Separating families marks a moral low

The really shocking thing about the spectacle of distraught children being forcibly separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border is not the sheer inhumanity of this practice. That is beyond question. Nor is it the mind-numbing idiocy of a shambolic policy that shames the US government and its agents and, as the UN suggests, is in probable breach of international human rights law. No, the really shocking thing is Donald Trump’s evident inability to understand what the fuss is about. Has ever a US president displayed such a total lack of empathy, such a deficit of common human decency?

Trump’s belated suspension of the separations offers scant relief. About 2,000 small children – nobody seems to have an exact count – remain incarcerated in “baby jails”, or what officials disingenuously call “tender age migrant shelters”. Their families do not know where they are. Nor have US border guards kept matching lists of parents detained for alleged illegal entry under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Now, in another grotesque betrayal of the hard-won values of the “land of the free”, there are reported plans to create virtual concentration camps on remote military bases in the California and Arizona deserts.

Illegal immigration is a problem facing many countries around the world. But, as Bishop Michael Curry, primate of the US Episcopal church, writes today, that is no excuse for brutality, especially in a country that aspires to exemplary global leadership. “Families making treacherous and often dangerous journeys to seek refuge in the US are desperate… You cannot deter people who are fleeing for their lives. We should be meeting these people with compassion,” Curry writes.

Millions of Americans agree. Their reaction to what Curry calls this “moment of national shame” has provided a welcome contrast to the immoral behaviour of their president. This generous outpouring undercuts the ugly image of a mean, selfish and inward-looking country that has been developing under Trump’s “nasty party” tutelage. Most Americans, thankfully, are better than Trump. Still denying responsibility, cravenly shifting blame and lying at every turn, he epitomises the very worst side of human nature ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/23/observer-view-on-donald-trump-cruelty-child-migrants