3/12/21

By Josh Rubin

How to make an unaccompanied minor:

1. Use a policy that relies on people’s fear of disease to pretend that migrants are a contagion threat to prevent families with children from seeking asylum. This forces families to send children across the border by themselves.

2. Separate children from their relatives when they present themselves at ports of entry, based an the assumption that those relatives are more of a danger to those children than the well-documented damage inflicted by spending time in Border Patrol stations and private prisons.

3. Collaborate with criminals to extort migrants seeking to cross the border, at prices that force families to choose who goes and who must stay behind.

4. Accept campaign contributions from private prison companies who influence policy to fill expensive beds with children.

How to stop making unaccompanied minors, and end the “crisis”:

1. Don’t do 1-4 above.

2. Respect the rights of families to migrate to save their lives.

3. Address the root causes of forced migration by accepting that your own country’s policies are driving it.

Photo: Allan Mestel, Homestead FL