Issues Under Fire: Trump Building Internment Camps for Asylum Seekers on Military Bases
When you love summer as much as I do and don't know how many more you've got left, (and let's face it, nobody does) the last thing you'd want to do, is waste it watching a world engulfed in conflict and crisis. You'd want to stop trying to make sense out of the senseless. You'd want to close your eyes and ears to the tears and pleas of the world's most vulnerable. You'd want to turn the world off for a while. You'd just want to walk away and tell the world you don't live here anymore. Well, that's what you'd want to do. But when you know the United States is building internment camps to house tens of thousands of migrants, many of them children, how do you walk away from that? You don't. Not even if it's your last summer.
What's happening this summer is an amazing story of how differently Americans define humanity. There are literally thousands of people from Central America trying to cross the U.S. southern border by any means necessary. The vast majority are claiming to be victims, refugees and asylum seekers from the failed states of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Can they be believed? That depends on how you define humanity. Although access to these migrants has been limited and tightly controlled by DHS and HHS, from the few videos and photos allowed, for the most part, they all looked like what one would expect victims of violence, refugees, and asylum seekers to look like. They looked poor, tired, hungry and scared. But mostly scared. And they should be. They should be very scared.
After paying some "guide" their last few dollars to travel with their children thousands of miles on foot, by rail like cattle, hidden in hot and poorly ventilated trucks, to be stowed away in a crowded safe house with dozens of others for days, sometimes weeks, they waited and prayed that some stranger would eventually show up to sneak them into the United States. It's a long, grueling and dangerous journey. One can imagine getting any sleep on a trip like this must be tough. And a woman finding privacy to relieve herself or take care of other personal needs while huddled in cramped quarters with a lot of men must be awkward, to say the least. So, to be caught by border patrol, ICE agents or local law enforcement authorities shortly after arriving must be terrifying. If they can't get a humanitarian to hear their case, they know that long, grueling journey was for nothing.
Now, they sit in cages, separated from their children. They wait for food and water to be handed out, while they wait and wonder where their children have been taken. Then they wait some more while their questions are ignored. At this point, they're doing a lot of waiting and wondering. They wait for a kind face or a friendly gesture from the armed guards. And that can be a really long wait. Armed guards aren't paid or trained to be kind or friendly, let alone humane. So, they wait some more for someone to listen to their story and wonder if that someone will believe them. After all, it's not easy to prove you've been the victim of violent crime, death threats or political and religious persecution. And since gang and domestic violence have been removed as grounds for asylum, while they wait, they wonder how much longer must they wait and wonder.
So, while these migrants sit in fenced cages waiting for food, water, someone to tell their stories to and someone to tell them where their children are, I'm waiting and wondering too. I'm waiting to find out how long the Trump administration will take to solve this humanitarian crisis. I'm wondering if the Trump administration even understands America is facing a humanitarian crisis. The administration seems satisfied arguing, the advanced warning of immediate criminal prosecution and family separation would be the consequence of entering the United States illegally was humane enough. The fact that migrants aren't being shot on site is an act of America's benevolence. And compared to the way Israel defends its borders from Palestinians, perhaps migrants from Central American should consider themselves lucky to be deported with their families intact.
Bottom line: Everyday this story rages on without a humanitarian solution, is another day of repeated history. And, its because this story is repeated history, is all the more reason why it must be observed carefully and documented accurately. After all, this is the summer the United States withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council. So, I want to be able to tell people this is the summer I saw the internment camps being built to house migrants by the tens of thousands with my own eyes. I want to be able to say this was the summer I saw what a prison for young children looked like. But mostly, I want to be able to say this is the summer the President of the United States said judges, courts and due process was just making a mockery of good immigration policy. Podcast below.
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