Homo homini lupus est: trauma and child abuse in U.S. refugee policy
Families of fathers facing deportation, community organizations, and allies, gathered outside Immigration Court at 26 Federal Plaza in NYC on June 15, 2018, to raise their voices calling for an end to deportations. Photo by Erik McGregor/Sipa USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.
Four men with red-brown skin and dirt on their clothes carry an
enormous dog to the vet under the noon sun of a heat advisory day. The index is
105 F and climbing, and the weather forecasters are warning of “dangerously hot
weather” for at least the next few days.
“Looks
like heat stroke,” the receptionist shrugs, and the assistants don’t appear
hopeful. An offer of Spanish translation is met with disinterest by the staff. The
men and the Great Dane-mastiff-something mix — unresponsive, folds of slack
skin hanging heavily — are told to go “in back” and disappear through a thick
door.
Earlier
this week, the local school board announced its most promising graduates,
picking out not even a handful. One is going to receive a “full ride” to an Ivy
League university, another a $10,000 per year scholarship to the best school in
the state. And one, in the space allotted to future plans, is going to install
floors and hope he can remain in the country.
Two
years ago, that student, Willian Ayala Esperanza, whose maternal surname means
Hope, left his family in El Salvador and made his way with a friend to the U.S.
southern border, where he presented himself and petitioned for asylum and the
right to join a family member in the United States. Another “unaccompanied
minor” in the Central American Kindertransport, he was held in a detention
center for months until he was released.
The law still allows – allowed — minors of any status to enroll in
school, and he has been studying while working and sending remittances to
support his parents, awaiting a judge’s decision that will determine if he can
stay, legally, or be deported. The school quickly recognized him as a prodigy, but
he refused, his teachers say, the offer of a college-level math class in order
to concentrate on learning English.
The
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) governs U.S. immigration. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, whose name
doesn’t mean hope but reflects her parents’ love of their immigrant roots, said
a few days earlier, "Illegal actions have and must
have consequences. No more free passes, no more get-out-of-jail-free
cards."
The children are being kept in cages, or as the Department of Homeland Security prefers,
“cage-like” conditions.
She has been defending the government’s new policy of
separating accompanied refugee children from their parent asylum seekers. The
children are being kept in cages, or as DHS prefers, “cage-like” conditions,
where congressional officials and reporters have witnessed things such as
youngsters struggling to change the diaper of a baby they don’t even know, and where
the official rule is “No hugging.” At least one separated father has committed
suicide.
While
the dog is being treated, Donald Trump, president of the United States, is on
the television, decrying previous policies that have allowed young persons to
apply for asylum and study in the meantime.
Speaking to a business group, he declares, “As a result of these
loopholes, roughly half a million illegal immigrant family units and Central
American minors have been released into the United States since 2014 at
unbelievably great taxpayer expense.”
DHS
is not hurting children, he says, it is protecting them. “Child smugglers
exploit the loopholes and they gain illegal entry into the United States,
putting countless children in danger on the perilous trek to the United
States.” Lamenting lax laws on the other side, he concludes, “Try staying in
Mexico a couple of days, see how long that lasts,” which is inexplicably met
with applause.
What
would deter someone under threat from leaving a region with the highest murder
rate in the world?
It’s
not loopholes but hurdles and insurmountable barriers that thousands of
families are trying to cross as they negotiate an obtuse refugee system that is
increasingly using trauma and punishment as a deterrent. But what would deter
someone under threat from leaving a region with the highest murder rate in the
world? What would stop children from attempting to join their families, or
parents sending their children out of a war-zone, or attempting to return when
they’ve been deported without their American-born kids, who have sometimes been
fostered or adopted by strangers?
“I
hate people like that,” says a woman about the men with the dog. What? “Leaving
a dog outside in this heat.” But it looks like the men have been working in the
sun, too. “They have a choice. You always have a choice.”
We
saw that movie. We know the story. We see the signs. We’ve lived through it, or
at least heard about it from people we know who were there. People still living
and bearing the scars in Israel, in Alabama, in Bosnia, in North Dakota, in
Rwanda. People who were, are, stigmatized because of the way they look, the
language they speak, the job they do, their orientation, their ability or
disability. People who are being treated as less than human.
It’s
been studied and analyzed and laws have been put in place and the signs are
supposed to be recognized so that it never happens again.
It’s
a day later, also noon, also hot if not hotter than the day before. Breaking
news, the TV announces. President Trump, with Secretary Nielsen by his side, is
signing, on camera, an executive order to keep refugee families together.
“We’re going to have a lot of happy people,” he smiles.
Over
at the vets, they don’t want to say if the dog made it. But the stony look on
their faces tells the story.