018. If people who want to blame someone, they should look to both parties who had years to do something but did nothing .
2
Besides the fact that your version of history is inaccurate, besides the fact that there is nothing in the law to dictate what is being done (these actions are the sole providence of the Trump administration), besides the fact that there is plenty for opponents of Republicans to run on, besides the fact that the photo op with North Korea last week meant nothing...
...exhibiting basic decency obviously doesn't count for anything with the likes of you.
6
The only thing I have read in the NYT and other news analysis is the Democrats seek a return to power. The haven't address one thing they want to do for us. This is not new. When Hillary ran, she shouted, "Now it's my turn!" When Trump stood before his supporters, he shouted, "Now it's your turn!" Did you notice who won and took both houses of congress with him?
1
No, actually he shouted a lot of meanness. I’m the mother of a disabled child, and I will never forget or forgive the cruel way he mocked a disabled reporter. Shame on him and shame on every single person who overlooked that.
This ends when Trump “ends”.
#MANA Make America Noble Again
#MAAA Make America America Again
3
Why can't I recall your hyper-partisan moral outrage with tears aplenty when Obama separated kids at the border and put them in cages? Perhaps because there wasn't any. It is impossible to conclude that your self-righteous screed is not largely informed by your hatred of the man in the oval office, as opposed to an overwhelming desire to suddenly protect and sympathize with immigrants who have illegally crossed our borders.
I am not suggesting the present policy is sound. Rather, it is a complicated problem that is not susceptible to an easy answer. Are you suggesting that our policy should be that any adults illegally crossing our border with kids be permitted to freely enter (while adults without kids get detained)? Or are you just saying that families should be deatined together? Should we erect tent cities? Or should we just open our borders to any and all who wish to live here? If the latter is what you believe, just say so.
But I guess it's easier to isolate a tragic case here and there and score virtue points by dishonestly manipulating an appeal to our sense of compassion while leaving the complicated "law and order" stuff to the fascists.
2
Did Obama refer to immigrants as "animals" on a regular basis? Did Obama work to dehumanize them? Did Obama pal around with white nationalists that clearly have a racist bent on immigration policy?
Besides the facts not matching your claims, you can stop the pose as a harsh truth teller when you ignore the points that I've listed, and you cast a blind eye to the indecency that is being done here- and that was NOT done under Obama.
4
Thanks PG for taking the time to respond.
Let me first knit pick a bit: Trump referred to MS-13 as animals, not immigrants in general. And no, Obama did not pal around with white nationalists -- just Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakahn, both unabashed anti-Semites.
That said, even assuming Obama is of higher moral character than Trump, the morality of the man doesn't alter the morality of the policy. If it is wrong now (and it very well may be), then it was wrong under Obama as well. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy of the liberal outrage.
1
Again, I have to call you on your falsehoods- though I appreciate the civil tone.
You don't get to quantify that Trump was ONLY referring to a gang (MS-13) as "animals." For one thing, Trump did not go out of his way for that clarification. If Trump was serious and not xenophobic over non-white immigrants (or even just pretending to be for his base), then he would have 10 examples of promoting and celebrating immigrants for every "animal" reference. He doesn't. He kicked off his campaign with an attack on Mexican immigrants- and parsing it to be "just the illegal ones" won't work. Not when you spend time with white nationalists.
BTW, Trump had those white nationalists Stephen Miller and Steven Bannon on his campaign AND in his White House. Did Obama have the same contact with either Wright (NOT a unabashed anti-Semite) or Farrakahn? Absolutely not. False equivalency on your part.
There's nothing to "assume"- Obama has a higher moral character than Trump. If you have a week I can show you how.
Obama's policy did NOT have family separation as it is occurring right now, under Trump's orders. Hence, there is nothing to be hypocritical about- is there?
Uber Christian Sessions invokes Romans 13 to justify trump's criminal, immoral, and unChristian acts. One can only imagine what he might have used to justify Hitler and the Japanese internment act. Maybe the Great Commission would have sufficed. At times it's difficult to admit that I am a practicing Christian.
3
For the accidental president who takes so much pleasure in bestowing informal titles on his political opponents, we now have a fitting sobriquet, “Trump—The Baby Snatcher”
3
trump is a heartless, narcissistic, callous person, he always has been. trump lies, he always has. He lives in a world that says yes to everything he wants, he always has. He’s now dragging our country into a place that anyone who believes in, pick a religion or no religion, can’t support. How can any, any, Congressperson support this. Problems have strategies to come up with solutions, to behave atrociously as a strategy is evil. These kids and their parents lives will forever bear the scars of this experience and we’re to blame. We’re to blame because we allow it. We marched for racial injustice, we marched for women’s rights, we marched against kids being shot in school. Where’s the outrage now? Who are we? Time for us to decide.
4
This is what happens when you elect a racist sociopath. He has no heart or soul. He doesn't see suffering. He has no empathy. He loves no one. He doesn't see beauty. He doesn't hear music. He has never felt the tender breath of a baby on his chest. The world is his mirror. He looks outward and sees only himself.
Everyone who voted for him is complicit in child abuse.
7
All things being equal, this where the party of family values will rehabilitate somewhat or defile itself irredeemably. The practise of separating young children from parents is inescapably Nazi-esque, and I say this as an academic historian loathe to make blithe analogies. The ultimate expression of tyranny is to annihilate the family: to bring the immense power of the state down on essentially defenceless individuals is to destroy the fabric of a nation. It will be forever changed, mutated, and mutilated by its history. Germany has not, and will never recover from the Shoah, and that is how it should be. America needs to lose its self anointed perception of righteousness and ineffable goodness because it is debasing itself in front of a world where survivors of ethnic atrocities watch from global vantage points.
For Melania Trump to essentially support her decrepit husband, as a wife, mother, and family woman, is tragic hypocrisy. She, as an immigrant herself, cannot ignore the moral conflict in which she finds herself, yet she treads a fine line. She has been betrayed and humiliated by her husband and still finds the will to maintain his manufactured fallacy of democratic culpability in this repugnant policy. This says much of her. It says much of the Republican Party who will not condemn Trump. My heart bleeds for these families doomed by a dotard.
5
This is kidnapping.
3
If you can read this article without shedding a tear . . . you just may be a Republican.
6
ICE has morphed into a shadow national police force, unaccountable to anyone other than the administration, and not subject to the checks and balances of the National Guard or the military. They are, at the urging of the justice department, violating the basic tenets of our constitution (4th amendment) countrywide - an American version of the Gestapo. Wake up America, our basic freedoms are under attack.
7
holding children hostage for a wall is terrorism. America doesn't negotiate with terrorists. So we thought.
5
It seems like 1942 all over again, but hardly an American is alive who remembers the concentration camps and the LOYAL Japanese Americans who were forced from their farms and homes, whose farms and homes were then seized by neighbors, IN the National Interest.
Infants and children in concentration camps?.In America?.Why in blazes are Americans not building and manning the barricades? Starting with one @ 1600 PA Ave, in D.C.?
Mr Blow says he is "simply outraged beyond his abilities". Yeh sure as he hides behind the protections of the NYTimes. Makes me seriously considering boycotting the NYTimes and canceling my subscription.Where is my generations Paul Revere leading us? ONE strong leader, who cares if its a woman,or a man. Black, Brown or White just someone with guts
3
The barbaric hordes are already here amongst us. They didn't cross any borders to get here. They arrived on Inauguration Day and were appointed by a hateful, mean and barbaric man named Donald Trump.
We are now moving backwards.
6
All of us are too polite. What the Tweet Administration is engaged in-and one need only read the biography of Stephen Miller, Sessions and Bannon to really get what is going on, is ETHNIC CLEANSING! Plain and simple. And, we need to start speaking of their policies in just this language. They see the nation as one for only white skinned people-preferably Christians. Miller is Jewish-his ancestors escaped from Belarus in 1903 (see Vanity Fair article on him) and as someone who is Jewish, I think he should be drummed out of our tribe. I have no idea where he gets his "racist" ideas from. Did not the Nazis separate children from parent's at the Camps? Did not the Nazis believe in a white, master race? What do you think all this talk of America for Americans is all about? Sessions quoting the Bible-incorrectly? Really. These guys are Nazis to the core and the sooner we start talking about it-honestly and openly and appropriately-the better we will be. Often, politicians will invoke Hitler-inappropriately. In this case, it is totally appropriate. My father did not fight in World War II to see his country behave in this manner. We have always had an undercurrent in this country of white fascist, racists. Tweet has brought it out. And, we need to start speaking out loudly in language strong enough to identify the policy for what it is. Has ICE targeted the illegal Irish and Eastern Europeans who have overstayed their visas? No. I call it Legalized Ethnic Cleansing.
5
Simply close the southern border! Case solved.
1
Cowards. Cant believe this is happening in the US
5
Old Blow working up his NYT reader base again, using cultural Marxist "zeal" talking about "clubbing the baby seals" again.
You'd think he'd we writing about how De Blasio ought to be sending caravans of buses down to the border and bringing them back to New York City where there are plenty of resources and accommodations for them.
Where's his sense of good-will and humanity, anyway?
2
Chaz is an irrefutable accepter of the false. He is flattered that he is seen as "worthy" to carry the hate Trump torch by his countrymen. He is the champion of good chosen by someone who finally recognizes his goodness. Very similar to the Obama administration's refusal to admit that the military threat to the West had a name- Islamic Fascism. And so he glosses over (as do his followers) the facts and puts a focus on the feeling of advancing the policies of the liberal doctrine. (basically we hate Trump, no matter what) The fact(s) and documented history is this-People are told not to come to the USA illegally, people understand that when they have to sneak across a certain part of a country at night or follow some remote trail in the desert in order to get to another part of the country that they are doing what they are not supposed to. People arrive at the border and see that they have to climb over or tunnel under a certain line, fence or guarded area. People see uniformed officers called "The Border Patrol". And yet they persist and bring their children with them. Why? Because people like Chaz tell them "it's OK, come on over, we the elite liberals support you and your illegal actions. Even though Chaz's ideas are destructive, senseless and can be so-proved he writes with zeal. Why? He is interested in destruction of the American culture- simiple.
2
I always appreciate it when Trump supporters out themselves and confirm that they have no soul, let alone a coherent argument for a indefensible policy.
