Over the last week, the flurry of news items connected to the plight of immigrant children in the United States came at a dizzying pace. We had Attorney General Jeff Sessions announce a “zero tolerance” policy that would immediately separate children from parents if caught attempting to illegally cross the border. That was followed by news that under the administration of former president Barack Obama, the government lost track of close to 1,500 immigrant children who had crossed the border unaccompanied by an adult. Then we had President Donald Trump blame Democrats for a “horrible law” separating immigrant children from their parents, when, in fact, it was his own administration that announced the policy earlier this month.
Next, we had Ivanka Trump choose this week of all weeks to tweet a picture of herself kissing her two-year-old son with the caption, “My <3! #SundayMorning.” The tweet led to accusations that the President’s daughter was “tone deaf” to the public outrage over the way her father was ripping immigrant families apart.
There were some real crossed wires in this story, not only because Donald Trump blamed Democrats for policies that were actually his but also because anti-Trump critics blamed Trump for practices that had taken place before he was elected.
That Trump would blame Democrats for a policy of his own making wasn’t surprising. But the ease and speed with which his detractors were quick to blame him for practices that pre-dated him is serious cause for concern. It suggests that just as Trumplodytes shun facts and information so, too, do those critical of Trump. It shows that we are so eager to point fingers at Trump and his cronies for ruining everything that we are becoming as tone deaf to facts as his supporters can be.
We know that we all suffer from confirmation bias, which leads us to read news stories through the lens of our predispositions. And it is true that the timing of the ACLU report on the missing immigrant kids during the Obama era dovetailed with new Trump administration policies that also showed a deep disregard for the well-being of immigrant children. But the public response from the anti-Trump camp to the news about suffering of immigrant children highlighted a disturbing consequence of the Trump era that went well beyond inattention to detail.
The outrageous treatment of young immigrants was taken as a sign of the moral depravity of the Trump administration. And expressing concern over these young lives allowed those of us who like to imagine ourselves as morally distinct from Trump to feel good about ourselves. But what if this moral posturing is an empty move? What if it is more about performing an ethical position than truly embodying one?
What if Trump’s total lack of a moral compass has led us to be too smug about ours?
Perhaps the biggest oversight in public response to the immigrant children news from last week was the fact that this wasn’t really news at all. For those of us who have long followed the outrageous ways our nation treats refugees, immigrants and the undocumented, there was simply no surprise to the stories of how families are ripped apart and brutalized once they enter the system.
The history of the way that undocumented immigrants have been punished in our system is long and complex, but suffice it to say that it has never been a good one. Within that legacy, the treatment of immigrant children is also consistently distressing. As a point of reference, recall that in 2010, Arizona passed SB 1070, which required police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there was “reasonable suspicion” they were not in the U.S. legally. If a parent was apprehended, they were separated from their child immediately. There were reports that police officers carried teddy bears in the trunks of their cars to offer to distraught kids.
In 2012, the American Immigration Council released a report that highlighted the fact that “one of the many consequences of an aggressive immigration enforcement system is the separation of children, often U.S. citizens, from their unauthorized immigrant parents.” They explained that offering precise numbers of children and families separated by immigration enforcement is impossible, but they did offer the following data:
- A 2007 Urban Institute study on immigration worksite raids found that, on average, for every two adults apprehended in a worksite raid, at least one child is impacted.
- The DHS Office of the Inspector General estimated that more than 108,000 parents of U.S.-citizen children were removed from the U.S. between 1997 and 2007.
- And in an astonishing report, statistics released by DHS revealed that 204,810 parents of U.S.-citizen children were removed from the U.S. between July 1, 2010 and September 31, 2012, accounting for nearly 23 percent of all individuals deported during that period. This is likely an underestimate since parents are often reluctant to reveal that they have children.
Dividing families has been the policy norm in this country, and there is little doubt that Trump is clearly poised to make it worse. But the hand-wringing over immigrant kids only reminds us of the fact that until Trump came after these kids, no one really seemed to care.
So, the only real news in the story of the breaking apart of immigrant families is that the general public is finally paying attention. Over Memorial Day weekend, Twitter was abuzz with hashtags like #WhereAreTheChildren, #MissingChildren and #FamiliesBelongTogether. Certainly there is some real political work that can emerge from folks paying attention to a crisis they had previously ignored. But what kind of attention emerged in the wake of these hashtags?
It is hard to shake the feeling that the outrage over the story of these children was simply the other side of the coin to Trump’s demonizing of them. Both gestures treat the kids as objects that can be used to further a political position.
Treating others like objects has two basic modes: controlling, policing and containing on the one hand, or infantilizing, patronizing and feeling sorry for on the other. In the first mode, the human as object is a threat. In the second, they are a helpless victim. In both cases, they lack agency, dignity and the ability to define themselves. These are kids and their stories are tragic. It makes sense to be upset, but how and why are we so upset?
The question we have to ask, then, is do we feel good about feeling bad for them? And, even more importantly, do we actually care about them or do we care more about shaming Trump?
Shares