Believe I was four years old, maybe 5, we were coming back from visiting Dads parents in The States, Mom and Dad, and I, and they had stopped us at the border coming home. That was early 1970’s, and it never occurred to them, I suppose, that anyone would question it, but I didn’t have my immigration papers yet, my residence ones that said I could, and so they kept us waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for hours – I’d been born in the U.S., but we now lived in Canada.

This is the story my Mom told, and I guess I’d been not a happy camper, and coming on to shift I guess the customs officer that came on duty that evening didn’t want to spend his whole shift listening to some wailing kid, so he asked them a few questions, and told us to go, but next time over have those docs.

The last part, about not wanting to spend the shift listening to a crying toddler was Mom’s thinking of why they let them go, but they were concerned that I wasn’t really theirs. After sitting at customs for that amount of time, listening to me, seeing me with them, they acquiesced and let us go with a warning.

It was yesterday morning that I remembered that story, I don’t recall it at all, well, cause I went home with them and to me it was merely a bump in my life, a small speed bump, and a story, that’s it.

Until yesterday morning, before I had to go to work, watching the news, reading it, absorbing it, and listening to children crying for Mommy, crying for Daddy. Little voices, sobbing and crying, a little six-year girl, pleading with the Border Officer to let her call her Aunts number she had memorized.

See, one thing that working in retail has taught me is I know how a child sounds when they’re tired, when they’re bored and when they can’t touch that and Mommy said no. I know how pitching a fit sounds, how I’m teething sounds, but until Sunday evening I didn’t know how children who are terrified sound.

The administration put the policy in place and could easily end it. But. Mr. Trump’s critics say he’s using the issue as leverage to force opposition lawmakers to negotiate on immigration policy and Mr. Trump’s promised border wall.
[ The Globe & Mail ]

Rachel Maddow in a piece I watched last night called it a wedge. Using it to divide and conquer, tactics of an authoritarian regime on its way up the flagpole.

Yesterday, in my anger and grasping at straws, thought maybe he has a scheme, with this narrative all set up and National Homeland Security swinging in lock-step, he’s going to turn around and reverse the zero-tolerance policy, that HE created, in some fashion or other, and call himself a hero. Will his base eat it up? And badda-boom-badda-bing, the whole thing gets a thorough whitewash, and he just denies, denies, denies, lies, lies, and lies some more.

One newscaster estimated that at the rate these children are coming in, there will be something like almost 20,000 of them by August. WITH, no plan in place as to how these children are going to be reunited with their parents, effectively creating a great big giant concentration camp of kids, kids that may never see their parents again.

How did they think this was going to play out? It boggles my mind, and brings all these emotions raging through me, to the point yesterday that I was in tears, imaging how horrifying that would be.

Also known as the Statue of Liberty poem, New Colossus and its famous last lines have become part of American history. Here is the sonnet in its entirety:

New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
[ from How Tall Is The Statue of Liberty.org ]

Seriously suspicious of this administrations purposes, and intent, and what they have up their sleeve with this manufactured crisis.

That anyone could actually think this is a solution is really hard to wrap my mind around. I mean, the crying, the feeding, the urine soaked bed sheets/mattress, the special needs, the medications, not to forget the lack of compassion and human touch. The separation of minors from their guardians, the stamp of criminal used to describe those only seeking a safe place.

But let’s be clear, this is racism. This is fascism 2.0.

And with the images, and sounds of children crying, who can stand by that? That man does, stands there and lies again, and again, and again, not willing, or able, to face is own truth, his reality, the reality that HE created, because you know down deep in your heart that that man down there in the land of my birth doesn’t have a heart, and neither do any of the cronies he’s surrounded himself with.

But, there they are, out muddying the waters, changing the narrative to suit their current agenda, a hard-line on immigration, that’s why he’s there, that’s what he believes his plebs want, and he won’t fix it, cause he doesn’t really care one way or the other, it doesn’t affect him in any way shape or form, and that is pretty much what his plebs think.

So, this is a step on the way to “unfreedom”. That’s how easy it is – create a crisis, and then be the hero, even though you yourself created the crisis.

“No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”
[ from Stephen Miller – quote from The Atlantic ]

This is a feature, not a bug.

And just remember, some of these children may never see their parents again because the U.S. government has no way of reuniting them, with parents who have often been deported back to where they came from, to the violence, horror, and poverty that they escaped.

America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the light at the golden door, your democracy is dying.