Detaining immigrant children: Cruelty is the policy

Cruelty against an individual is terrible. Cruelty against a child is reprehensible. Cruelty against an animal is a crime for which perpetrators often are jailed. Cruelty against a child is a much more serious crime. What do you call cruelty perpetrated by a government against thousands of children? An unspeakable crime.

Under international law, there are serious punishments for such crimes. But it doesn’t matter because the United States under every administration, and especially under this one, routinely violates international law and ignores the ruling of international tribunals.

Much of the media, many lawyers, academics of all stripes, and average citizens have done a good job in exposing the outrages. The separation of minors from their closest relatives. The material deprivations: no soap, no toothbrushes, no fresh air or exercise, and unsanitary conditions, inadequate health care leading to disease, lice infestations, and unnecessary deaths. Some observers have described the conditions under which the children are being detained as torture.

Yet, while the description of what is happening to the child detainees is invaluable, the analysis of why it is happening has for the most part been lacking. The issue has been generally been framed in terms of whether the detention disaster is the result of poor administration or lack of resources. The truth is neither. The cruelty is not a byproduct of anything, cruelty is the crux of the policy. Cold, deliberate, planned. The intent is not to take care of the human needs of children, the intent is to openly and visibly not take care of the children. To put the fear of God in the heart of the adults who bring the children so no matter how awful the environment they are fleeing from, they will know things on this side of the border will be worse and not dare to come.

Why did much of the media see the crime but miss the motive? The innocence complex that pervades so many Americans. To see the cruelty as the core of the policy would acknowledge criminal intent. That’s unthinkable. That’s not who we are. Sure. Ask the Native Americans. Ask the African Americans. Ask the Japanese interned during World War II.

Yes, it is tough to admit it, but that is who we are and have always been. That’s what we need to acknowledge if we are to transcend our history and transform the nation so that it becomes what we have always said it was.

Bury all the pretexts. For the decimation and dispossession of Native Americans. For the Mi Lay massacre in Vietnam for which no one was held accountable. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the theft of half of Mexico. For slavery and Jim Crow. For lynching and separate but equal. For McCarthyism and the mass persecution of gays and lesbians. For the election of a racist, dishonest, cruel man to the presidency, Donald Trump.

The glare of the media and the public outrage finally prompted the administration to try to change the “optics” by shuffling the children around, from one border concentration camp to another, from Texas to Homestead, Florida, maybe even to Oklahoma. But geographical evasion will not help. In Oklahoma, the plan to locate a detention camp was met by a demonstration led by a Japanese American woman born in an internment camp.

But the moral stench of the policy, worse than that of the detained children who are not allowed to bathe, follows from facility to facility. By spreading the children around, this administration is creating a detention  archipelago not quite as sinister as the Gulag but disturbing enough in a country that calls itself democratic, the land of the brave and the home of the free.

One last comment before I conclude. The sincere solidarity of African Americans with these Latino families and children has been deeply moving. In contrast, the silence the rationalizations of our so-called Cuban American Republican members of Congress has been revolting.

The criminality of the Trump administration has no bounds. How many more awful surprises does Donald Trump have in store for us? Try this nightmare scenario for size. It’s the fall of 2020 and Donald Trump is trailing hopelessly in every poll. He needs a miracle. How about a fire and fury air war against Iran that will kill tens of thousands of civilians, teach those pesky Persians a lesson, and rally enough Americans behind the terrorist-in-chief to eke out a victory in the anti-democratic Electoral College.