6
These kids and their families seeking asylum don't matter, but Kim Jong Un might be invited to the White House. Those kids don't matter, so blame others so you don't have to take responsibility. These families don't matter, just like Puerto Rico after the hurricane. Families don't matter, unless they are part of or believe in this lying administration.
5
What do you want the US to do ??
Should all illegal immigrants be allowed into the US???
We have immigration laws that have set numbers of immigrants to be allowed into the US every year.
Liberals want open borders & the liberal elite have decided
in the past 3 days that this is the campaign issue !!!
Where are we supposed to house these illegeal imigrants & who will pay for the housing.
Who will pay for the health care needs for the illegal immigrants. The cost per year is $7,000 per person. Who will pay for this ??
Which schools have room for the illegal immigrant children ?? The average education cost per student in the US is $10,000 per year but the illegal immigrants are behind US education and speak little English so they require special teaching which is double the average cost.
So who will pay for the illegal immigration costs???
The Federal budget is in a serious deficit and States can't afford the costs given the rising pension & benefit costs for all the state & local workers.
So ...can someone tell me how we can pay for this ??
Until you have an answer don't buy the liberal elite election propaganda!!
3
How is it possible for one person you lie as much as our president, across every form of media? Trump obviously has the support of a staff of liars, some of whom are public figures, like Sarah Sanders. But there must be others, probably working in a clandestine office in the White House basement.
3
This is the horror show that we get when so-called Christians decide to vote for a lying sexual predator bigot birther. It is what happens when they ignore the teaching of Jesus who taught: the devil is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44). This is what happens when they sell their souls to the devil in exchange for Injustice Gorsuch and right wing judges
We the People of the United States have a duty to put an end to this horror whether or not we profess a religious faith. Our own humanity demands it. Our own human dignity demands it. And this does not mean that our elected officials ought to negotiate with Trump and the other GOP hostage takers. They have taken these children hostage to get money for a wall that Mexico is supposed to pay for.
This means We ought to give control of Congress to Democrats in November.
5
For the trillionth time GOP:
WHERE? ARE? YOU?
6
Trump, his enablers in Congress and his psychotic advisors Kelly and Miller need to be swept from power. There are no words to express the depth my absolute disgust. America must be better than this!
4
It's okay folks..... using tiny, terrified children screaming for their parents as political bargaining chips is okay as long as you have accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.
8
It is called conservative compassion.
I just cannot stand you conservatives anymore. The plague on you.
4
In addition to grifter, liar, adulterer, and tax cheat - child abuser can now be justifiably added to the litany of Trump's immoral and reprehensible behavior.
3
Just like all of the other travesties and lies Trump has created, he is testing the waters to see what he can get away with. Slowly, drip by drip, he is bending reality and watching his polls to make sure his mob has his six.
If he gets away with this, who next will be in cages, torn from their homes? Democrats? Dissenters? Reporters?
This is how it always starts. Mark my words.
How is this not a "High Crime"
11
If you take the position that...
* Any call for mercy is hypocrisy or virtue signaling, and to be disregarded or held in contempt
* Any religious tradition that counsels mercy is also to be ignored or selectively interpreted to mean the opposite
* Those subjected to misery are 100% to blame for their own situation
* Those performing the subjections are 0% to blame for it
* If the victims are not themselves subhuman "animals," they cannot be reasonably distinguished from them, and our safety depends on treating them as if they were
* Only you and people you identify with have legitimate grievances
...you have closed off any external means of limiting what you will accept.
Why then will you not accept an escalation of these actions when they do not achieve your goals? What mechanisms will stop you from behaving as many "good" people did before you, in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and many other places?
I mean this seriously, not rhetorically. What will stop you? By now, human beings should have learned that their own claimed goodness is an awfully weak reed to depend upon.
3
The parallel of Trump's inhuman policy of separating children from their parents at the border with the Nazis' wrenching families apart at the entrance to Auschwitz, is stunning. We've heard the excuse, "just doing my job" before.
6
What kind of thugs work for border patrol who grab children and remove them from their parents as both the children and parents scream? Are they the same thugs who separated children and parents as people stepped from the trains that transported them to the extermination camps set up by the Nazis? Are they the same people who when placed on trial for crimes against humanity stated that they were just "following orders?"
These people are despicable and if they had a conscience they'd be refusing to carry out this inhumane policy.
6
Amen Charles.
Never give up.
Do not let trumpism swallow America.
9
"There by the grace of God go I", is what every American should be thinking.
Imagine living in a country where you are terrified for your children's safety.
Of course, you would do anything to save your children. You would even make the long dangerous trek to the US border.
Now you get to the border and your children are ripped from your arms!
Mr Trump and all your cohorts have you no decency?!
The answer speaks volumes and is sickening!!!!
Remember, you alone can fix it.
8
There were only 24 comments when I posted. I hope my post is accepted before the “This is not who we are”. “This is not America” folks start chiming in.
60 Million Americans voted for this. Build the Wall was the #1 policy in a campaign of not policies. Not one republican senator has signed on to the bill to correct this gross racist and cruel policy and worst yet - Republican voters aren’t demandig that they do.
You might not like it, but this is America.
2
No, it is a PART of America. And one that is actually the minority. They just think they are the majority.
1
Why are the democrats being blamed? I thought the “Mexicans were going to pay for the wall.”
7
Trump wanted to deny his disabled (cerebral palsy) infant nephew the family medical benefits because he had a beef with its parents. A judge had to intervene to force him to reverse his decision. That sums it up. Trump is a sadistic psychopath who has to go, by hook or by crook, whatever it takes.
4
It is truly a sick mind who fathomed this sin. And another who implemented it. Vile individuals, who personifies evil.
4
"When our holy scripture is being abused to defend an immoral and unjust policy it is the duty of all Christians to rise and speak out. We cannot allow such blasphemy to go unchallenged or we become complicit in the wrongs that it is being used to uphold."
- The Rev. Dr. Ellen Clark-King
https://www.gracecathedral.org/no-justification-scripture-separating-fam...
Listen to today's sermon by the The Very Rev. Dr. Alan Jones: https://www.gracecathedral.org/sermons?sermon-id=41779
Here's how to contact Jeff Sessions:
https://m.wikihow.com/Contact-Jeff-Sessions
5
The Republicans in Congress many of whom are self professed Christians are equally to blame for separating children from their parents as much as their idiot in chief, Donald Trump.
The hypocrisy here is stunning – we know that Donald Trump worships only himself, ( and perhaps money) but the Republicans in Congress, if they believe what they profess to believe, should know better.These Republicans in the House and the Senate have no only betrayed their country, but they have also betrayed their faith.
6
Red state America is determined to keep this country majority white at all costs. ALL. I'm sick of pundits giving these voters the benefit of the doubt- they did not cast a vote for Trump based on economic reasons: it was purely racial. Period. I can truly say I am scared now- like Gestapo, Ann Frank scared. And I'm a citizen. "First they came..."
5
What will it take for this evil, liar in Chief to be stopped? Everyone he has surrounded himself with are equally evil. During the Nuremberg trials it was difficult to fathom people followed an overt diabolical leader.
This is 2018 America and the government is stacked with spineless sycophants, opportunists, a cult of Evangelicals and morally corrupt individuals who yearn for power regardless how they grab it and who will suffer be it Mothers, Father's, children, immigrants, asylum seekers or citizens.
I clearly am offended, enraged by the admiration Trump has for the power Kim Jong Um holds over his people, they stand at attention. He used the possessive pronoun, My, referring to American citizens and his wish for the same fear and adulation. How revolting and sickening that came from his foul mouth. I don't consider him the President, I don't want to be lumped in with, "my", I am not part of his cancer or plague he is spreading.
3
This is an immoral and inhuman policy. Children are not to be used as pawns in some political game of chess. It gives me great pain to think that some stormtrooper would come and take my children out of my arms and take them away to who knows where? This is criminal and remenicient of Hitler's Germany. Trump, Sessions, Kelly, Sanders are abusing and torturing children for political gain. All the phony religious supporters of this administration are a party to this torture. I can only imagine the fear and deep hurt these innocents are feeling as each day passes. Enough! Give these kids back to their parents and stop this immoral, cruel and unjust policy. GOP this one is on all of you!
5
<sarcasm>Now, now. No reason to be concerned. These are Christians. Turn the other cheek types. Love thine enemy is their mantra. They believe in "family values" and are "pro life." </sarcasm>
2
What do we do expect from people who are perfectly willing to tolerate the massacre of their own children in schools , at concerts, the movies, the mall, church.
What can we expect from a nation that takes hot meals from elderly shut ins so the rich can have a tax break.
What can we expect from a nation that sees nothing amiss when the sick and disabled go bankrupt and are forced to beg (GoFundMe) to pay for health care.
Americans are barbarians.
4
We as a nation are at a point of no return. We is not all, but enough of our own. We is a big chunk of our elected government and leaders at every level. We just keep living with unacceptable political and moral ideas , events and policies. We accept without much resistance the cruelty of our government towards foreigners and also our own people.
We cannot fly the flag on the front porch and at the same time accept that our elected president sees good good people in a Nazi crowd.
We cannot claim that we value human life and be against universal health care. We cannot be supporting a president who respect a murderous dictator from a murderous family. During WW2 both FDR and Churchill hated Stalin, but supported the USSR because of the fight against Hitler and Japan. What is happening with these children is from the Book of Hatred and Evil. We are paranoid. We fight with our neighbors and friends because of it.
We have normalized the hateful behavior and policies of the Tee Party and extended that inhumane philosophy by electing a vengeful person as our president. We are blind to the suffering of others, regardless of them being our own or in foreign lands. This is how we get to make people depend on food stamps, then cut social welfare, pensions, 401k, everything and anything that helps people who are not rich.
There is some hope for a blue wave in November, but most people have become, num, dumb, greedy and scared. This is the time of hatred and crazy, globally, again!
4
The only thing missing are the "Arbeit Macht Frei"
signs. we are separating children from families,
kidnapping them really, telling them we are going to"bathe
them" never to be seen again
Trump's AMERIKA Kids in cages.
This is Trump's policy. he is just lying, and NO,
the IG report did not exonerate him
be valiant for the truth. call lies lies. period
1
Melania Trump should do her homework so she would know the facts. The Democrats have nothing to do with separating immigrant children from their parents. Melania is simply Donald's echo, as when she repeated his 'birther' lie about President Obama.
