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State House Updates

It’s Time to Stop Looking Away

I normally focus on state government issues on my state rep website. But these aren’t normal times, so an exception is in order.

Of the many violations of social, legal, ethical, and moral norms committed over the last 2.5 years by the Trump administration, none is worse than the separation of child refugees from their parents and the imprisonment of those children in for-profit detention facilities where education is no longer available and sexual abuse is common.

Earlier this month, the federal government’s heartless policy separating and caging children again made national news when the administration announced it would dramatically cut aid to detention centers that house migrant children who arrive in the United States unaccompanied by their parents. The Homestead Detention Center is the largest of those facilities.

According to the Miami Herald, “The budget cut means detainees will no longer get recess time, nor access to any sort of education. Going forward, they will no longer be assisted by attorneys, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Officially, children as young as 13 are detained at the center, although a recent court filing suggested kids as young as 8 were held there.”

On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered in soaking rains outside the Homestead Detention Center in Homestead, Florida to urge the federal government to shut it down and reunite the children with their families. While supporters of the child separation policy like to point out that there is precedent in the US for interning so-called “enemy aliens” in detention facilities, these children and their parents are not our enemies. They are immigrants who in many case are also refugees driven out of their out countries by criminal gangs and dictatorships. Also worth noting is that as cruel and misguided as our policy of interning American citizens of Japanese descent was during WWII, children were never separated from their parents.

What is happening at Homestead is nothing short of a moral outrage. It is short-sighted, cruel, and a slap in the face to every American who cherishes the memory of US soldiers liberating children and other concentration camp victims during WWII. It is also a slap in the face to every American who believes that we are the rescuers, the heroes, and “the good guys”.

To help raise the profile of this issue even more, every candidate in our first-in-the-nation presidential primary is being asked to take the Homestead Pledge—a promise to visit Homestead before or after the first presidential debate in nearby Miami on June 27.

To date, signees include: Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Eric Swalwell, Beto O’Rourke, and Marianne Williamson.

But candidate pledges alone won’t close Homestead. What will close Homestead are Americans who refuse to look away. People with the courage to see children as children, instead of as harbingers of an invading horde. People who let our elected officials know every day that our America is still capable of opening its heart to the victims of hate, oppression, and greed—but will sit in harsh judgement of those who feed the fires of cruelty and division.

#ShutItDown #FamiliesBelongTogether #EndChildDetention

MORE: Why it’s time to shut down Homestead

David Meuse