Donald Trump has stacked his agencies with loyalists who are not only as shamelessly racist as he is, but also as devoid of basic human decency. That’s why they’re there. Example: Ken Cuccinelli, the new acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who decided to go on television and say that the migrant who drowned along with his baby daugher in the Rio Grande only had himself to blame.
“The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because that father didn’t wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion,” Cuccinelli falsely asserted to CNN, “and decided to cross the river and not only died but his daughter died tragically as well. Until we fix the attractions in our asylum system, people like that father and that child are going to continue to come through a dangerous trip.”
But reports state that Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his baby, Valeria, only attempted to cross the river because they’d become desperate. Under Trump administration policy, asylum-seekers have been forced to wait for weeks, sometimes months, on the Mexican side of the border in order to present themselves and ask for protection. The family had reportedly been waiting in Mexico for two months already.
The administration could do away with this metering policy right now. Instead, people like Óscar, denied their right to ask for asylum, become desperate, and are then forced into making more dangerous journeys. Then when tragedies happen, there are no sympathies, no condolences, no thorough, good-faith re-examination by the president and his administration on how we can better improve our system. Instead, officials like Cuccinelli blame the victims, like this dad and child who came here for a better life, and instead lost their lives.
