The kids will remember

4 min readJun 21, 2018

Rosaries seized from migrants at the the border. Photo by Katie Orlinsky

As I write this, our government is still imprisoning children (including babies). The United States is “warehousing” kids in cages, in flimsy tent cities, in abandoned Walmarts and “tender age facilities”. These kids are some the most helpless among us. They were brought here by parents fleeing poverty and violence, and until yesterday it was the Trump administration’s policy to separate kids from their parents even when their parents are legally seeking asylum. While the President has now reversed his policy of tearing these children away from the one constant they have in their lives—their parents—over 2000 kids remain in limbo. The kids are voiceless and the Trump administration is doing its best to hide them from us, forbidding access to the internment centers and even keeping congressmen from visiting them. The administration does not want you to hear these kids’ stories and seemingly has no process to reunite children with their familes.

But the children will not forget. No mother or father who has had a child ripped from their arms will forget. Amongst the kids who have been locked up for days or weeks or months, there are future writers, poets, and artists who will one day be able to take the injustice of this experience and turn a mirror onto America. I expect we will be ashamed of what we see.

We can disagree as to how we should handle asylum seekers and people who cross our border, but separating children from their parents was monstrous by design.

This was no accident. Donald Trump’s first pronouncement as a candidate after he descended his escalator was declaring Mexicans “rapists and murderers”. He peddled fear and whipped his crowds into anti-immigrant frenzies and his red hats — modern brown shirts — drink in his poison equating all immigrants with violent gang members: “animals”. The red hats don’t see themselves as locking up children, they see themselves as protecting the country — but they are just railing against their deepest fears. Trump conjures nightmarish hoards coming to kill and drug us, ignoring the reality that many of the people who cross our borders harvest our food, cook it, care for America’s children, and build our cities. The red hat’s fear has twisted the country into a grotesque bizarro version of itself, where cabinet members do exactly the opposite of they have been charged to do — Orwellian is too weak a word.

We see evidence of this every day. I am the least Mexican-looking Mexican. My mother was Irish and my skin is white, but they come after me because of my name. The hate is mimicked by schoolchildren. I am still horrified afresh at the memory of my 10-year-old recounting his classmates surrounding a Latina teacher’s aide and chanting “build a wall, build a wall, build a wall.” Later they would just chant “Trump, Trump, Trump” — the name has become a synonym for hate. If I, a white-skinned Ivy League CEO experience this, I can only imagine the everyday experience of people who are darker-skinned and less fortunate than I. After two years of this cruelty, Trump refers to immigrants as an “infestation”. This is his justification for caging 5-year-olds.

The red hats delight in the symbol of the wall and the idea of turning America into an isolated racially-pure fortress, seemingly unaware of the futility of walls in a connected world or the reality of today’s multicultural multiracial America. If we ignore the problems of our neighbors, cut them off, despise and antagonize them, their problems will only grow worse — as will the tide of good souls seeking shelter from misery, poverty and violence. And of course we will still need them; the American economy desperately depends on migrant and seasonal labor.

I wonder how people who call themselves Christians can justify this.

Trump’s red hats are digging in. Trump in reversing the separation policy promised to be “just as tough” by caging entire families instead of isolating children. This is not toughness. This is weakness and fear personified. We are the majority. Your voices need to be heard. I urge everyone who cares about these kids, who are under lock and key, to keep talking about this, to keep pressing your representatives for answers. We can help these families. More importantly, register to vote. Register your friends and family to vote. Volunteer. Don’t be complacent. Together we can start to vote away the people who propagate this evil in our name.

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How to help:

These organizations are on the front lines helping the helpless:

Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services helps immigrant families in Texas. — https://www.raicestexas.org https://www.facebook.com/raicestexas/

Border Angels works on immigrant reform — https://www.borderangels.org

KIND (Kids in need of Defense) represents refugee kids caught in the legal system providing them with high-quality representation — https://supportkind.org

Again, if you don’t have the means to contribute to one of these organizations, please make sure you are registered to vote and make sure your friends and neighbors are registered too.