June 20 is World Refugee Day, designated annually by the United Nations to honor the "strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees" who are forced to flee their homelands. But this year, the international agency says the day has special significance as "a key moment for the public to show support for families forced to flee."
The U.S. president, however, will spend some of it defending his new "zero-tolerance" policy and his administration's inhumane practice of separating families who enter the U.S. illegally and criminally prosecuting them. That includes those seeking asylum who are fleeing persecution in their homelands.
This deplorable new practice means that adults who cross the border without papers are locked up as criminals in federal prisons instead of immigrant detention centers, as in the past. Their children are treated like unaccompanied minors and turned over to the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
So far, Trump's justifications include:
_ Blaming Democrats for having passed a law requiring it (no law requires it, or for not passing a law on border security that would mitigate the need for it. That ignores the fact that Democrats don't control Congress; members of Trump's own Republican Party do.
_ Characterizing undocumented immigrants as potential "murderers and thieves and so much else," observing: "You take a look at the death and destruction that's been caused by people coming into this country without going through a process." What evidence can he offer of disproportionate criminal activity by immigrants?
_ Saying he wants a "merit-based immigration system." There is one, but it does little for people seeking immediate protection against starvation or forced recruitment by criminal drug gangs under threat of murder. People without American families or high jobs skills for which there is a need here would have to wait decades to get immigrant visas _ if they ever could.
His Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, started out Sunday denying there was a policy to separate families at the border. On Monday she backtracked, telling reporters, "DHS is enforcing the laws as they exist on the books. As long as entry remains a criminal offense, DHS will not look the other way."
In the last six weeks, a reported 2,000 children have been taken from their parents after arriving from Mexico. But public outrage has picked up in recent days, as video and audio of separated children from a detention center in Texas made national news. The practice so deeply offends conscience and violates norms of fundamental decency that more than 60 percent of Americans polled say they oppose it.
That includes Iowa's evangelical social conservative Bob Vander Plaats, better known for his hard-line opposition to same-sex marriage. In a strongly worded June 18 New York Times opinion piece, Vander Plaats wrote:
"When agents from the Department of Justice, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Health and Human Services call immigrants names or tell a weeping mother, 'You won't have a family anymore' and 'You will never see your children again' _ as one agent reportedly said _ they do wrong. Cruelty is not justice. We don't need to be cruel to enforce zero tolerance. "
Good for him.
Good also for Courtenay Wolf, a local volunteer leader involved with Plymouth Congregational Church's RENEW/ESL program, which teaches English to refugees. She approached the church's Peace Committee for help with a May Mother's Day postcard campaign to Iowa's U.S. senators Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst. It requested immediate action to stop the separations and reunite the children with their families. She has continued the work with other churches.
And good for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who joined Mexico's attorney general and at least 16 others in calling the practice draconian, saying it "raises serious concerns regarding the violation of children's rights, constitutional principles of due process and equal protection, and the efforts of state law enforcement officials to stop crime."
Iowa's white-supremacist-admirer Congressman Steve King, however, says the holding facilities are not cages, though even DHS has characterized them that way. "There's nothing cruel about this," King tweeted. "These are children that are cared for with better care than they get in their home country."
Shame on him for suggesting that being snatched from their parents and held in detention facilities is better than the care they get with their families.
Republican politicians understand that campaigning on family values requires speaking out for them in cases like that. But just how far will that go?
Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has previously offered up Iowa National Guard troops to help defend the borders against illegal immigration. Asked if she would do so now to support the zero-tolerance practices, her spokeswoman Brenna Smith said Reynolds didn't want to speculate on a hypothetical situation, noting, "There have been security reasons to send troops to the border like combating drug and human trafficking." But, she said, "the governor would not use state resources, including the Iowa National Guard, to separate children from their families. As the governor said this morning, 'it's horrific that children are being used as a pawn in this situation.' "
The sentiment is appreciated. But the answer is not some of the harsh Republican-proposed bills like H.R. 4760, which curb immigration and crack down on undocumented immigrants.
The Trump administration and the Republican congressional majority have offered little reason to hope this could be a defining moment for a change to their approach. We've seen indifference meet mass shootings in the face of mass public protests. Trump clearly believes these issues have currency with his voter base. Only if enough Americans, including Republicans, show enough outrage to threaten withholding their votes at election time should we expect Trump to suddenly find God on this.
