What is it called when one white child is kidnapped in America? An Amber Alert. What’s it called when 2,342 brown refugee children are kidnapped in America? Spring of 2018, under the White House’s Zero Tolerance Policy.

Here’s the timeline of this new approach to our immigration crisis, taken directly from the Justice Department’s official website, in the words of Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

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So in the last few weeks, we’ve seen the heartbreaking pictures and heard the gut-wrenching audio of boys, girls, toddlers, and babies crying out for their parents. We’ve heard that staff are not permitted to pick up, hold or comfort these desperate little ones. Everybody wants to know exactly what’s the truth, and our government is stone-walling. A few Congress members have gone down to investigate, but our West Virginia delegation is nowhere to be seen.

Here’s why this matters, and here’s what everybody qualified to work in Health & Human Services should have already known.

This is systematic child abuse inflicted by our federal government, and it will have lasting effects on every one of the children who were forcibly taken from their families.

I’m going to share a quick lesson from my paid job as a child abuse prevention specialist. You may or may not have heard about ACES research, also known as the Adverse Childhood Experiences. It’s not some snowflake, liberal theory. It’s the actual science behind a growing field of trauma-informed care specialists in medicine, child welfare, and our law enforcement and education systems. Basically, the ACES evidence shows that severe or accumulated childhood stress increases the odds of lifelong physical and mental health problems.

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Which brings me back to Attorney General Sessions. Who tried to justify this mess, this self-inflicted humanitarian crisis, this childhood atrocity, by referring to Biblical scripture.

And his own church, MY church, the United Methodist Church officially condemned his actions as child abuse. Quoting from an official statement on the denomination’s website: “In recent weeks, we have watched with horror at the implementation of policies from the Department of Justice regarding the treatment of people migrating to the United States.Furthermore — and in response to the ardent opposition from a wide array of faith communities — the officials responsible for these policies have recently used Christian scripture to justify their actions. To argue that these policies are consistent with Christian teaching is unsound, a flawed interpretation, and a shocking violation of the spirit of the Gospel.”

When you join or have a child baptized into the United Methodist church, you take a series of vows. The pastor asks you, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

Not only has Attorney General Sessions failed to live up to his baptismal vow and Christian duty, he along with others in this administration have actively promoted and delivered systematic evil, injustice and oppression in the name of border security. It has to end, and these innocent children must be reunited and in partial restitution for the trauma they’ve been subjected to, given safe asylum with their families if they should choose to remain in this country.

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