A child who does not want to be separated from his mother. Would he look so hopeful if torn from her arms?

Passing the Buck

What the Trump administration does is somebody else’s fault.

It was almost the same as after the 2016 election. In a state of shock, when the news began to break about refugees from the violence in Central America having their children taken away from them by ICE, about Sessions’ misguided “zero tolerance” policy for “illegals” crossing the US southern boarder, we obsessively sucked up every piece of news on the subject we could. National news, local news, BBC.

Just this spring we’ve endured snubbing the G7, sucking up to Kim, and now flauting the United Nations standards for human rights in such a cruel and needless way, ripping children already traumatized by losing their homes and precipitous flight through strange places to a strange country from the arms of their parents. Our defense mechanisms, like ignoring the national news and acting locally, carefully constructed in the months since November 2016, have broken down, and we’re torturing ourselves with news again.

If he weren’t our representative in Congress, the blather that Ken Buck added to the general rhubarb of excuse-making, fibbing, and buck-passing (get it?) would be insignificant. But he is our representative, so when he got on Greeley radio KFKA earlier this month and said this, it was a bitter pill:

I think it’s unfortunate when families are separated. But it’s also unfortunate when families make a decision to break the law [by coming here.] And there are consequences in this country. We are a country of rule — a country of laws. And we believe in the rule of law. And I think it’s just a sad reality that there is going to be some unfortunate separation of individuals when crimes are committed. I was a DA for years, a prosecutor for 25 years. And I was involved in making sure that those who are more dangerous and violated the law were separated from the rest of society. And that’s part of what we do

Nobody reading this has likely failed to fact-check the party line that Buck was parroting. We all know that presenting oneself as a refugee on our borders is not a crime. We know that there’s no law that requires children who arrive with their parents to be interned like unaccompanied minors. Buck, like his president, like his attorney general, is passing the buck — trying to pretend, to make us believe, that it’s someone else’s fault that they are committing crimes against humanity.

So is there any shred of truth in Buck’s words? Are these refugees — not the children, we’re pretty sure they’re not to be feared, but their parents — so dangerous that they must be separated from the rest of society?

Our sister publication, Coloradopols.com, has documented the situation at an ICE detention center in Aurora where these “dangerous” people are held. They are generously sharing the story with WTF Colorado. What follows is adapted from a much longer article by mamajama55, who participated in a protest on June 14 and wrote the story of the people she met.

Aurora, Colorado. June 14, 2018.

Two protesters at the for-profit ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colorado. Marguerite, left, and Cristian are addressing the crowd at a rally organized by Families Belong Together. Photo by Amalthea Aelwyn, used with permission

Cristian from Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, pictured at left, is a vibrant young man with a wide smile. He is a student leader at his college. But Cris is a Dreamer, and if DACA protections are rescinded, he could be deported at any time.

He tells the story of how his mother carried him and his young sister over the border, and how she has worked ever since to maintain the family.

“My mother has been on that waiting list (for citizenship) since 1999,” he said. “My whole family pays local taxes, we pay into Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, we pay Federal taxes, local taxes, sales taxes. We pay for programs we will never benefit from. We’re helping to take care of our nation’s children, of our senior citizens. We are not a burden. The real burden is the moral burden Trump is imposing on this country with these policies.”

Marguerite, from Colombia, said,“ I see this building [GEO Group’s for-profit ICE detention center] behind you and it pains me. It hurts. Because I would have to wait in line to see my son. He waited for months there to be deported back to Colombia. There is no illegal human being on this earth. The only way we can become illegal is to break our laws and hurt each other. But we’re not doing that.”

Cristian, and Marguerite are speaking to a diverse crowd of about two hundred people, gathered in front of GEO group’s vast, windowless, grim ICE facility in Aurora on June 14, 2018, to protest the Trump administration’s new policy of separating families who are crossing the border.

I [mamajama55] am part of this protest. We are here because we feel that we must “do something” to stop the atrocity of tearing families apart and incarcerating the young children of families who come here seeking asylum.

Over 11,000 children have been separated from their families while crossing the southern border since March, according to NPR. About 46 kids a day are being torn away from their parents. This is not including the unaccompanied minors who were already showing up at the border by the thousands.

One Protest Among Many

People rallying to say that Families Belong Together. Photo by Amalthea Aelwyn

The Aurora ICE protest was one of 60 around the country, organized on the Action Network by grassroots groups to say that Families Belong Together. There were protests nationwide on June 14, including in Denver at Montview Presbyterian Church, and in Pueblo. House Democrats protested in DC, and in New Jersey, legislators paid a surprise visit to a detention center, demanding to speak with the incarcerated fathers on Father’s Day.

We need to keep protesting. We cannot let this pass. We’ve seen this before. Dehumanize a group, lock them up, take away their property and their children. It is not the law. It is not “Biblical”. It is a deliberately cruel policy which the Trump administration has put in place to satisfy his base, since they’re not getting a “big, beautiful wall”. [Trump rescinded the policy on 6/20/2018.]

Trump’s cruel policy of breaking up families and locking up children demeans and dehumanizes people, traumatizes kids, and debases our ideals as Americans. It is a form of state terrorism. It is what totalitarian governments do to control the population. It must stop. The private prison industry’s obscene profiteering from human misery must stop. We, the American People, those of us who still have a conscience, must not be complicit in this.

Do what you can.

Here are some ways that each of us can continue the struggle to return America to the path of Freedom and Justice. Please help. There are many legal questions to be settled, and the families have not yet been reunited. Let’s make sure the shattered families aren’t swept under the rug.

Contact these organizations for local and national actions, or to donate:

ACLU — providing legal counsel to families and children at the border, lawsuit to stop separation policy

Families Belong Together Action Network

Stopseparation.org focused on the tent city for kids in Tornillo, TX

Live video from Ursula TX activists protesting outside a detention center. Congressman Beto O’Rourke is there.

America’s Voice network

National Domestic Worker Alliance

NAACP — lobbying Congress for the Keep Families Together Act

Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
Casa de Paz
Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network — RMIAN
Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition
AFSC & Coloradans For Immigrant Rights

Colorado Rapid Response Network — Immigration (for ICE seizures of people — information about legal rights in English and Spanish)

One More Thing

This is WTF again. Thanks again to Coloradopols.com for this compilation of resources. Please do what you can. And here is one more thing we can do.

We can end Ken Buck’s term in Congress. In CD4, Democrats and unaffiliated voters together outnumber Buck’s base. We do not have to be represented by this evil little man, this toady to a dictator. There is an election this year. We can all vote against him. We can get our young sons and daughters, who may not think a midterm election matters, to vote against him. We can talk to our friends who don’t vote because they fear for their undocumented relatives, and persuade them that the only safety left is in action.

This November 6, let’s “pass the Buck.” And flush twice.