4
Trump and his administration is a blight on the American soul. The United States had a chance to right our wrongs, but now sadly, we are sinking further into the abyss of hate, bigotry and fear. I used to believe Americans would stand up, say no this despicable caricature of a human being and his lack of moral fiber. But instead we are on this decline into the dark "rabbit hole" with him, with little way out but one, vote!
4
This policy is an atrocity. The Trump administration is a atrocity. But worse than any of the policies enacted by one man and his administration (and his weak enablers in congress), are the millions Americans who think this is ok. They are ultimately responsible for this, and they will remain with their racism, ignorance, and hate long after Trump goes.
2
Reports also cited the use of the chilling explanation "we're taking the children to the showers" when being separated from their parents. It was the very explanation used in the concentration camps in World War Two when children were taken away during the Holocaust. The administration's ignorance of history leads it, once again, to a grotesque mimicry of evil. Here, in the United States.
2
Wasn't it a few weeks ago 45 called immigrants animals? Now he is treating them like animals locked up in cages. We've been down this path before with child separations in Germany, Japan and children ripped from slave parents and know the horror of these events. The United States is better than this. This week has been over the top with 45s lies and propaganda. Since Congress fails to use their checks and balances with 45 the media seriously needs to reevaluate how they report on him because, unfortunately, he is doing nothing but using the media now to spread his lies and propaganda while his lemmings of a base just nod and agree with every lie out of his mouth. I am so scared for our country and how we can recover.
4
New day rising - now a party of hate, party of fear, part of vengeance. And, TrumpNation roars, then, takes a knee - a new Messiah to adore. A Man-God strides the Land. He lifts the Flaming Sword - blood on the tongue - blood on the hand. Heart of America.
1
Perhaps Trump is so callous because he did not spend any of his precious wealth-accumulating time involved in raising and physically caring for his own children. Did he ever play catch with his sons? Play tea time with his daughters? Change the diaper on any one of them?
No. Trump's idea of hands-on parenting is to publicly admire his daughter's physical appearance by saying he would "date" (a euphemism, obviously) her.
Family, other than viewing them as a trophy, one that, if he had a shelf big enough to hold them, is where they would be kept. And where the cleaning lady could dust them off nightly.
1
Don't cross the border illegally. Simple. Solves the problem.
2
Many of these people were properly applying for asylum, not crossing the border illegally.
4
Surely this is and will remain one of the blackest marks in American history. A concentration camp (s) for children rivals giving Native Americans blankets with diseases to kill them and many other horrors of the 19th and 20th century. That his and international policies that say the dictator of N Korea is a good guy not only makes Steve Bannon happy as a drunk crow, but shows how far Trump and Sessions (God save us from Sarah Sanders later today or tomorrow) have sunk America to the fire below.
2
Trump's separation of parents from children reminds me of the Japanese internment camps in California during WW 2--one of the most egregious moments in American history. Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible to support this cruelty. This is sheer sacrilege, in total defiance of the Golden Rule and Jesus's love of little children. But at least Sessions admits honestly that this is the current administration's policy. Trump, lying coward that he is, doesn't even do that. He blames the Democrats!
1
Simply...We, the People, are under the Governance of a bonafide
Sociopathic Personality Disorder, in the Personal Presence of "President"
Donald Trump. We are, thereby, under the Management of Sickness.
2
I cannot help but think of the black children who were taken from their parents during slavery times.
6
Bu-but, the beautiful chocolate cake that Trump just had, was decorated to mimic the Nobel Peace Prize!
That counts for something...
1
One of the many cruelties of our prison system is the separation of families.People attribute many of the ills of our society to absent parents who are in jail.
Sorry about Munoz but he was clearly mentally unstable the kind of person we don't need in this country.If I was a Bush I would keep quiet about illegals Presidents Bush bear responsibility for the mess Trump has to deals with.I'm proud of you Charles for using the word Illegal aliens.The NYT well known for calling them undocumented.
1
What is unbelievable is that Trump's policy of separating children from their parents seems to be pleasing his base.
Let the Americans of latino decent remember what can happen when they fail to vote...complacency in the face of abuse will come back to haunt you.
2
Most Obama era measures, Trump wants to undo. Since at least one immigrant child was separated from it's parents during Obama, this action Trump wants to magnify.
There is no excuse. Today you can stop being complicit.
Do not visit the United States. Do not buy anything made or grown in America. Do not buy stocks on an American stock exchange. Do not apply for school in the United States. If you are American start the process of leaving the United States and immigrating to another country. Turn off Fox News.
Add to this list. You can do it.
2
I, and many other Canadians, have said, "You're fired!" to
what we used to buy, where we used to go, etc. etc.
The president and his lap dog, Jeff Sessions, are telling one and all that the asylum-seekers from Central America are not worthy of human decency. They have no rights that Americans are bound to respect, which is exactly what white Southerners said during the Reconstruction period about the newly-emancipated black men and women in Dixie.
This administration is sending an inhumane message south of the border, telling Latino adults that using their children as shields for illegal entry into the US won’t work. The president hears the deafening rumble of approval from his party and his base but turns a deaf ear to the pleas for human outreach or mercy.
2
The president and his minions haven’t found their way to the bottom yet but they’re trying.
I’ve seen some articles suggest that comparing him to fascist leaders of the ‘30s and ‘40s is inappropriate and extreme, but doesn’t this policy, performed despite calls against it from “all sides” deserve such a comparison?
Isn’t it hard to see the shining city on the hill from the depths of the sewers? Or is it sinking into the mire?
2
What sort of emotionally-stunted, cold-hearted individual separates innocent children from their parents in the name of national security?
The same sort of Republicans who support racists, dictators, the reduction of health care coverage, de facto death panels, tax cuts only for the wealthy and corporations, and who pretend to be Godly and religious.
Anyone you know?
4
Children live in the present moment. Waiting until November to help them, to save them is cowardly....shame on us...we need to ACT now !
4
Children can also die, fall seriously ill, become insane, be molested or be radicalized in these facilities, long before November.
1
The Democrats could run garden gnomes this year and I would still vote a straight Dem ticket. Trump is a foul cancer. If we can't excise him, we must contain him.
6
The most revealing thing about this horrible imbroglio is the reaction of Trump’s base, evident even in some comments in the NYT. This reaction is an enormous surge of sniveling self-pity. They do not, as any decent human being would, feel outraged at the senseless cruelty of this policy. They do not, as any rational human being would, suggest alternative policies that would keep children with their parents while preventing illegal immigration. Their only mantra is “we need money for our own people”! And who are “our own people”? High-school dropouts, disability cheats, opioid junkies, fetus worshippers and gun fetishists. And those people who could not do an honest day’s work if their lives depended on it, blame immigrants for “taking our jobs”! Sure, the jobs you can’t do do because they require either brain or brawn and you have neither! Nor do you have a heart, conscience or simple decency. Next time when you start complaining about the death of rural America, be aware that nobody is listening. If you have no pity on others, others will have no pity on you.
4
As hard as it will be, the Democrats will have to hold firm and not give into Trump and his lie. This is the equivalent of a kidnapping with the wall used as ransom. This is not how we govern in this country, this is how fascists rule.
3
Melania Trump is quoted in another article today and referenced here.
SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on Melania..
She is an immigrant who was able to walk through gilded doors and brought her parents here by chain migration. Her statement is so luke warm and vague that she should be ashamed for not screaming for child separation to STOP !
But, what is most shameful and abusive to a child is that she allows her son to live in the same building with a cruel, heartless, bully. If she loves Barron and wants to protect him, she should move him out of the WH and separate from her husband now.
Sure, she won't have $51,500 jackets to wear (Sicily, 5/30/17) and multi-thousand dollars designer dresses and clothes. But, right now she is complicit and as despicable as her husband.
BTW - she had a 4 hour surgery and 5 days in the hospital - likely cost more than $150,000. She didn't care - covered by insurance.
Melania, you have a pre--existing condition. Yet, you don't care that you husband wants to take insurance from millions of people and allow substandard insurance policies that deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
If I knew how to get this letter to you, Melania, I would hand deliver it and tell you face too face that you should be ashamed and contrite and regain some dignity by being honest. I guess to0 much to ask when you are living in the lap of luxury -- on my money. You are a phony - admit it.
5
The only appropriate reparation for this appalling crime is to fast track citizenship and provide a significant period of housing and economic support to families who have been subjected to this traumatizing and cruel and dehumanizing policy.
1
Just when we think the Trump Administration cannot possibly go any lower, Trump surprises the country yet again.
This policy falls more in line with Nazi Germany than the United States of America. I am so angry at what has happened to my country.
And now I read in the Times that Trump is lying about Germany's immigration policies and about how crime there has increased - which is absolutely not the case.
I want to wake up from this nightmare.
5
America got what it voted for. This administration believes "If you aren't white, you are not right."
2
The majority of America voted against this.
2
Where are the Christian Leaders?
Christ said, "Whatsoever you do among the least of mine,
you do also unto me."
7
Actually their has been harsh criticism from Cardinal Dolan and the Southern Baptist Convention. When you reflectively look to criticize religion without knowing facts, you just increase Trump's support
1
Old Blow working up his NYT reader base, using cultural Marxist "zeal" talking about Trump "clubbing baby seals" again.
You'd think he'd we writing about how De Blasio ought to be sending caravans of buses down to the border and bringing them--mothers and children--back to New York City where there are plenty of resources and accommodations for them.
Where's his Opinion Kingdom sense of good-will and humanity, anyway?
1
Love it when posters that clearly have no moral authority get it wrong and label anyone left of the far right as a "Marxist", cultural or otherwise.
You've just confirmed not only the utter lack of humanity for your position, but how you can't help but misappropriate political terms at every chance.
2
Far worse than just a profound embarrassment to the world, this whole administration and feckless family are a bellwether for the very values of our society.
3
As is so often the case, Blow does not write an editorial so much as cut and paste other’s work. Thanks for annotating articles the Times already published, Charles; but as any freshman English professor will tell you, try using your own words.
2
I wanted to start a blog on what it would take to flip a Trump voter. Murder on Fifth Ave.? Nah. Lying while taking the oath of office on a bible to uphold the Constitution? Nah. Criminal behavior? Nah. Appointing the worst unqualified people to lead the nation? Nah. White supremacist rants? Nah. Hate speech? Nah. Groping many woman? Nah, Cheating on his wives? Nah. Cheating workers and students out of their money? Nah. But maybe, just maybe the ripping of screaming children from the arms of their traumatized parents? Actually, I would not put it past his base to enjoy watching that. So, NAH.
