Children don’t belong in any cage, not today, not yesterday and not ever. What the Trump administration did was cruel. Separating parents from their children to instill fear so the parents don’t try to seek a better life is wrong. For a country supposedly built on Christian values and a current president taking photo ops with the Bible in tow, these kinds of actions are the furthest thing from the teachings of Jesus. Then again, Jesus was Jewish, not a Christian.

Zero Tolerance

On April 6, 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a statement about his administration’s new zero-tolerance policy on immigration. The policy was put in place after the United States saw a surge of new immigrants crossing the border illegally. In the statement, Sessions states that the Department of Homeland Security had seen an increase of 203 percent in immigrants trying to cross from Mexico into the United States.

The policy was so controversial at the time that even the first lady decided to speak against it. Ironic when your husband was the one implementing the practice in the first place, although the first lady was not without controversy herself when she visited a detention center. She wore a $39 jacket with the words “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” on her way off the plane and after the visit. Her spokesperson denied any hidden message, but President Trump tweeted otherwise. 

In a rare move, the government had acknowledged at least 1,712 migrant children might have been separated from their parents before the zero-tolerance policy took place. An estimated 4,368 children were taken away from their parents under the zero-tolerance policy. This makes it over 6,000 children separated from their families.

Tender-Aged Children

There were stories all over the news about how some children had to take care of other children, about how some facilities only had mattresses on the floor and foil for blankets. Of the children that were separated, 1,033 were under 10 years old and 103 were under the age of 5. 

The youngest child separated from his parents was a 4-month-old baby. This baby was too little to stay in detention, so he was sent to foster care for five months. His father was sent to a detention facility, then deported.

This child was part of the “tender-aged” category. Tender-aged children are children who are under the age of 13 or with special needs. The baby was one of the few that could not stay at the detention center, but children as young as 1 year old were in the detention centers. 

A 3-year-old girl was separated from her parents for nearly 10 months. Her father had been deported a week after turning himself in with the child to Border Patrol.

Trauma and Sexual Abuse of Children

Over 4,500 complaints were disclosed to Congress in 2019. These were sexual abuse complaints from immigrant children while under the U.S. government’s care from 2014 to 2018. The number of complaints spiked during the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. It is not clear how all complaints were resolved.

One of the beneficiaries of the zero-tolerance policy was Southwest Key Programs, a nonprofit that has received almost $1 billion since 2015 from the U.S. government. Two of its employees were charged in Arizona for sexual abuse against teenagers they were supposed to oversee. 

Seven children have died under the watch of the Trump administration. Before this, no death had occurred in over a decade. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General released a report about the emotional toll parents’ separation had on them. “Intense trauma” and “fear,” “feelings of abandonment” and “post-traumatic stress” are some of the terms they used. The report also lists children that would cry “inconsolably” when they separated from their parents.

Under Pressure

As the administration ramped up their policy, pictures of children in cages circulated on social media. News outlets were reporting on it. I remember reading about the co-host of “Fox & Friends,” who made the statement, “these aren’t our kids” when talking about the children in cages. He later rebuked back his comments. 

Not long after that, I was reading some comments on a local KCCI report and saw many comments about how it was “unfortunate” these kids were in cages, but at least they weren’t our kids, that it was their parent’s fault for bringing them over illegally. Parents have tough choices to make. The parents that risk the journey into our country are desperate. Desperate parents that are seeking a better life for their children. 

Due to all the negative feedback, President Trump blamed former President Obama for the policy, which was a false allegation. Obama did not have this policy in place; the separation of children from their family was only during the Trump administration. In June 2018, Trump signed an executive order to stop his policy of family separation. Yet the family separation continued. About 1,100 families were separated after the executive order was signed. 

Almost Done

All of this seems a lifetime ago amid the global pandemic we are going through right now. It is precisely for this pandemic that the Trump administration was ordered to release the remaining children in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) custody at detention centers by July 17 or explain why they must keep the children detained. The release orders come after COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly at two of three ICE detention centers. 

I know these terrible things have already happened. Many families will forever stay broken by an administration that claims to value family. Some children may never recover from the trauma experienced at the hands of the Trump administration. As a country, but more importantly, as human beings, we can’t allow the eradication of human rights and humanity itself simply because someone was born on the wrong side of the border; if you can vote, vote.

Next time you decide who best represents your values, ask yourself, am I the kind of person who puts children in cages?