Disgusting
“We work for children, because children are the ones who know how to love, because children are the hope of the world.” – José Martí
***
I live in a country that throws children into cages and treats them like aliens from other planets. Last I looked, they were kids, many from other countries, but kids nonetheless. Some, sadly, may never see their parents again. Lost in the shuffle. Collateral damage, I guess. Collateral, just another modern word for people discarded by a society that has taken its eyes off what really matters.
In Trump’s world, it’s the price of doing business.
There’s the young boy who appeared before an immigration judge in Texas. Lost and unaware of where his parents were, he was forced to act like an adult he’s not, and to face a system that seems to prioritize analytics and algorithms while forgetting our humanity.
The boy, whose name is Angel, explained to the judge that “my mom and almost my entire family are here. It’s too dangerous to go back.” The Texas judge sternly looked at the kid and told him he did not qualify for asylum. Unbelievably, he asked the 13-year-old to choose between a promise of a $3,000 stipend from the Department of Homeland Security to return to Honduras without his mother and family, and a deportation order. Mind you, this is a child before a judge with no lawyer or adult to guide him.
Angel’s response should have been expected. He cried. With tears streaming down his face, he explained, “I don’t know … I have no one. I have nothing.” Ignoring the child’s pleas, the judge then issued Angel a deportation order and gave him 30 days to appeal.
Cruelty and inhumanity: Is that who we’ve become?
I have thought long and hard about the situation. It bothers me to the point of rage. How can we be doing this… to children?
We are deporting kids without their parents knowing it, or without advice from an adult or a lawyer who looks down and sees a child, still with the sweet smell of talcum and violets one has as a baby. These judges must NOT value children as they should, especially those who live in Latin America and other “shithole” countries, as the president likes to call them.
And surely, Latino parents baby their children for too long. In contrast, in the U.S., we push them off the ledge way too early, then order them to fly. Latinos are different. Many have faced life’s hardships. They’ve seen what this world offers those born on the wrong side of an economy that leaves so many behind as part of a plan. So yes, we want our kids to remain kids for as long as possible… because the joy and happiness that are natural to a child may soon be lost when they are hit in the face by a world dominated by devils named Trump and Miller, and others who see them as numbers to fill their cages and cells — each representing a dollar amount.
I wonder if that judge in Texas, who demonstrated no empathy or humanity for what the 13-year-old was facing, has any children of his own. Would he treat his child the same way as he just did a boy from a Latin American country, or is it that his child, much lighter in skin tone, lives in the GREAT U.S. of A., a country that seems to think the word “America” belongs only to them?
The great Cuban poet and revolutionary leader José Martí called it “Our America.” He understood something we seem to have forgotten: America is not merely the name of one country. It is a hemisphere, a family of peoples connected by geography, history, and struggle.
I have a right to be shocked by what’s happening in the United States, a place where I grew up and learned to love. A place where I innocently believed things were different. A place where I thought people were put first and everything else came after.
All lies.
The Great Seal of the United States features a bald eagle clutching a bundle of arrows and an olive branch. We might as well discard the olive branch and replace it with drones, bombs, and children jailed in cages.
Maybe the real test of America’s greatness isn’t how we treat the powerful, the wealthy, or the people who look like us. Maybe it’s how we treat a frightened 13-year-old boy standing alone before a judge, crying because he has no one and nothing.
I believe that José Martí had it right all along: the children are the hope of the world.
What have we become when we forget that?