4
Yes, it's Trump's fault. Yes, he lies, almost every time he opens his mouth. We say, "this is not who we are to take children from parents." But, it is exactly who we are & who we have been.
Slavery is the 1st example that comes to mind. People captured and brought here and sold to the highest bidder. Their labor making their masters wealthy.
First Nation peoples. Official government policy at one point was Assimilation or Annihilation. We stole their children from their mother's arms and put them in Indian Schools where they were beaten and sexually molested.
We brought the Chinese people here to build railways. But, no citizenship for them.
Japanese interment camps during WWII. These were mostly citizens.
Lets not forget about how we turned away boatloads of Jewish people fleeing Nazi Germany.
Now the tide has really turned on our neighbors to the south. For decades we've turned a blind eye to employers who enticed these folks here.
Stephen Miller, John Kelly, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Donald Trump are dedicated to carrying on the American Tradition of extremely cruel and unusual punishment. This is who we are!
We white folks sit in our middle class living rooms "tisk-tisking" at the nightly news. Evangelicals finally found something to condemn Trump for. Sorry, I'm not impressed and I don't believe you. You sold your souls to the devil over abortion &extreme right wing politics.
Don't like it? Stop voting for do nothing Republicans. Nov. 2018!
6
And I have no doubt that members of Trump's circle are trying to devise ways to personally profit off this horror. The Nazis found that building and running concentration camps was a very profitable path to personal wealth; Trump and his cronies are almost certainly going to emulate their role models in this.
4
Charles Blow, the ever-increasing hypocrite! Are you really going to give this President the sole authority to decide which laws to enforce? Yes, it is the law. The Obama administration and Bush administration CHOSE not to enforce the laws. We know about Obama's DACA (contrary to the law but he had a pen) illegality. If you want this President to not enforce ALL immigration laws, I want this President to refuse to enforce tax law, healthcare, speeding, seatbelts, election law and a host of other laws.
You also are ignoring that failure to implement a zero tolerance will create an incentive for more "illegal aliens" to break the law. Lastly, while I don't doubt you would like to open the prison doors to all the criminals, you should seriously think about the precedent of arguing that people can't be incarcerated because they will be separated from their children. Doesn't Paul Manafort has children? I guess he can't be prosecuted then?
STOP THE HYPOCRISY!!
3
It's a law? Which law? Complete specificity, please.
3
The hate and cruelty in this policy is the root of the Trump agenda. His supporters love it has he shakes hands with dictators all over the world and praises them for their power and how they control their citizens. It is clear that they do NOT love the principles upon which this country is based and that history means nothing to them. When they lose all of their rights as free citizens it won't matter to them because they love this man so much. Trump is waging a war against our country and its foundation. How much can we take before we rise up and fight back? It is clear that his supporters are saying what Hitler's supporters said, " as long as it doesn't happen to us, we are fine with whatever he does."
5
When I was a child learning about Nazi Germany the policies of separating parents from their children still sticks in my mind as one of the most cruel things the Nazis did.
7
It’s clear to me that liberals think any one who reaches our southern border are entitled to an automatic green card. There’s no other explanation for these comments.
1
That's a Faux News talking point. NO DEMOCRATS favor 'open borders'--that is Fox's Big Lie. We just don't think that ripping nursing infants from their mothers' breast qualifies as effective--or sane--much less humane, immigration policy.
5
Methinks that the president "don't care". Could these traumatized folks become the next wave of terrorists in retribution for his actions?
3
"Melania Trump Calls on ‘Both Sides’ to End Family Separation,..."
Both sides of what? Melania, there is no both sides, just one, your husband. He's the President of the United States and has the authority right this minute to stop this travesty that's taking place on the border.
Talk to your husband, he's the culprit, and don't hide behind the same lie as he is.
Do something Melania Trump.
4
Decent people of America, now is the time to take to the streets to peacefully protest, in huge numbers, in every single city. Don't let this cult leader continue his cruelty.
Are you now North Koreans who look to their dictator and "sit at attention"? Trump wasn't joking when he said this was his prayer.
5
These isolationist policies spewing forth from the fingers and mouth of this president are doing so much damage to the standing of the US in the world. It will take years to rebuild the kind of trust trump is happily destroying. If and when the US needs support from world leaders, it is becoming increasingly apparent that trump is setting the stage to recognize the soviet union as an equal partner in our policies.
Scary, dangerous and extremely disturbing.
This policy of separating children from families seeking asylum in the US, is despicable. Keeping children in cages and with staff unable to offer any sort of comfort is cruel. Identifying children by a number is shades of nazi Germany.
As in the Middle East we are creating a generation of children who will grow up hating the US. Where is our compassion and most of all where is any kind of common sense in this administration?
2
Another version of “Nice looking kids you have there,shame to see something happen to them”
7
The guy is not only narcissistic and every other negative thing he has been called.
He is also sadistic. Goes along with his authoritarian and dictatorial role he wants to be.
Sad, very sad.
5
Almost as bad as this atrocious policy is the cowardice and willful dishonesty from Donald Trump and his sycophants in attempting to blame it on Democrats who are actually trying to stop it. Considering how much Trump supporters love seeing Latino kids in cages and knowing how agonizing it is for the children and their parents, you’d think the 45 administration would just up to it.
3
Trump and the GOP are turning the meanings of words, laws, and morality itself inside out. It's what fascists do. Job one.
4
Melania:
Do you want the sins of fathers visited upon their sons and daughters?
Look at Barron and loudly proclaim your answer to the world!
The lives of little children hang in the balance.
2
It seems that Mr Trump has learned a lesson from the playbook of all tyrants--destroy the family unit of the "outsiders". Now Mr Trump can be part of that evil company that includes slave-owners, Stalin, Hitler, and his best buddy, Kim Jong Un.
As for Mr. Sessions and his perversion of scripture, I would refer him to the Gospel of Matthew:
"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me, in prison and you came to visit me. I assure you, as often as you did it for the least among you, you did it for me."
Mr. Blow, I too am outraged and heartsick at the actions of my adopted country.
5
"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him." -Abraham Lincoln.
“Black guys counting my money! I hate it. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks.” - Donald Trump.
I wonder what Mr. Lincoln would say about this race-baiting, fear-mongering, scapegoating serial liar of a President? Would he be proud of the man or the place now?
6
Wow Charles Blow! The definitive epitaph for Donald J. Trump FOREVER AND A DAY. No self-respecting American should ever again use any words but "BABY SNATCHER" when referring to
Trump, this devastating piece of American waste. May God Bless all of these children and all of their parents.
2
Trump is a terrible person. His powers must be limited this fall with the vote of reasonable human beings. I will lose hope in this country and humanity if the tides do not start to change this fall.
4
THIS is the epitome of the entire Trump Regime. Ignorance, racism, cruelty and SPITE. Why ??? Because they CAN. Who will stop them ? Their Collaborators? The Courts ? As for me, I'm entirely done with playing nice, and being understanding. I want these dregs of society to suffer, and pay the price. How ??? VOTE. Vote out ALL GOP candidates. Nothing focuses the mind like losing an extremely overpaid, fairly useless " JOB ".
Kick the Bums OUT !!!!!!! Get to work now, VOTE in November.
4
One of the most sickening sights of Nazi Germany -- before the full horrors were known -- was the separation of children from their parents.
America expended 407,300 of its youth and young men fighting against that scourge in two theaters of operations. They won, resoundingly.
In 2018, a senator named Sessions, quoted the Bible to justify Nazi Germany's government edict to separate children from their parents. Thereby justifying that America do the same.
My uncle did not die in June 1944 to see this happen to America; no matter how dumb an ignorant electorate might be; no matter how sick a president might be, no matter how hypocritical a congress might be.
5
This policy of separating children from their parents and putting them in jail is evil and reminiscent of the Nazis' treatment of Jews and other minority groups. This is a test of the moral fiber of the citizens of the US and the world. Will you allow this evil to continue? Unchecked evil will only spread if we don't stamp it out now. History has shown this to be true, when Hitler was not satisfied with invading Poland and continued to march across the continents of the world.
No amount of rationalization will justify putting innocent children in prison. No rule of law is justified in putting children in prison. This is evil and inhumane. Every good soul on this planet should make their voices heard. Shout out this evil and cruelty from the roof tops, ballot boxes, court system, Congress, Senate, march, chant, call your representatives and stop this evil now!
I am reminded of the following quote from the Protestant pastor Martin Niemoller who spent seven years in Nazi concentration camps:
"
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
5
We have become a barbaric country.
3
As Sessions proved, bibles (pick any one you like) can be used to justify anything from murder to slavery to stealing children. I just wonder what kind of god Sessions, Trump and their acolytes believe in?
5
It's the god of "I've got mine."
5
Normally I would be writing about the ancient Jewish legend of why Sodom and Gomorrah were really destroyed because of the way they treated strangers. It is getting more and more difficult to comment because of the tears blocking the vision in my one good eye. How many times do I have to read this is not who we are before America looks in the mirror?
Aislin the editorial cartoonist in the Montreal Gazette speaks for far too many of us.
http://montrealgazette.com/gallery/gallery-aislin-and-other-editorial-ca...
2
There are no words to adequately describe the catastrophe that has been visited on our nation by this president. Last used during World War II, we once again have concentration camps on U.S. soil. This time, they are being used to house infants and children taken by force from their parents, many seeking asylum, which is their legal right. Think of that for a second, thousands of children taken from their parents, with no assurance that they will be reunited. This, in "the land of the free."
Meanwhile, the current occupant of the White House lies about what he has ordered and his Attorney General invokes selected passages in the Bible to support the policy ordered by his boss. Are we now a baby-snatching theocracy run by a would be dictator?
If you support this policy, you are complicit in a crime against humanity. If this does not horrify you, get some professional psychological help. If you have not yet been dehumanized by the flood of fear mongering and lies coming from the White House, vote against every candidate with an R next to their name in 2018. And, continue to do so in every election until the, once respectable, GOP stops being the party that tries to justify ripping babies from the arms of mothers but don't hold your breath.
2
Trumps doing this to get the dems to agree to pay for the wall. Remember the ends justify the means for this guy. He's holding a gun to their heads n saying he'll shoot or not it's your choice cuz he doesn't care.
