Trump’s
“Zero Tolerance” Immigration Policy – A Manufactured Crisis
By Joanna Williams
Today over 2000 migrant children
have been separated from their parents and sent to foster homes, camps and
housed in cages. Outrage over the separation policy has been building for
months – on June 30th hundreds of thousands of Americans protested
in over 700 marches across the US.
How
did we get here?
- In March 2017, just weeks after Trump’s
inauguration, administration officials began talking about separating families
at the border as a deterrent to illegal immigration.
- Then in April 2018 Attorney General Jeff
Sessions announced a “Zero Tolerance” policy calling for prosecution of ALL
individuals who enter the US illegally, which ESSENTIALLY ENSURES the separation
of parents and children since minors cannot be kept in criminal detention
facilities. Many of the families
apprehended at the border come from Central America fleeing gang violence,
domestic abuse and poverty and are attempting to seek asylum - which is not illegal.
Truth
or Lies? Trump has said his
administration is simply “following laws that were given to us and forced upon
us by the Democrats”. Clearly untrue: there
is no immigration law requiring family separation and Democrats, in the in the
minority in Congress, did not “force“ Trump to mandate family separation. Referring
immigrants for prosecution is not a new policy, but under previous
administrations families were detained together, sent back immediately or paroled
into the country. Further proof that no
law was involved in the Zero Tolerance Policy is the fact that Trump reversed
it with an executive order on June 20th.
What
is the effect on the children separated from their families?
Colleen Kraft, M.D., the president of the
American Academy of Pediatrics, explained the damage to children that can be
caused by the Zero Tolerance policy. “Separating children when they are really
young can do irreparable harm and create what is known as toxic stress.”
“Young children have this stress response,
which increases their cortisol and their fight-or-flight hormones in response
to fear. When these children are exposed to scary things like traveling from
their home countries to the U.S. or being separated from their parents, they
remain with those chemicals high in their system. And they have no adult to
buffer their stress, so they remain on red alert all the time.” This, she added, can cause long-term damage,
including developmental delays in speech and the ability to develop social bonds.
If it continues, it can be a lifelong problem.
Reuniting the families – where are we now?
On June 27th a federal judge ordered
the government to reunite children and parents:
In
14 days for children under 5
In
30 days for children 5 and over
As of this writing, more than 2000
migrant children still remain in government custody after being separated from
their parents at the border, more than a week after a court ordered the Trump
administration to reunite families.
The Trump administration is
currently in the process of reuniting families, in part by using DNA tests to
confirm whether they are related. But the government has yet to return children
to their parents in immigration custody which means the families split up are
only being reunited if the parent agrees to deportation (giving up all rights
to an asylum claim) or if the child was released to another relative in the
U.S.
This is a Manufactured Crisis, doing exactly what it was meant to
do: Create utter and complete chaos with no thought of the harm to children and
families.
