While American elected officials posted pious family-friendly Father’s Day messages on social media Sunday, about 2,300 children remained incarcerated by the U.S. government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch, stolen from their parents at the southern border with Mexico.
The families are migrants from throughout Central America and the idea of tearing children from their parents is dubbed the “nuclear option” for discouraging illegal migration into the United States. Once the families are divided, children and adults begin separate legal journeys. Some parents are being deported while their children remain behind. One infant was snatched from its mother while breastfeeding.
The boys are being held in a repurposed Walmart. No one outside government knows where the girls are.
President Donald Trump, whose administration implemented the inhumane policy, blames Democratic lawmakers for the situation, in keeping with his pathological dishonesty.
Inevitably, social media is making rampant comparisons with the Holocaust. In an age when the Nazi era is invoked just about every time a disagreement arises, this parallel remains troubling. As distasteful as the analogy is though, it does reflect a laudable desire to scream injustice in the loudest way.
“We are better than this,” critics say, or “This is not America,” both of which defy the evidence. As awareness increases about this horror, if Americans are not rallying on the streets in every city and town, we will know whether this is America or whether they are better than this.