2
The House of Trump is engaged in crimes against humanity aka arresting,kidnapping, killing and wounding babies along the Mexican American border, the Gaza Israeli border, the Saudi Yemeni border and the border between every black and white American community. In a fair just moral world the Trump family would awaken in one of those dark deadly dire worlds.
Legal immigration is too slow, too complicated, too costly and too subjectively ethnic sectarian national origin color aka race xenophobic bigoted to be worthy of the interests and values of America.
5
I absolutely do not understand why anyone is surprised at President Trump's very successful way of operating. What else would you expect from a brilliant student, who graduated summa cum laude from The Joseph Goebbels College of Marketing and magma cum laude from The Joseph Stalin Institute of Loyalty for his dissertation, "Using Apprentices When 'Lock Him Up' Aint Enough: The Case of Leon Trotsky."
2
Sorry I’m not impressed by the B-horror movie!
Your hyperboles would have more punch if Obama did not cage these unfortunates or was the liberal hypocrisy not applied during his administration? Where are the daily celebrity vulgarities lacking from your hit piece?
Surely, we deserve to be cursed!
4
Did Obama separate families and detain children in this way?
Thanks again for Trump apologists having no moral center, and no facts on their side.
3
This is the worst, the cruelest thing that the Trump administration has done, and it causes terrible harm to children and families.
Never again can Republicans pretend to be the party that has a monopoly on moral values, or on family values, or on caring about children. They are revealed as being willing to go into the heart of darkness of Nazi tactics of taking children -- even babies and toddlers -- away from their parents, their siblings, their families.
I keep thinking that Coretta Scott King really did have Sessions pegged. She wrote about his abuse of power to intimidate and frighten black voters. There is a massive abuse of power involved here, and the thin veil over its racism is "deterrence" as Kelly termed it. This kind of deterrence once justified terrible punishments like drawing and quartering traitors, putting decapitated heads over city gates, and is currently used by dictator regimes.
This has never happened in America before -- this forcible separation of children from their families -- with children lost, damaged for life, kept in poor conditions (and yes, sometimes behind wire fences, or evidently in tents in the heat of a Texas summer and hurricane season).
What hath Trump and his fellow Republicans wrought?
This is evil.
Vote them all out.
6
When trumps troops take their children one day they will take your children
3
They have and it’s called bad public education or as some would say “brain washing with propaganda”.
2
This president is beyond the pale. He is disgusting and, as the lady said, deplorable. Please let your representatives in Congress—even if they already agree with you—know how you feel about this cruel policy.
2
This is far from the usual blue team vs. red team debate. Basic human decency is the question. The people have to decide if this reflects U.S.?
3
Many have commented here their feelings of horror and helplessness regarding the separation of the most vulnerable of all - the children - from frightened and scared parents at the border. The parents are asking for asylum, which is legitimate by international law. These parents are not criminals.
Mr. Blow's article, like others in this paper and elsewhere, lament Trump's and Session's cruel policies.
However, the one word that I have not seen used to describe what the Federal Government is doing is this: KIDNAPPING. Taking children away from parents by force and without permission is kidnapping. Kidnapping is a Federal crime and kidnappers are punished. Trump and Sessions, like Mafia bosses, order the kidnapping, the removal of children from their loving parents. Kirstjen Nielsen, CBP, and ICE carry out the orders. Kidnappers all. There are laws concerning the punishment of kidnappers. The kidnappers of this administration should not be above the law.
6
Thank you for this, but what about the children currently locked up? The ones being hidden from us, behind blackened doors, away from cameras, or smoldering in tent cities in the middle of nowhere? What about the children denied the comfort of touch by workers, or a hug from a sibling? What about the toddlers stuffed into cages who have fallen silent from the trauma? This humanitarian crisis needs to be addressed on this front as well, because I fear the worst is happening to those children -- all this denial and secrecy is horrific. Are the babies allowed to be touched? I believe we need to speak more on the intentional cruelty that is being inflicted in some of these facilities, with parents getting no warning their kids will be snatched, no time to say goodbye, and children forbidden the essential human need: comfort. CHILDREN. This trauma being inflicted is not some unfortunate byproduct of their "policy", it's part of the point. Trump has unleashed the hatred in white supremacists.
5
This policy is designed to coerce the parents to plead guilty to illegal entry rather than applying for asylum. That is a misdemeanor. They will then be sentenced to time served and sent back. If they try to re-enter they will be charged with a felony . This is the equivalent of the police taking children away from parents charged with a crime in order to coerce them to plead guilty. No judge would accept such a guilty plea because it was coerced
2
The Trump administration’s kidnapping of children will not stop since Trump doesn’t back down, he doubles down. His hench-people were flooding the airwaves all repeating the same talking points; we are executing the law, it’s a Democrat law, we have to separate the the criminal parents from their children. These lies repeated again and again in Josef Goebbels fashion become the truth Trump supporters will cite. As with the institution of the presidency, the free press, political discourse, and the environment, America is being dragged into the ditch. This policy is destroying our nation’s image of generosity developed over many generations and tying inhumanity to the law and patriotism. Mission accomplished, President Trump.
2
We see today that the US is pulling out of the UN human rights commission because they don't like that the rest of the world won't remain silent about the abuses of Israel toward the Palestinians.
Trump, who admires people like Netanyahu and other authoritarians who oppress and abuse their own people or their adversaries, is simply taking the first step toward the creation of concentration camps. First it's people who come here seeking asylum, (a perfectly legal endeavor, by the way), then it will be anyone who speaks out against him. So when the likes of KellyAnne goes on TV to say that if these families didn't want to be ripped apart, then they shouldn't have broken the law and come here illegally, we need to remind them that 1. asylum seekers aren't breaking the law, and 2. those who do cross the border illegally simply looking for work or a better life, have only committed a misdemeanor. If we're going to start putting people in prison without bail for misdemeanors, we should start with people like KellyAnne when they get a speeding ticket.
3
This is heart breaking inhumane and pure evil. Not surprisingly this is forced upon us by the Trump. Trump put this policy into effect and Trump could stop it right now. Trump is chooses to continue the cruelty. Remember this in November when you vote.
3
It's time for the media and the few lawmakers we have left with a spine to hold Trump to account when he lies that the child separation policy complies with a "Democrat law." I haven't seen one member of Congress nor one reporter in the White House daily briefing or out on the White House lawn ask Trump to name the law he's lying about. The Bloviator-in-Chief should not be allowed to get away with it.
2
This is a rare incident where I tend to support Trump administration.
If parents do not respect the safety and rights of their own children, how they expect they to be treated by law enforcement agencies in a country where law and order still matters? Many of these Latin American illegal immigrants and asylum seekers are using their children as human shield just like the Islamic extremists in middle east.
There are so many other countries in Asia and Africa (Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, included) in the world with far worse socio-political condition that any Latin American country. Should we tell them that they can barge onto US border and then sneak into the USA if they fail to get asylum, or somehow manage to arrive in USA illegally and everything will be taken care of by politicians and churches/mosques/temples who consider them as future vote bank?
What should we tell to those people who obeyed US laws and legally entered into USA and patiently waited for thier turn to get permanent residency and citizenship?
If we keep on allowing each and everyone from these countries then soon USA would resemble those countries in Latin America or Asia or Africa or Balkan states in Europe- lawless, corrupt and religious theological society ultimately leading to civil conflict (if not civil war) in near future.
1
The parents come to this country exactly because they care for the safety of their children.
Are you even aware what goes on beyond your own backyard?
There is no legitimate rationale for taking children away from their parents who are seeking asylum.
5
I have read from a pediatrician's essay that the actual wiring of the child's brain changes from the trauma of such separations as we are seeing on a daily basis on the southern border; these changes make it much more likely that the child will develop illnesses, be more prone to substance abuse, etc.--hardly surprising given the withdrawal they experience. And then they are handed over to care where the caregivers cannot touch, hold, or comfort the child. How is that possibly ok? If this is even tolerated by the American public then we, too, are complicit in the clear child abuse that is happening.
NYTimes, please, keep on this story with relentless dedication! Get into those facilities that house the infants and toddlers and youngest children! We need to know the horror done by this government in our name.
They say that this is a maneuver by Trump to get the Democrats to pass the wall funding--that seems completely in character with that man and is nothing surprising. It is on US, the American public, to make it clear that this quid pro quo cannot happen; this policy MUST be reversed immediately. The world community will punish us; we will be branded a rogue nation and we will be clumped along with N. Korea. So much for "American exceptionalism". We are special and maybe exceptional, but not in a good way.
3
When I was six and my sister seven (I’m 54 now), my sister got lost at the circus. It must have been for all of about fifteen minutes. We found her cowering next to a pole, crying. She said “I thought I’d never see you again” and cried inconsolably for what seemed like hours. I remember that event as piercingly as if it were yesterday, and it still brings tears to my eyes.
Her pain was to her unbearable, and yet nothing to what these kids at the border are subjected, not to mention their parents. For someone to countenance such atrocity as a matter of policy, I cannot even imagine what could be within the human soul. There is no earthly explanation other than that Donald Trump not only lacks empathy, but is a truly mean-spirited person.
6
Citizen: Commit crime, go to jail, separation ensues.
Illegal immigrant: commit crime, go to jail, get special rights because political meme.
Hmmm. Something doesn’t compute.
1
People seeking asylum are not illegal immigrants. And since when is not having your child forcibly taken away from you a special right?
4
Sseeking asylum is not a crime. It's NOT. Look it up.
6
Have you no sense of decency, sir? Mr.Trump, at long last, have you left no sense of decency?
2
This barbaric policy, at it's core, I believe, is this administration's pathological attempt at a type of "ethnic cleansing"--by way of prevention.
It's about inflicting sufficient pain and suffering on non Anglo's attempting to come here so they will stop trying.
It's political. It's about satisfying this administration's anti-diversity; anti-multiculturalism; make America culturally white again base of supporters. It's about turning border agents into a form of the KKK who, rather than burn crosses and worse, incarcerates and separate children and their parents. It sends a message to others with coming-here-on-their mind. Don't. It's stomach churning. It's not the America (although imperfect) I've know and love. It's Donald J. Trump's America.
2
As the old saying goes, the devil can quote the scriptures for his own purposes.
8
I am so ashamed that my government would do this. Slavery, Japanese internment camps and now this. Yes, America is truly exceptional!
