Incarcerating Children? Not in Our Name!

You’d think it would take only a modicum of humanity to understand the problem with imprisoning children for extended periods. And you’d think that even those who couldn’t grasp that simple point would recognize how doubly intolerable the situation is when the children deprived of their freedom haven’t done anything wrong.

Nonetheless, despite the blatant inhumanity of the situation, the United States government is taking steps to permit immigrant children to be incarcerated for extended periods, moving to vacate a two decade-long legal agreement designed to prohibit such abuse.

This is wrong. This is evil. And it is up to us, those of us who care about the lives of children and those of us who care about the despicable actions being taken in our name, to push back.

When it became known that immigrant children were being separated from their parents, The Clergy Letter Project, an organization of more than 16,000 clergy members from all across the United States, spoke out publicly. The Clergy Letter Project was founded to demonstrate two critically important points: that religious leaders supported the teaching of evolution; and that religion and science need not be in conflict.

Members of The Clergy Letter Project made it clear that separating children from their parents was abhorrent on both…