Attorney General Sessions. Photo: Gage Skidmore–Flickr.
[Commentary]
From across the country, leaders and editorial boards are denouncing the Trump Administration’s cruel and inhumane policies carried out by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that are separating families, condemning vulnerable women and children to violence, and turning our backs on who we are as a nation.
Cardinal Daniel DeNardo, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said: “Families are the foundational element of our society and they must be able to stay together. While protecting our borders is important, we can and must do better as a government, and as a society, to find other ways to ensure that safety. Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”
In an editorial, Alabama’s Anniston Star said: “Jeff Sessions’ worldview is a stark canvas of evil versus good that allows no wiggle room, no gray area, nothing but grimness. He sees people not as people, not as humans worth protecting and families worth keeping intact, but as data points and potential criminals. He is the U.S. attorney general, an Alabamian named after Confederate heroes, and he is embarrassing this great nation. His decision this week to alter U.S. policy for asylum eligibility stains America. We are not, and must not be, a nation that turns away immigrant women and children battered by abusive husbands and fathers, or by immigrants fleeing rampant gang violence seen in other lands. Our flag and national morals stand against such behavior.”
Meanwhile, Iowa’s Des Moines Register in an editorial said, “It’s un-American to rip apart immigrant families. Why aren’t Grassley, Ernst speaking out? This isn’t acceptable … As Americans, we will someday look back on this period as a stain on our nation’s history … If we allow cruel treatment of those who are vulnerable simply because they are outsiders, we will eventually think nothing of treating our citizens the same way.”
Texas’s Corpus Christi Caller Times in an editorial said: :Why we can’t let Trump’s zero-tolerance immigrant family separation policy define us. We are a nation that seizes small children from their parents and keeps them apart under cruel conditions. We are that kind of people.
…If the purpose of separating children from their parents is to send the message that this is a cruel country where no one should want to move, then mission accomplished. We are the only ones who haven’t absorbed the message. We are in denial.”
Spanish language newspaper La Opinión, “Una orden despiadada” (“A ruthless order”), condemns Sessions’ order stating that being a victim of “private violence” such as domestic abuse or gang-related, are not grounds to be eligible for asylum.
The article read: “The Trump administration is resorting to a definition of a refugee that defies international standards to prevent the entry of women and children who are at risk in their countries of origin…Sessions’ decision will cost many women their lives. The cruelty of the immigration policy does not respect family values or international treaties.”
The Spanish language newspaper El Nuevo Herald’s editorial read in part: “The government of President Donald Trump maintains his tenacious battle against immigration, specifically immigration from Latin America. The latest strategy of that battle – a battle with racist overtones – consists of separating the children who arrive with their parents to the border between Mexico and the United States…More than undocumented immigrants, they are refugees, according to the United Nations definition…As refugees, they should receive international support instead of rejection. The ruthless family separation policy betrays the most endearing American values. Family unity is sacred, and the government’s strategy of separating children from their parents to discourage immigration is an inhuman act that goes against the nation’s principles. The separation policy must be eliminated immediately.”
Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, in a Washington Post op-ed said: “The Trump administration is taking us back to a time when women’s rights were not considered human rights and cementing a new set of values in our name: that we are a nation that no longer wants to uphold our long-standing commitments to protect refugees, that we no longer value our own rule of law, and that we are willing to turn our backs on our fellow human beings and look the other way when our help is most needed.”
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