3
Is Trump a narcissist, or is he a full-blown sociopath? Since becoming president his behavior is tilting toward the latter, now completely unchecked by any laws (as he and his lawyers claim) or social norms.
Is a sociopath what people consciously voted for? Almost certainly not. But, just like the family of the relative who shouldn’t be driving anymore, Republicans in Congress are avoiding the conversation. And, like the family of the relative who shouldn’t be driving, how much risk are Republicans in Congress willing to accept by their continued inaction?
3
Imagine if asylum seekers from Norway, Sweden or Finland were at the border. Does anyone believe they would be detained in prison camps or separated from their children.
1
Trump’s core of white evangelical men and women believe his lies and support him even more now than they did on election day
On that basis, anything is possible. And none of it good.
2
God forbid children will not die because of these forced separations
3
What has "God" got to do with anything? It seems that "humanity" was abandoned long ago - as if there never was a God. And, who/what is God's creator/God? "In God We Trust"? All this will come back to haunt this country ... sooner than we think.
1
According to the American Psychological Association “The administration’s policy of separating children from their families as they attempt to cross into the United States without documentation is not only needless and cruel, it threatens the mental and physical health of both the children and their caregivers."
That doesn't begin to describe how many millions of Americans' mental and physical health feels threatened by the barbaric, inhumane actions directed by our new Gestapo team, Trump and Sessions.
Just cannot believe that the bought and paid for Republicans in Congress refuse to take action. Surely their billionaire and corporate funders haven't given them direct orders to support these unconscionable acts of ICE agents to tear children from their parent's arms. So what is Congress waiting for?
2
At a complete loss for words other than:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
1
As for the United States: the bloom is off the rose.
Maybe Benjamin Franklin was correct when he thought the turkey should be the national bird.
4
Trump is America! Think not, travel to Europe and see how you're treated, if you have the guts to claim you're American. Not your president? Yes, he is! Ticked off? Good! What do you plan to do about it?
2
This government policy is criminal. CRIMINAL. Period.
2
Melania Trump also tried to deflect blame from her husband for these atrocious acts - This terrible trump policy reflects on her too.
3
Wonder if a journalist could coerce Trump into laying out exactly what kind of America he is shaping. What is his vision? We deserve to know this- and It would be best if we learned this first person,-from his own mouth
these children are better off seperated then with their parents who should not think that they have a right to the united States illegally. The parents only thought about themselves. To drag children through the night into unknown areas is not thinking very well.Who do you think is paying for all of this none other by us AMERICANS Citizens of the USA. These are low skilled people who eventually commit crimes once here here and are a huge social problem in entitlements. We already have a gigantic financial debt situation. We cannot afford to grant everone entry into the USA.
Trumps is caging women, children and babies to keep us safe. Meanwhile the people representing the greatest threat to all humanity live and work DC and we all pay for all this. When truth dies we all die with it.
3
Maybe the prez is fulfilling an unfulfilled dream and desire to be separated from his children ... by separating other's from their's.
3
Whenever a Republican Administration official starts quoting the Bible for any reason whatsoever, it’s time to worry. Oh, and vote.
I’m certain that Jesus Christ Himself would be appalled at what awful things people do in His name.
2
trump does not have one shred of human decency.
3
Unbelievable - this coming from a man(I use that word to describe his gender only ) and an administration that is ripping the moral fabric from this country. And his cohorts love it. All the while he is robbing us blind - what kind of fools have we become ? While they all get rich serving the corporate masters. November can not get here fast enough.
3
Trump needs to be separated from the presidency.
2
"One Trump administration official told The Washington Post that the harsh separation practices were meant to force Democrats to negotiate immigration laws more in line with the White House’s demands."
Democrats should tell Trump administration: "We refuse to negotiate with terrorists."
3
The use of children hostages to advance an agenda is what we have. Absolutely disgusting.
5
The latest Gallup poll shows 42% approval rating of Trump. Who are those 42% and is the “große Lüge” of immigration separation part of their approval?
1
Face it, Donald Trump is an overachiever. Just when you think he has sunk as low as it is possible to sink, He comes up with an even more disgusting idea. Truly amazing.
I also would like to know where all the "family values" zealots of the Republican party are hiding. I've heard very little outcry from our revered "Religious Right".
2
We MUST be better than this.
3
This mistreatment of children, this scarring of them and orphaning, is a good recipe for growing our own crop of MS-13 gang members.
3
What's happening is the result of racism--pure and simple.
4
Trump’s separating children from their parents is yet another indication that the United States is a country that has run amok.
4
Trump has implemented this policy because, well, that's the kind of person he is. Twist the arm until the other person cries uncle. And the base says "YEAH". Well I would like to point out the families coming to the border just want a chance. A chance for survival. A chance for a better life. A sense of safety and security. They aren't coming to take your stuff, rape the women, sell drugs, murder you , or take away your livelihood. They are coming to live and take the jobs that are available to them. You know the landscaping jobs, the field jobs in the orchards, the housekeepers, the mall cleaners, etc. You know, the jobs you are running to try and beat them to apply for. And I also can see very clearly what you would do to someone in their situation. You'd teach them a lesson. No threat, no action, no cruelty, from your point of view crosses the line. If there was a movement to implement free child care in the US like in other countries, and Trump insisted child molesters be the directors of child care centers to keep people from trying to use them, you'd gp along with that too. Because Trump is just the face of.....you.
2
And the Evangelical Christians still stand with him.
9
Even for self-indulged Republicans who don't much care about the mental health of someone else's kids, practically speaking this is a disaster. This is thousands and thousands of damaged people, growing up with uncertain futures. What's to become of them? What will be the effect of all that rage and bitterness we are sowing? Are we creating an entire generation of people who will hate us for what our cruel government did to them as kids, maybe even potential terrorists? And for what, to prove a stupid racist point that we don't want too many Latin Americans, and we'll glady ruin children's futures if that's what it takes to keep them out?
1
Trump painted immigrants with a broad brush, labeling them MS3 animals. He intentionally dehumanized them (even gang members are human) to justify his barbaric policy of ripping children from their parents and incarcerating the children.
3
How different is this from the Japanese Internment Camps? We are dealing with Hispanics. That's what's different.
1
Yes, there are deplorable people in the Trump White House and GOP Congress. Trump is evil personified.
3
Yes, the Republicans and must be held accountable for this barbaric, senseless and unlawful way of handling immigration in our country. Is this really the United States anymore where we are suppose to welcome the hungry , the poor..?
1
This is step one in the attempt to build a racist dictatorship.
4
The people whom Trump listens to. who run Trump are Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and those whom give him psychological support are Putin and Kim.
2
This is all too reminiscent of the early days of the Holocaust, when children were separated from parents and sent via train to holding places and subsequently taken to prisons to work and eventually to be killed. Read history. Connect the dots.
4
The cruelty of separating children from parents to put them in what are essentially concentration camps is unbelievable and unbearable. America was once a land of freedom but has fallen into the hands of a sick group. Trump himself seems to lack empathy and compassion, but he has always appeared disordered to the point of being a psychopath, and this is evidence of that. Those children are suffering unbearable pain and fear. They need love and hugs. They need their parents. This will haunt them for the rest of their lives, and it will haunt the USA long into the future. Americans, please save your country and your souls.
3
Do we need any more evidence that Trump is a monster in the making? That all of his campaign rhetoric about "Making America Great Again" was the biggest lie of all?
Trump is an amoral authoritarian who will keep pushing the limits until they are either gone or we take back the country from him and the Republican Party that set the stage for him in the first place.
Once upon a time there was a question about why didn't the "Good Germans" do anything about their megalomaniac. Americans now need to look in the mirror and ask themselves that question.
3
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?..."
3
Ripping babies away from their immigrant mothers is exactly what Trump fans voted for and applaud.
4
For some reason, this bothers me more than 'Nam or the Gulf Wars where many more people were killed. These are simple asylum seekers, not M-13 or ISIS, children for God's sake. The Donald and Jeff Sessions must be total sadists or sociopaths ... something I am not a Dr. Any fool can tell Donald and his crew of enablers are guilty of crimes against humanity. This is no longer the America I grew up in for sure. Once again I ashamed being an American. This used to be America:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Now it is a hateful lying orange Buffon bent on destroying all of the progress of the 20th century. Are we not better than this?
1
Given this nations current state of morality so called christian values are absolutely worthless. Love thy neighbors does not mean interpret verse to justify hate in the name of law. So much for the so called moral majority. Fact is they by way of their support of the enablers of such barbaric and ruthless actions are showing their true colors loud and clear. Hypocrites, all of them!
2
When Jesus said "Suffer little children," He did not mean "Little children suffer." We had trials in Nuremberg for this kind of crime against humanity.
3
Let's be clear, children are being used to force the opposition into agreeing to the asinine Great Wall of Mexico. When is this guy going to be impeached ? 1933 gets closer every day.
3
I have nothing to add; this sums up all of it in no uncertain terms. Brutally sad, but true. Amen, Mr. Blow.
1
Some things are wrong, intrinsically wrong. But some people, like Trump and Sessions, think you can make them OK if you just make the right noises come out of your mouth. But making the right noises doesn't make them OK. You might just as well be saying "Oink Oink".
1
This is needless and despicable cruelty. The ballot box option is 5 months away. We can't wait that long. Congress should act today if the moral cretins in the White House let this policy stand.
Sessions and Sanders quoted the bible in defense of the indefensible. The golden rule clearly trump's their lame excuse for cruelty: 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.' Their acts are violating the single tenet most common to all the world's religions.
How could they be so wrong? How can they be so blind?
2
Trump lying no longer deserves to be called news. However, deflecting blame for the scheme to separate children from parents was designed to serve as a deterrent belongs to him. Now that the obvious consequences of doing some callous and stupid comes to pass, Donald hates what he created and refuses to stop until he gets his wall funded. Cannot bring myself to refer to him as President.
2
Although difficult to comprehend fully America has sunk to a new low in how it treats immigrants, albeit illegal immigrants. No democratic country in the entire world takes babies away from their parents except the US. There is no trying to understand Trump's base or any attempt to find common ground with them because their support of this thuggish, ignorant, psychopathic President is inexplicable. Any Republican Congressman who supports this policy should be removed from office forthwith. Who are we becoming as a nation that lacks human values? I shudder to contemplate Trump's secret plan for changing America into a country that in his sick, twisted mind doesn't care a whit about anyone but the super wealthy. Vote his minions out in the midterm elections. Or else.
