4/17/21

By Josh Rubin

A mother, in the company of an advocate, went to one of the “shelters” where young children were locked inside. Among those children was the mother’s son.

Her son was being kept there under a policy that is now keeping about 20,000 children in lockup, most of whom have family here in the US. New locked facilities are opening nearly every day, on military bases, in convention centers...

Her son was having a very hard time. You would think that once the woman proved she was the child’s mother, that it would have been easy. Put the boy into his mother’s arms. But that is not how our “system” works. Our system insists that a child such as this unhappy boy is at greater risk with his mother than with the staff of an institution.

What is behind this idea? What makes a system that would lock children in facilities where vast rooms full of cots echo with the weeping of children during the night shift? What system can justify rules that say that even a sympathetic volunteer is not allowed to hand a phone to a child to make a call?

I know it sounds bizarre. I know it sounds like we would never do such a thing. But we are doing it, and we have done it before. At Tornillo. At Homestead. And now, at a dozen places. Deserts, cities, military bases.

Back to the story. An argument ensued. Without advocacy, without TV cameras present, it is unlikely that this stunned and frightened child would have been handed over to his mother. But there was advocacy. There were cameras.

And mother and son were reunited.

Back to my question. Why are we doing this? Because the same kind of derangement of thinking that can shut down a border based on the lie that certain kinds of foreigners will threaten us with a disease we already have—that derangement can also convince many that those same people, of that certain type, cannot love their children as we love ours. That we, saviors, must protect them from their families.

What is the name of that derangement?

Racism.