5/25/21

By Josh Rubin

I have learned from my friends en la lucha that language matters. That “catch and release” summons images of fish, not humans, and makes a harrowing process sound like a sporting choice. We have watched as the Biden administration has been using its editing pencil to put its lines through “alien,” settling for unaccompanied and illegal and irregular, no doubt recognizing that the old term too easily suggested scaly things with bulbous heads and glowing fingertips.

Here in our Witness at the Border group, Larry Cox lets us know of his anguish when detention centers, prisons, are called shelters. He reminds us, as we all should always remember, that shelters do not need guards to prevent escape.

Let me take on a term that we have been exposed to in the last 24 hours. Tender, as in tender age (or aged) children. Although it may sound cannibalistic and predatory, that seems like an unintentional, though unfortunate, association. My concern with it is not the classification in its positive sense, which suggests vulnerability and a need for loving care, but with its negative. But first let me put it in context.

Yesterday, after a storm of stories that came flying from the black hole that is the children’s prison at Fort Bliss, the government stood up a defense of the place. Not only didn’t they acknowledge stories of abuse and neglect, but they congratulated themselves for what our country was doing for those children, certainly, they puffed, a relief from the traumas sustained in the world of their flight.

But, a few hours later, out of the spotlight, they canceled the plan that had been bandied about for some weeks: a plan to use the blameless facilities of the tents in the Fort Bliss desert to house tender age children. Now, besides referring to vulnerability, this is a classification made on the basis of age. It roughly divides the world of youth into two groups, one before puberty, the other, post.

We would have to wonder what it is about a place like Bliss, what it is that makes one too tender for it, and another just tough enough. Which brings to mind something that we heard about. We heard reports that, early on, there were very young children there. But the records did not bear this out. Now, the records could have been wrong. But there is another possibility.

Many Latin American and indigenous children are robbed of stature by the hunger of their childhood. Many are smaller than we might expect. Many are fragile. Many are vulnerable.

In fact, it makes me want to reserve the word tender for the feelings that arise when an open heart sees need, sees pain. Is there an age when we stop needing that sort of tenderness? Do we lose the need for loving care the moment we turn 12?

Fort Bliss is no place for children. Of any age.