1
I could not care less what Melania has to say about this hideous travesty. Like Congressional Republicans, her fear of Trump is in full, unapologetic and pathetic view. If she can't influence her evil husband -- and it's clear she never has -- then what's the point of reporting her meaningless blather? Nothing she says will help reunite those traumatized children with their anguished parents.
3
The perpetrators of this epic cruelty must view the images of the little children thinking they are "rapists and criminals".
2
The Trump administration is evil.
Donald Trump and his family and his staff and his cabinet: These people are complicit in and perpetrators of evil. That makes them evil creatures.
The United States of America is lead by evil creatures.
Trump has 42% approval rating, close to his all time high of 45%.
The United States of America is a very sick place.
3
This is why the mainstream media can't be trusted. The Washington Post reported in 2015 that Mexican kids were being separated from their parents for months at time and interrogated by US authorities. (link below)
Separating kids from parents is terrible, but the practice is not at all new or unique to the Trump administration, and comparing it to the Holocaust is utterly ridiculous and disgusting. While Obama was president it went almost entirely unreported, but now, every liberal news org has it as the top story.
The media has done the same thing with Trump's immigration policies in general. Securing our borders, deporting those who breach them and creating more effective barriers were the stated immigration policies of every president in my lifetime. Centrist, reasonable policies which are suddenly being framed as a far right blueprint to facilitate the furtherance of the white race and keep everyone darker than Sinbad out of the country.
This is what you guys do. You selectively manufacture outrage.
Of course this is a heartbreaking situation, but the parents who decided to illegally enter our country knew they could face arrest, and that would leave their kids without parents for some time. They are the ones responsible for the suffering of their children.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexican-kids-held-for-...
Where are all the pro life people?
2
The ballot box next time!
Place the blame for these draconian policies directly on the shoulders of Stephen Miller. Look into the history of this sad, sad excuse of a human being. He is Evil Incarnate.
2
Some very nice well-meaning people still don't want to see how his actions resemble those of Hitler and his followers in the run-up to World War II, even though they loathe Trump personally. I have heard the argument that 'he who is the first to mention Hitler loses the argument,' but the comparison is becoming increasingly unavoidable. People simply don't want to believe that things can get that bad here, but look how eager ICE has been to torture families under the excuse that they are following the law. It is as if they have been waiting for someone to tell them it's okay to unleash their most aggressive tendencies. This is just the beginning. Don't soft-pedal it to yourself and turn a blind eye because it is simply too painful and inconvenient to acknowledge that we're in the fight of Our Lives.
1
Clearly we are beyond appealing to Donald Trump's better moral and ethical sense, or even calling him on it. But could it be that there is no political (or Christian) will to stop Trump and Sessions from what can only equal the most heinous behavior of despicable regimes? Americans are cowards.
1
America is drowning in the tears of children.
Have we truly forgotten these words?
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" - Emma Lazarus
1
I have written my representatives more than once. I volunteer with families who have children in the foster care system and know first hand the problems--long lasting ones--that occur. I told my representatives that adding to the insult is how stupid Trump assumes so many are or maybe knows how stupid they are when he blames, of course, Obama and the Democrats. I reminded them this was not an issue under previous administrations. Keep up your wonderful work.
1
And 15-20 years from now, will anyone connect this policy to the Latin ISIS that bubbles up?
3
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders stands there at the podium and repeats Trumps lie that this is the Democrats fault why doesn't ever reporter stand up and call her a liar to her face! If she persists then everyone wall out in protest of lies.
6
Trump is the most despicable human being I have ever been associated with. Unfortunately, there is no way I can avoid him, which what I would do if I could. One of the great mysteries of my life will be why did so many people vote for him? I will never understand it.
1
This policy is Trump trying to prove he can shoot a person on 5th Avenue in NYC and the base will support him. This is as close to the bottom of human behavior I've ever seen out of a public figure...much less the president of the United States. He wants his stupid wall and he's willing to do anything to get it. I hope the base, which includes a lot of grandmothers and grandfathers as well as parents are as shocked and appalled by this disgusting, inhumane, cruel policy as the rest of America.
2
thank you for expressing my rage.
1
Thank you, Charles Blow. It is unspeakable to inflict psychological torture on innocent children. And for him to say this is someone else’s fault? Is there any conceivable lower level moral depravity than this?
2
The GOP brought us the Iraq war; the GOP brought us torture; the GOP brought us one of the worst financial crisis in history; now the GOP brings us the inhumanity of seizing babies from poor migrant mothers whose only crime is seeking a better life for their family. What's next GOP, the reinstitution of slavery?
2
Preach it Charles!
But perhaps you could edit the online version of your powerful column and remove the details of the method of suicide. Experts say that such things should not be reported in the media.
He seriously could shoot someone and right wing media machine will try to blame Obama. This bubble needs to be popped.
1
These immigrants are desperate for a life in which they can raise their children in safety and peace. They are asking for that life here--the richest nation on the planet. The one that professes Christian values. The doctrine that admonishes us to care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan. Emma Lazarus must be spinning in her grave.
1
This Trump and Sessions policy is an abomination. The courts should outlaw it as cruel and unusual punishment. And no, Mr. Trump, the Democrats did not launch this. You did. Stop blaming other people for your lunacy.
3
In psychology we have a name for this- gaslighting. The American people are being gaslighted. Time to wake up people.
5
1933 has become 1934. If we don't stop it we will quickly be in 1939 which means concentration camps and war. Democrats can't show enough outrage. Our only hope is a complete takeover of Congress in November. Otherwise America and the world are doomed.
2
To Trump and his henchmen, cruelty is a sign of strength. The ability to inflict emotional and physical pain, with impunity, confirms their status as "alpha males." Trump is the perfect example of toxic masculinity--three marriages, multiple affairs, violence against women, violence against the poor and refugees, defying the rule of law, sneering at allies, and worshipping tyrants. Unfortunately, Trump's base is eating this up like ice cream. Trump's voters are living vicariously through him. They WANT a tyrant ruling the United States. We are in the hands of a megalomaniac. May God have mercy on us. #NotMyPresident #RESIST #ImpeachTrumpNOW
3
I know this is the NYT comment board and I should have an intelligent, thoughtful comment, but I don’t have much more to add but this: Donald J Trump is a narcissistic, cruel sociopath who has managed to surround himself with individuals who are just as sick and damaged, as well as, power mad and WEAK. From the ‘Evangelicals’ with their 9th century control freak dogma to the money grubbing donors and corporations who are obsessed with eliminating any notion of contributing to the ‘common good’ to the entire GOP and RNC whose destruction of our democracy (McConnell and Ryan) and support for an autocracy (McDaniels) and disgust for the rule of law (Nunes et. al.) - they are all sociopaths. Their hearts are black and their lies unbearable.
This has gone WAY BEYOND differences in policy. One political party is a clear and present danger to our democracy. And that party is the GOP. Straight up. No arguments left.
I thank God every day I am lucky enough to have a dual citizenship with Canada because this country is on its way to ruin.
2
Depending on how long these depredations continue, a new and expanded list of national disgraces will consist of slavery, the Native American genocide, the Japanese WWII internment policy, and The Trump Child Snatching Decree of 2018.
2
This policy is the calling card of died in the wool racists. They have the ability to see people who are not WASPs as less than - as objects.
Shame on us to allow these pondscum to turn the USA into the opposite of who we claim to be.
We are so in need of a leader with the courage to put a stop to this.
This policy plays to the base of the regressive party - where is the resistance?
Where are this generation's MLK? RFK? Caesar Chavez?
Shame on us!
1
"Make America Great Again" - The beginning of the ultimate solution.
"On 15 May 1940, in a document titled (in German) Einige Gedanken ueber die Behandlung der Fremdenvoelker im Osten ("A Few Thoughts about the Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East"), and in another "top-secret memorandum with limited distribution, dated 25 May 1940", titled (in English translation) "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", Himmler defined special directives for the kidnapping of Polish children. Himmler "also outlined the administration of incorporated Poland and the General Government, where Poles were to be assigned to compulsory labor, and racially selected children were to be abducted and Germanized.
Among Himmler's core points.
In the territory of Poland, only four grade schools would remain, in which education would be strictly limited. Children would be taught to count only to 500, to write their own name, and that God commanded Poles to serve Germans. Writing was determined to be unnecessary for the Polish population.
Parents who desired better education for their children would have to apply to the SS and police for a special permit. The permit would be awarded to children deemed "racially valuable". Those children would be taken to Germany to be Germanized. Even then, the fate of each child would be determined by the loyalty and obedience to the German state of his or her parents. A child determined to be "of little racial value" would not receive any further education."
3
There's a term when a political group abducts people to extract political gain (leverage).....its called HOSTAGE taking!!!
We usually call people that do such things terrorists.
Let that sink in......and if thats not bad enough, these hostages are children......who are we becoming?
2
This is all made worse by the fact that Melania immigrated (legally?) from Slovenia, primarily a white country. Of course, Barron was not yet born, so he was not ripped from her arms. Isn't her agenda related to cyber-bullying against children? We need a strong woman to protect against "border bullying" by her husband. Yes, we can uphold the laws without cruelty.
Vote them out! Vote them out!
MSNBC showed that the New York Post states that these children's concentration areas are "Trump's concentration camps".
Correct.
3
Would Trump have the same policy if these children were white, English speaking, evangelical Christians?
1
Beauregard Sessions III interpretation of the law only applies to the Southwest border is as racist as the administrations Muslim ban struck down by the courts .
1
Trump keeps saying there's a witch hunt, which led me to get onto Twitter and create a hashtag: #TrumpIsTheWitch. Now he goes and proves it himself by kidnapping kids, just like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. And Sessions looked like the happiest evil gnome in the world talking about kidnapping children. This is the grimmest fairy tale imaginable, which I didn't imagine happening in my country. #TRUMPISTHEWITCH
1
The next step is sending the parents and/or the children to concentration camps. There seems to be no limit to how low they will go!
1
I believe I read somewhere that Trump is using this heinous and immoral policy over Congress' (the Democrats, really) heads to force it to give him the wall and the other stupid immigration stuff he promised his soulless base. If that's true, he no doubt sees it as being a master negotiator. But what it really shows is a set of XY chromosomes (you can't call this being a 'man') with no heart, no soul, no compassion, no decency. Only darkness.
