This was written by Sophie, one of our summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
Collectively, we are complicit. Collectively, we have signed off on the detention/internment/concentration camps at our border. Collectively, we have agreed to family separation, to children in cages, to pictures of a drowned child still clutching to her drowned father. Collectively, the United States of America has agreed that those people, those children sleeping on concrete, crammed into cells, denied access to basic hygiene and not receiving adequate food, do not deserve basic human rights.
This story is not new. It is not breaking news. It is not as if America suddenly woke up to discover that children were being housed in detention facilities. Anyone, Republican or Democrat, who follows the news has known of these camps since Trump implemented his “Zero Tolerance Policy” in May 2018. The headlines were hard to ignore throughout the summer of 2018 as the rhetoric surrounding this policy became a national talking point. Supposedly, Trump’s Administration reversed the policy and began reuniting children with their families, although the success rates of this policy are not verified. The blunders and outright failures of this policy are also well documented.
Everyone following the “crisis at the border” (whether that be the humanitarian crisis or the national security crisis that the Trump Administration and Republican party manufactured to stir up their base) knows that family separation continued and migrants were still shuffled off into detention facilities. It was America’s worst kept secret and most ignored moral crisis.
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen resigning was another clue that all was not well on the Southern border. Secretary Nielsen resigning was not a sign of progress, it simply meant that Donald Trump could now appoint someone who would maintain a more brutal hard line on immigration at the border. Or, the president could leave the position vacant to create a leadership vacuum that would only worsen the chaos at the border (this is the policy choice he would actually choose).
The pyrrhic victory of removing Secretary Nielsen allowed the Trump administration to continue their war against immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees at the border without the glare of the news spotlight. (And it is a war, the border is a 2,000 long militarized zone designed specifically to keep people out via deterrence.) Her resignation gave people a false hope that perhaps changes to the Trump immigration policy were possible. At the very least Americans could now go back to ignoring what was happening at the border because “something had been done.”
But the Trump administration continued to separate children, they continued the Zero-Tolerance Policy, despite overcrowded detention facilities and videos of migrants being kept under overpasses. ICE and Border Control agents continued to deny people asylum. And now we’ve learned that the administration did nothing as conditions spiraled out of control and children were left in dirty diapers, without clean clothes, without good food, without their parents.
There was outrage of course, all Americans are good at outrage, but there was no action. People were arrested for leaving food and water in the desert as part of No More Deaths, an organization that leaves food and water for people trying to cross the unforgiving desert. Most of us were furious, most of us demanded action…most of us didn’t volunteer to get arrested by leaving food and water in the desert, most of us didn’t donate supplies, most of us didn’t call our representatives. Add those last three statements to any issue of your choosing.
And therein lies the problem: our innate complicity with an administration that has made human rights violations the norm when it comes to our southern border. Seeking asylum is a human right that the United States has turned into a mind-numbing catch-22. You must be on United States Soil to claim asylum but it is illegal to enter the United States without proper documentation. Additionally, the United States refuses to allow members of the migrant caravan, currently waiting for an opportunity to claim asylum, to enter the United States, instead forcing them to camp outside of the border in Mexico. And this is just the first Catch-22 asylum seekers must navigate in their uphill battle to be able to remain in the United States.
Let’s just take a moment to remember just how absurd the criminalization of crossing our Southern border is. United States companies have been fleeing to Mexico for years to take advantage of a less expensive labor force and lower taxes. United States Citizens have been traveling to Mexican resorts for just as long, if not longer. High schoolers and college students routinely spring break in Mexico to drink and take advantage of cheaper prices. Sounds a lot like both United States businesses and citizens use Mexico to their economic advantage. All they need is a passport (which, because they were born in the United States they have a right to own, no 400-question interview for them!) Not to mention that this border was taken from Mexico in a dubious war of aggression by the United States in the 1800’s.
But when the reverse happens, when migrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and other Latin American countries try to enter the United States for economic reasons they are criminalized, shoved into camps, treated inhumanely, stripped of their voices and used as political pawns tossed back and forth between America’s two major political parties. Not to mention that if they make their way into the USA legally or illegally they are employed for lower wages, no benefits, and can be discarded for any reason. Sounds a lot like racism and classism (despite the fact that the unskilled laborer is another racist stereotype).
If we were really outraged, if we really wanted to stop being complicit in human rights violations; then, at the bare MINIMUM every single one of us should be calling our representatives (local, state, and federal) until they agree to immigration reform (declaring your town/city/municipality a sanctuary city, funding immigration programs, decriminalizing crossing the border, shutting down the detention facilities.) In every election, whether special, municipal, or national, your vote should only be going to the candidate’s whose immigration policy involves decriminalization, demilitarization, and immigration reform that makes it easier, not harder, for immigrants to enter the country. Donate what you can to aid agencies down at the border, support the workers striking at Wayfair, do everything possible to make every ICE agent’s job unconscionable as they try and deport nonviolent immigrants, support your local immigrant owned businesses, volunteer at your local resettlement agencies, put a name to a face and humanize this reality.
Do everything on this list and then do even more. Because if you aren’t, if your activism and advocacy is confined to simply tweeting your outrage, then you are complicit in what is going on at the border. Sixty-seven years ago, we had Japanese American Internment Camps. When they closed down people said the United States would never do that again. People said “how did we let this happen?”
Well, it’s been 77 years and once again, collectively, we are complicit. Maybe this time we should shed our complicit status and join the fight for what we know is right: human rights for all, not just for some.
