1/24/22
By Sarah Towle
WITNESS RADIO: Episode 10:
Is Family Separation What We Voted For?
Happy New Year, one and all!
I hope this new episode of Witness Radio finds you well and ready for another year of action, reminding the powers-that-be that migrant lives matter, too.
Witness Radio's Executive Producer, Camilo Perez-Bustillo, and I kick off our second season by reflecting on the Biden administration's one-year record on border and immigration, framed through the civil rights legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We start with the question, What would Dr. King have said about one of the greatest human rights crimes in recent US history: family separation?
A civil rights lawyer and human rights scholar, Camilo was at ground-zero in El Paso when the practice of separating migrating families was piloted by the Trump administration before being rolled out across the borderlands as policy in April 2018. The burden of responsibility for the crimes then committed now falls to the Biden administration, which faces a Sophie’s choice:
Acknowledge the irreparable damage done to these families by the US government and negotiate a legal remedy -- at the risk of sparking the further ire of Trump World and the GOP prior to US mid-term elections?
Or shield the US government from a settlement and, in effect, defend government-sanctioned torture in the form of separating families.
On January 5th, the Biden Administration staked its claim to a position. Tap that play button to find out where it landed.
Click Here for Episode Transcript
But before you go, I have a huge favor to ask...
Please help us to keep Witness Radio coming to your inbox each month. We are still short the funds needed to cover our production costs. And although the world is awash in podcasts these days, there's no other show -- that we've been able to find, anyway -- that is focused exclusively on border and immigration issues, and with the international perspective we two US-expatriates can bring. If each of our current listeners -- that's you -- encourages just one other person to subscribe to Witness Radio's Patreon page, we'll be able to go on providing critical insights and analysis on a matter we believe should be a voting issue for all US-Americans. Not just those who see migrants as a scourge and immigration as a threat.
Thank you in advance for this additional support!
Sarah
Host & Director
Witness Radio
Relevant Reading:
Justice Department Halts Settlement Talks With Migrant Families
Separation of Families on the U.S.-Mexican Border as a Form of Torture
“You Will Never See Your Child Again”: The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family Separation
SEALING THE BORDER: The Criminalization of Asylum Seekers in the Trump Era, Hope Border Institute Annual Report, January 2018
Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Amicus Brief by Stanford University psychologists and others documenting all the evidence that proves family separation is experienced by its victims as torture