I'm honestly not sure how to start this article, so I'll do so with an apology. On behalf of the United States of America, I apologize to the children and parents who are being forcibly separated throughout the nation at the hands of our government. I apologize because, while well-meaning people scream “This is not our America!” the truth is that we have always had racial strife and crises, and the notion that family separation is as 'America' as the slave auctions before the civil war necessary to end that abomination can be maddening to comprehend for those who may have lived a life of privilege and luxury.
My great fear, here, is that there is something more sinister afoot with these forced separations. We know children are being forced to defend themselves in immigration court – a ludicrous proposition, but it's being done, anyhow. We also know that parents are being deported back to their home countries without their children.These children are being left in these Internment camps emblazoned with President Trump's face, our flag, and quaint little inspiring quotes to reassure them that everything is going to go well for them. It is all eerily reminiscent of the Japanese Internment during World War two, when imprisoned Japanese-Americans were taught about the freedoms they were denied. As noted Japanese-American internee George Takei intimated, even during that horrible yet all-American incident he at least wasn’t separated from his parents. Most interestingly, according to The Hill, Department of Homeland Security head Kristjen Nielsen cheered, “We operate according to some of the highest standards in the country. We provide food, medical, education and all the needs of the child.”
Most of this struck me as just ordinary yammering on about how 'great' the government is treating these kids we've imprisoned in what sounds, to any citizen with a shred of competency with respect to the Holocaust,Concentration Camps. That specific term has been disputed, however,with people of Jewish and Roma descent cautioning that the use of that term may be premature, so I'll refer to it as an Internment Camp for the time being. The Trump administration is certainly copying Nazi Germany’s deception tactics, with one of lawyer Michael Avenatti’s clients reporting that they were told they would be “taken for a bath” — just before the kidnapping occurred.
With that said, as a teacher, I was instantly interested in what the education these children were receiving might consist of. I got to searching. What could possibly be hard to find about it? Aside from a stray Twitter post I cannot even retrace, which suggested that they were being taught about the way the United States Government works, I found nothing. No curriculum, no corporate statement, nothing. Maybe I just failed at Google-Fu (And Bing-Blade, as well), but I couldn't find anything substantial of note.
What I did find, however, was an Esquire Magazine interview with the imminently-legendary Jacob Soboroff, featuring many of his photographs from within what the evidence compels me to call the Casa Padre Internment Camp. Painted on the walls inside of this prison are portraits of Trump, the White House, and the quote, “Sometimes by losing the battle you find a new way to win the war,” confirmed by Brainyquote to have come from the President, himself. There is a clear pattern of indoctrination on display, here, and it leads my recollection to another “This is not our America!”-defying event in our history.
Dating back to as early as British settlers had set up missionary schools in the Americas, efforts to “civilize” the Native American population were notorious for precisely the same sort of behavior that the Trump Administration is putting forth, today. General Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in Pennsylvania, famously argued that America, though re-education camps such as his, had to “kill the Indian to save the man.”
When you add up the Trumpian idea of “winning the war” with the incidents of lost children, it paints a horrifying picture: Imagine these children being separated from their parents for good; imagine them being placed in the homes of people with “good hearts” who want to “civilize” them.
Yeah, it's a pretty disturbing mental picture, so let's take a step back.
On June 18, 2018, Ginger Thompson ProPublica released audio recorded from inside of one of these camps. There is no question that trauma is being inflicted directly and deliberately on these children, as their overseers – Our government and, thus, our people, my friends– make unconscionable jokes about desiring a conductor for the chorus of crying children. Yet buried in this article was a line that made me wince with understanding: One girl's aunt claims that the authorities “at the shelter have warned the girl that her mother, 29-year-old Cindy Madrid, might be deported without her.” In other words, while the mother is sent away, the child will beheld captive by the United States Government. As Sarah Kendizor of The Globe And Mail wrote, “No one seems to know where the girls and the babies are,” at times.
Even at this hour, at 8:45 on June 18th, as keys klack, JohnathanChait from New York Magazine makes clear that the Trump administration is engaging in hostage-taking tactics – or, as one might call it, terrorism. He claims, “Literally:The children are taken from their parents in order to leverage the behavior of adult migrants. And figuratively: The administration is leveraging the suffering of these families in order to pressure Democrats into capitulating to the administration’s policy demands.” And he's right. Notice how Trump often wails about how we need to “change the laws,” but we all know that Stephen Miller, Trump's pet neo-Fascist, is crowing about how this policy was his idea? Well, to be fair to Mr. Miller, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was in favor of using family separation as a deterrent back when he was in charge of the Department of Homeland Security in 2017. I guess he might feel bad that his cruelty was not uniquely his?
Let's return to the core of this issue: It is clear that Trump is not only using the tactic of traumatizing children as a bargaining chip in the political arena – the textbook definition of terrorism,by the way, being, “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.”- but his administration has literally kidnapped children and sent their parents to a foreign country while exposing them to what seems to be pro-American propaganda, all with little evidence of any plansto actually re-unite the children. The harm that has been done can never be repaired, but it can be manipulated because children are, if anything, excellent at adaptation. Where are these children really destined to go? Are we stealing children away and indoctrinating them to solve the burgeoning need for farm labor once filled by illegal immigrants?
America, this isn't an illusion; this is the reality, and it's time to do something about it.
Editorial Note: Due to various publication considerations, this article is being published on 6/19/2018. In the time since this was written, the situation has continued to gather public attention, with governors (including my own in New York) refusing to deploy National Guard resources to assist in these practices. MoveOn.org is organizing a June 30th action.
Jesse Pohlman is an author from Long Island, New York. You can find his website at www.jessepohlman.com.