Family Separation at the Border In an article written by Karl Vick for Time magazine, he shows us a little about American values regarding the issue of the exodus of families on the edge of the border. Presidents have many jobs, and one is telling us who we are. For the first 240 years of U.S. history, at least, our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. The Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson etched onto the Declaration of Independence were given voice by Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama. Donald Trump doesn’t talk like that. In the 18 months since his Inauguration, Trump has mentioned “democracy” fewer than 100 times, “equality” only 12 times and “human rights” just 10 times. Trump embraces a different set of values. He speaks often of patriotism, albeit in the narrow sense of military duty, or as the kind of loyalty test he’s made to NFL players. He also esteems religious liberty and economic vitality. But American’s 45th President is “not doing what rhetoricians call that ‘transcendent move,’” says Mary E. Stuckey, a communications professor at Penn State University and author of Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. Instead, with each passing month he is testing anew just how far from our founding humanism his “America first” policies can take us. And over the past two months on our southern border, we have seen the result. On April 6, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero tolerance” policy toward those crossing illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. In mere weeks, over 2,000 children were taken from their parents and held, alone, sometimes behind chain-link fences, under the cold care of the federal government. In Texas, three “tender age” centers were set up for detained toddlers and infants. Incessant wails of “Mamá” and
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“Papá” were heard on audio from a Customs and Border Protection detention center. An advocate told of a child being led away from her mother crying so hard she vomited. In a case mocked by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, the child taken from a parent was a 10-year-old with Down syndrome.
nervously asking that since November 2016. And while Trump ultimately capitulated on the forced separation of children, his new order suggested that families would be detained not only together, but perhaps indefinitely. For many Americans, the forced separation of immigrant families left them looking into the void from which the brutal policy emerged: the dark space left by the The reality on the southern U.S. border was words Trump does say. so difficult to reconcile with Americans’ vision of themselves that Trump did not even In the first days of the Trump administration, make the effort.The President’s first mention the State Department moved to drop two of the order to separate children from their words–just and democratic–from the list of parents was a May 26 Twitter post calling it qualities the U.S. sought to promote beyond “horrible” even though he had personally its borders. authorized it. “Go to the United States, that’s the place,” was what Ivars Kalnins’ parents heard in The attention part certainly worked. A week the displaced-persons camp where the after his return from the June 12 summit with family lived for five years after World War North Korea’s dictator, family separation II, having fled their native Latvia ahead of the dominated the national conversation like no Soviets. Kalnins’ father, as a city official, was a other political story since former FBI chief target for the Communists. The young family James Comey was shown the door.A steadily ended up in the southwestern Wisconsin building wave of revulsion washed over the hamlet of Burton, sponsored by the families political spectrum, from MSNBC to the of St. Paul Lutheran, where my father later editorial page of the Wall Street Journal to preached. Kalnins’ dad started out as a hired Franklin Graham and into the White House hand, doing the chores for local farmers living quarters, when a spokeswoman for the that Mexicans now do, for half the wages a First Lady said she called for “a country that local would demand. His son, Ivars Kalnins, governs with heart.” grew up to be a lawyer and ardent Trump supporter. Which leaves us facing a question: What kind of country are we? The world has been Continues on Page 18...