A letter to Republicans I just posted on the Hill.
Well, I just got off the phone with both my US Senators and my Representative. I'm calling them daily until we can find a resolution to this moral crisis. Two things: Trump tweeted that it is the Dems fault, and equates immigrants with vermin who infest our country. In other words, like the Nazis in the 1930s, he is systematically working with his base to dehumanize people who disagree.
Then there's a memo from DOJ to ICE that calls for agents and judges to go through six weeks of training on 'mass migration emergencies, enforcement initiatives and management needs including staff shortages.'
Problem is, I object to being dehumanized, and I object to the cruelty of this policy. You want to be tough on immigration? Fine. You don't want to let these families in? Fine. But don't take the children away from their parents and put them in cages. That is a crime against humanity. Because they ARE human. As human as you.
And you know what, to the people who will reply to this with some flippant thing that says, in effect, that it is either a) the Democrats' fault, and/or b) the suffering of the children is the fault of their parents, I ask how you sleep at night. I'm looking at the picture of the little two-year-old girl crying as ICE takes away her mother, the photos of caged children living in the new Trump 'hotels' in southern TX, and a picture of rosaries confiscated at the border.
Those rosaries remind me of the piles of wedding rings the Nazis 'confiscated' from their victims before the gassed them and cremated them in huge ovens. I remember the railroad car full of shoes at the Holocaust Museum.
So, for those of you who are all frothy and worked up about MS 13 - that's a 1980s LA street gang whose members are all probably well into their 70s by now. Maybe it exists, but to say that ALL of these people seeking asylum are MS 13 is the same as saying because this granny smith apple is green, all apples are green. It just isn't so. If you think that imposing cruel and inhuman punishments against people who come to this country with hope in their hearts and ask for asylum is OK, if you think taking children away from their parents and putting them in cages is OK, think again.
Your party will not always be in power, and the arc of justice is moving. If camps are built and children die, there will be a tribunal, and those responsible will be put in the dock and held accountable for their crimes against humanity. We did not accept the excuse that "I was just doing my duty" at Nuremberg, and we will not accept that from these ICE people. So be careful. Stop this cruel policy. Nip it in the bud now. Be tough on immigration - that's fine. But do not forget the humanity of those who look at America with hope.
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