{"id":592793,"date":"2018-06-15T08:04:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T14:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=592793"},"modified":"2018-06-17T20:08:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T02:08:15","slug":"this-is-a-crime-against-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/06\/this-is-a-crime-against-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"This is a crime against humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\"Border

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

A scene from the U.S.\/Mexico border. In the foreground, behind a barbed-wire fence, U.S. Border Patrol agents speak with each other in El Paso, Texas. Across the Rio Grande, in the background, is Cuidad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico.<\/p><\/div>\n

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>Several U.S. presidents have called the United States a shining city on a hill<\/a> \u2013 a reference to Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, telling his followers they were to be the light of the world.<\/p>\n

A 1630 sermon by Puritan John Winthrop<\/a>, which expressed a commitment to be a force for community, charity and justice in the world, made the phrase popular in American lore.<\/p>\n

During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney warned<\/a> that if Donald Trump were elected, the United States would cease being such a place.<\/p>\n

It seems he was right.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s administration is using children as pawns in an effort to deter illegal immigration and asylum seeking<\/a>. They\u2019re separating children from their parents, flagrantly disregarding the trauma that causes kids, in an attempt to discourage other would-be immigrants from attempting to cross our border. \u201cIf people don\u2019t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them,\u201d U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Heath

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

The on-the-ground reality that heartless attitude creates is stunning. One public defender recounted clients who told her the Border Patrol said, while taking their children, that they were going to give them baths. \u201cAs the hours passed, it dawned on the mothers the kids were not coming back,\u201d the Boston Globe<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

The New York Times reported on a 5-year-old boy from Honduras<\/a> who, while in foster care, cried himself to sleep and clung to drawings of his family for dear life.<\/p>\n

A Democratic congresswoman met with some detained immigrants. They said they were taken to be photographed and returned to find their children gone, The Times reported<\/a>. Sometimes, the detainees heard their children screaming in nearby rooms.<\/p>\n

A father took his own life after border agents forcibly took his 3-year-old son from his arms in Texas, the Washington Post reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the investigative reporting outlet Searchlight New Mexico has recounted in recent articles<\/a>, childhood trauma \u2013 formally called adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs \u2013 has dramatic and lifelong impacts. Literally hundreds of scientific studies link such trauma to diseases, mental illness and other problems. ACEs can impair learning and emotional regulation, undermine social functioning and even alter DNA.<\/p>\n

ACEs \u201chave lifelong harmful impacts on health and the human condition, potentially for generations to come,\u201d Searchlight reported.<\/p>\n

We call that generational trauma. It\u2019s apparent today in the struggles of many Native Americans to overcome generations of government-imposed persecution \u2013 including the decades-long practice of forcibly removing Native children from their homes and placing them in Christian boarding schools to assimilate them<\/a>. Children were forced to cut their hair, forbidden to speak their languages and given new names. Many were also subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse<\/a>. Albuquerque is among the cities that housed such a place.<\/p>\n

Have we not learned a goddamn thing?<\/p>\n

Some will say Native American boarding schools were a well-intentioned effort to help children adapt and have better lives, even if in retrospect that system was morally wrong. Today, there\u2019s no pretense that we\u2019re somehow doing right by these immigrant children. Instead, we\u2019ve sharpened the traumatization of kids into a weapon we\u2019re now intentionally using in a very adult and geopolitical struggle.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to take a hardline approach to curbing illegal entry into the United States. It\u2019s an entirely different thing to intentionally harm innocent children.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re inflicting trauma that will last generations. This is a crime against humanity \u2013 one that could only be carried out by a nation and a people who have become hardened by our own generational trauma.<\/p>\n

The city on the hill is only shining because it\u2019s being burned to the ground.<\/p>\n

Heath Haussamen<\/a>\u00a0is NMPolitics.net\u2019s editor and publisher.\u00a0Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By separating immigrant children from their parents, the United States is intentionally inflicting trauma that will last generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[140,234],"class_list":["post-592793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-children"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}