Common Threads

Q: What do the following eras have in common?

• Nazi Germany
• Argentina under the military dictatorship of the 1970’s
• The current administration

A: Forced separation of parents and children.

Throughout history, despots knew that breaking up families was a key strategy to vanquish dissidents or undesirables. The Nazis separated children and parents to send them to their deaths in the concentration camps, either upon arrival or after torture, forced labor, or “experimentation”. The Argentine military junta  had children of the desaparecidos adopted by couples sympathetic to the regime. The current administration’s strategy of separating families as a deterrent to further immigration just follows the well-worn path.

It should be no surprise that the children suffer most from this separation. Psychological trauma in early childhood is linked to serious physical and mental conditions later in life. The jailers (I refuse to call them caretakers) have been instructed not to pick up or console children in their custody. What sort of person can be so heartless as to not attempt to comfort a crying child? Young children don’t have resilience and coping skills, so the scars will be deep and long-lasting.

Fortunately, citizens are beginning to wake up to forced separations. Major religious denominations are denouncing the practice. We need to keep the pressure on politicians and the administration to reunite families and assure that immigrants are treated humanely.