2
It's pretty obvious Trump is doing this to pressure Democrats to fund his wall. It's the same sadistic tactic used by torturers to extract information from their victims. If those being tortured don't cooperate, torture someone he cares about instead.
The American people put this guy in office AND elected a cadre of Republicans to Congress to support him. This indelible stain in on us! The rest of the world is watching us intently and wondering what has happened to turn us into the 21st century version of Nazis. I'm wondering too. Whatever the grievance, it does NOT justify this. We, as a nation, need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. We need to stand at the tombstones of our family members who died fighting for our freedom, and try to convince them that this is what they sacrificed their lives for. And while you're at it, try to convince yourself too!
1
He is a kidnapper.
3
There are babies being snatched out of their parent's arms, and there are teenagers being sent to their deaths, all because of Donald Trump. This is all Trump's doing, while the Democrats try everything in their power to stop him. Melania Trump, unsurprisingly, lied in pretending that this is somehow the fault of both Republicans and Democrats, when it is all Trump's fault. Barbara Bush put the blame squarely on Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has shown himself to be a most vicious racist, and appears he is intent on making things even worse. How many more need to die before the man is stopped? Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient was sent back to Mexico after being stripped of his deportation protections by the Trump administration. Manuel Pacheco had been an American grade school student who would have been eligible for graduation later this month if he had been allowed to stay. Instead he was brutally murdered only three weeks after being forced across our southern border. Manuel had lived in America since he was three years old.
"Children were especially vulnerable in the era."
"The government advocated" the separation and destruction of the "children of 'unwanted' or 'dangerous' groups either as part of the 'racial struggle' or as a measure of 'preventative security.'"
Taken from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, "Children During The Holocaust," detailing the Nazi Program of murdering children.
4
What would a serial adulterer know or care about the importance of family unity, of loving and caring for your children? What would a narcissistic sociopath know or care about the importance of community and social coherence? What would a lowlife con man, racist, sexist and xenophobe know or care about the values of fairness and openness in a free society?
2
Where are the protests from the Democrats when divorce courts separate children from their fathers?
1
The record keeping of who the children are and who their parents are is dismal. Many children have been 'misplaced,' and can't be identified to restore them to their parents. No DNA testing is being done to improve identification, which is a tragedy.
Some are only months old or are mere toddlers, and caretakers are forbidden to cuddle or comfort them. Imagine a three or four year old who is never held, never loved on, never praised. 'Heartless' doesn't begin to describe such atrocity.
Long after Trump is gone, this Holocaust of lost children and their heartbroken parents will be a stain upon our country. The Nazis rose to power nearly a century ago, but despite the passage of time, the memory of the evil they did is still strong and repugnant. This moment in American history will also be considered evil.
At the very least, DNA records of each seized child should be listed to be matched to parental DNA for those trying to find their beloved children.
Meanwhile, no one is asking what Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump have planned for these desolate children as time goes by and the government can't help parents find their children. How long will taxpayers be asked to pay to support them and send them to school?
Or will not allowing these children to go to school also be part of this administration's psychopathic cruelty?
2
“I don’t have a long treatise to issue here, no meandering argument. I am simply outraged beyond my ability to articulate it.”
I was waiting for Charles Blow to go in on this because he is my weekly Trump catharsis, but not even he could gather a rant enough to satisfy himself.
1
If you really want to end this phenomenon Charles, then let me recommend that you learn Spanish, and then publish an article in the Mexican media warning that illegal immigrants to the United States risk separation of families.
But they already know that....
1
Incarcerating innocent children, the most vulnerable of us, and refusing to provide them legal representation. This is what our once fine nation has come to. And so little outcry that this writer shudders. Had those children been blonde haired and blue eyed, none of this would be happening.
But understand this, Trump has just begun his internment camps by targeting the most vulnerable population he could find. We have a "president" who has said that he wants "his people" to "sit up at attention" any time they see him. He's said that the press is America's greatest enemy. He has told his rabid base that the KKK and neo-Nazis are some very fine people. Just where do you think this is going to end?
I have a pretty good idea. Congress will not impeach Trump regardless of Mr. Mueller's findings. Trump will then cancel the 2020 election (claiming elections are "rigged"), and install himself as dictator. One by one, "disfavored" groups -- Americans of Hispanic or Middle Eastern origin, to start with, then other minority groups, will be rounded up and put into internment camps. Trump will lie again, claiming it is for "national security." When this starts, those white Americans who oppose Trump will be too afraid to speak out.
And what about those of us who aren't white and Christian? Those of us who can do so should begin leaving this country while we still can. The fascist takeover has begun with the horrific treatment of these children, but it will certainly not end there.
2
I feel like what is happening to "children of color," at our border, is a horror that reminds me of concentration camps, and the screams of separating children that could be straight out of a "Schindler's List," movie.
Why are those Democrats in Texas who are opposing Cruz and Abbott not down at Texas Tent City protesting in person, or
even going on a "hunger strike," until these children are united with their families?
1
Disgusting in every way. Brutal, cruel, horrific, and terrifying. SHAME SHAME on these religious bigots. Jesus says, "Love One Another" not persecute each other. Where are the "pro-life" people now?
It breaks my heart every day that our country elected Trump, that he gets away with the most vile and abhorrent actions with nary a whimper from the GOP.
The 87% of Republicans who support Trump rely on FOX to inform them, they get the rest of their "information" at the local American Legion, the local paper and at church. They are fed a non-stop diet of garbage but hear nothing to contradict the stink. As long as the mainstream media can't dish out in kind what FOX promotes 24/7, expect more misery at the border and elsewhere all over the planet.
Thanks, "base". You really are.
1
Holding kids hostage isn't a negotiating tool one would expect from the greatest deal maker of all time. It's expected from a low life dictator. Kind of like using nukes to get a weaker leader to shake their hand...!
How can anyone who's watched him deal call him a genius?
2
45 is simply using the children as a chip
to extort that goofy wall. my guess, mexico
ain't paying.
2
All people who are arrested for breaking the law are separated from their children. You tell me how many incarcerated are in jail with their children.
Of all of the attacks on Donald Trump, this is the stupidest yet.
Really?
Deborah, turn off Fox News. This is a false narrative that they are using to justify this cruel practice. Look into your own heart. Is this who we are as Americans... Really?
1
Trump is a fascist and a liar. And Trump’s surrogates and careerist sycophants, Conway, Nielsen, Sessions, are disgusting, waving their bibles around to justify this twisted idea of using child abuse as a tactic for enforcing immigration laws. If this is the best idea that they can come with for dealing with illegal immigrants, they should not be allowed anywhere near positions of responsibility and governance.
4
This all begins with the propaganda of treating people as "other." It is a page right out of the Nazi playbook. Of course, the tactic works as the border agents are "just doing their jobs." Following orders. Just like North Korea too. Yes. Everyone should "sit up at attention." Then stand up and look in the mirror on the next election day. If you send these Republicans back to Congress, this is on you.
5
What's happening here is exactly what was done in concentration camps employing lies n tricks to separate families- disgusting. This man has no soul. We need to take back the House n impeach him
3
They would never be doing this if these were white people.
9
NO AMNESTY, Jail all illegal aliens until they are deported. They can stay with their kids in their country of origin. Kids don' t belong in adjust jails. Illegal alien parent do
1
This is Trump’s Trail of Tears.
Many of these children from Guatemala and Honduras are Native Americans. In Guatemala, there are at least 25 recognized tribes, and in Honduras, there are at least 6 tribes.
The little girl who had her diapers changed by other teenage migrants didn’t speak a word of Spanish. She spoke K’iche which is a Mayan language spoken by indigenous people in Guatemala. In other words, that little girl is a descendant of the people who build the great Maya Empire and who nearly died out when soldiers from Spain arrived in the early 1500’s, bringing disease and eventually a brutal conquest that killed close to 90% of the Maya population.
One of the most reprehensible acts during the history of our nation was the Cherokee Trail of Tears, when Native Americans were forcefully relocated from their ancestral lands to designated reservations.
Many Native American children in the U.S. were forced to give up their native language, culture and customs. Many were forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.
The window to learn language is small. Are we putting these children into households that speak K’iche or any of the other indigenous languages? Or are we removing them not only from their parents, but from their native tongue?
5
Of course separating children from their parents is harmful to the children and parents. It is also harmful to those who enforce such an immoral policy, those who literally rip the children away from the arms of their parents. Their dreams will be haunted forever by memories of their conduct. These people are just as stained, perhaps more so, as the self-important Washington suits who made up this dreadful policy. Everyone who goes along with Trump and his lackeys is eventually soiled by the association.
2
Cue the excuses from Trump supporters about how they parents brought this on themselves by being born in violent countries - without any hint that they have a problem punishing children for their parents' alleged sins. After all, these are "children" being separated from their parents, not fetuses - who are sacred and must be protected at all costs.
7
No end could possibly justify this means.
7
What I don't understand is why so many supposed Christians are silent on this issue. Self-serving hypocrisy and cherry picking "law and order" passages from the Bible are not likely to get them into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus wept.
7
They have been silent in every human tragedy categorized as racist, sexist and xenophobic. It's the vast minority which objects.
Cruel treatment of the powerless seems to be the goal of the Banana Republicans. I had no idea how many Americans would be energized by this policy. Sessions, Trump and their fans are stirring a pot of hatred, and the aroma is poisonous. Just like the lead and CO2 they so enthusiastically arrange for our consumption. Depressing, no?
4
The ballot box! Admins need to go to jail, this is state sponsored kidnapping with bail as the ransom.
2
To all the Evangelicals, Catholics or others who believe that Trump is doing God's work: you are wrong!
No true Christian, and no 'righteous' human being, can stand by and accept this level of cruelty. This monstruous cynicism from a monstruous man. This is not the work of God and Trump is not an instrument of God. So, snap out of it, and let those who have eyes, see.
7
I hope and pray that Trump's hideous baby snatching to attempt to bully Dems into doing as he bids backfires, blowing Trump's administration up. I wish more commentators pointed out that Trump is snatching babies and children in an attempt to impose his wishes on the country. He sure seems to think he gets to order this country to do his bidding and that's dictatorship.
Melania's puzzling op-ed on this topic added to the crazy.
3