It’s well established that children who experience extreme stress at a very early age sustain lasting psychological damage and frequently physical problems as well. Children of pre-school age and even in diapers are now appearing in immigration courts due to Donald Trump and Jeff Session’s draconian and inhumane Zero Tolerance policy. Recently even a one year old separated from his parents was in court. Associated Press:
Then it was the child’s turn for his court appearance before a Phoenix immigration judge, who could hardly contain his unease with the situation during the portion of the hearing where he asks immigrant defendants whether they understand the proceedings.
“I’m embarrassed to ask it, because I don’t know who you would explain it to, unless you think that a 1-year-old could learn immigration law,” Judge John W. Richardson told the lawyer representing the 1-year-old boy.
The boy is one of hundreds of children who need to be reunited with their parents after being separated at the border, many of them split from mothers and fathers as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance policy.” The separations have become an embarrassment to the administration as stories of crying children separated from mothers and kept apart for weeks on end dominated the news in recent weeks.
Critics have also seized on the nation’s immigration court system that requires children — some still in diapers — to have appearances before judges and go through deportation proceedings while separated from their parents. Such children don’t have a right to a court-appointed attorney, and 90 percent of kids without a lawyer are returned to their home countries, according to Kids in Need of Defense, a group that provides legal representation.
The worst part of this, is that the kids who are presently going through the court system are at least doing that. The others are, to all intents and purposes, missing in action. The cost in human misery is immense and it’s all on account of Sessions’ racism and Trump’s need to amplify a campaign talking point about safe borders and keeping all the murderers and rapists out of the country.
Melania famously trolled the left with her “I really don’t care. Do U?” coat. What she was doing, consciously or unconsciously, is stating her husband’s attitude towards the suffering of these kids. He is oblivious, she is cruel, and these children are in a world of hurt.
