Editor’s note: This commentary is by Genie Rayner, of Bennington, a writer and freelance editor who is a member of the Bennington group of Rights and Democracy. This was first published in the Bennington Banner on June 28.
[I]t took Donald Trump 13 days to sign the executive order that countermanded the xenophobic policy he set in place to separate children from their parents as they sought to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. Most of the families are seeking asylum from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – countries one TV news anchor declared among the most dangerous in the world today. Is it any wonder so many people decide to make the treacherous journey north, even knowing what awaits them?
Asylum-seekers are not illegal immigrants, but resources are needed to process their papers. According to Businessinsider.com, “Over 10 thousand migrant children are [already] in U.S. government custody at 100 shelters in 14 states.” Now, today, there are 2,300 more. We have heard the audios of these 2,300 children, all of whom were taken from their parents’ arms – some even from their mothers’ breasts – crying in terror, fear and confusion.
Trump’s executive order is only temporary, and there is no official plan in place to reunite the families. According to the New York Times, a judge has given the government 30 days. Given the way this government works, though, I think it’s likely that many, if not most, will never find their loved ones again.
Can you imagine being a young child – some of whom are so young, including infants and toddlers, they’re being held in “tender age” shelters – who doesn’t speak the language of those around him or her? And the official “holders” are not allowed to comfort them or touch them? Not even a simple hug for a crying child.
Now Trump has reversed himself again, calling for “immediate deportation [of new immigrants] without due process.” And the man who has made immigration reform such a prominent part of his so-called presidency has now said Congress should wait until after the November mid-term elections to address it. In the meantime, children and families continue to be torn apart from each other, with little hope of seeing each other ever again.
On June 26, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim ban in a 5-4 decision. Trump, of course, calls this “a tremendous victory,” and says he’s sorry but they can’t come in. I can just imagine how he’ll turn this into policy at our southern border, too.
When U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his policy to stop and separate southern migrants, he quoted from Romans 13: “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.” You know what else it says, though – among other things – in Romans 13? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Scripture passages have been used to justify the government’s policy that “repatriated” Native Americans and forced their children into schools to “Americanize” them. Slave families were victims of scripture, the Nazis used scripture, the Inquisition and Crusades were carried out on scriptural foundations, Japanese-Americans were gathered up and placed in internment camps, and the Boers carried out slaughter and apartheid in South Africa using scripture as their permission. Do we see a pattern yet?
We cannot pull out bits and pieces of scripture when and how it suits our agenda. Proof-texting is, by definition, always out of context, and there’s almost always an opposite viewpoint.
Yet White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders followed Sessions’ lead when she said that “the separation of immigrant families is biblical.” She really should know better, since her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, is an ordained Baptist minister.
In fact, if people have to use scripture passages to rationalize immigration policies, it would be better to consider this from Leviticus: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt …” (Lev. 19: 33-34).
Yet this country is not a theocracy. We are a democracy. There’s a reason for separation of church and state. CNN’s Chris Cuomo has said that “the only aspect of this practice that should be of biblical proportions should be the outrage.”
The image of Sessions’ stomach-turning smile of glee when he announced this horrible policy will stay with me for a long time. The heart-wrenching sound of the children crying for their mothers and fathers and families will stay with me much longer.
