First They Came for the Immigrants . . .

The Trump administration is a very effective scandal-generator. Ironically, because there is at least one new scandal each day, no single scandal has really taken root. The media and the public have shifted their attention from one scandal to the next to the next, and in so doing, the Trump administration has kept its head above water, like a rock skipping across a pond.

That really needs to stop now.

A "zero-tolerance" policy toward people who enter the United States illegally may cause families to be separated while parents are prosecuted, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday.

. . .

"We don't want to separate families, but we don't want families to come to the border illegally and attempt to enter into this country improperly," Sessions said. "The parents are subject to prosecution while children may not be. So, if we do our duty and prosecute those cases, then children inevitably for a period of time might be in different conditions."

This new policy has had predictably disastrous results. Take the time to watch the whole clip:

A brief flavor of what's going on:

Children as young as 18 months are being “ripped out of the arms of their mother,” Hayes reported, adding it was for a very specific reason: “to punish the immigrants,” many of whom he said were “often seeking asylum”.

It's worth noting here that when someone comes to America from another country seeking asylum, they are not breaking the law. This distinction appears to be lost on ICE, a rogue agency with a lot of other issues, which separate the children from their parents anyway.

The good news here is that a lot of people were rightly outraged by the new policy, which seems like something only an authoritarian dictator would implement. For his part, Trump responded to the outrage by --- blaming the Democrats:

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

But of course, this is typical Trump misdirection and lying. As Chris Hayes noted in the film clip above, this policy is new with the Trump administration, and unprecedented. In particular, Trump himself pushed for the policy, raising speculation that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen might resign over it:

One persistent issue has been Mr. Trump’s belief that Ms. Nielsen and other officials in the department were resisting his direction that parents be separated from their children when families cross illegally into the United States, several officials said. The president and his aides in the White House had been pushing a family separation policy for weeks as a way of deterring families from trying to cross the border illegally.

This policy isn't a Democratic policy, and it's no accident. This policy is consistent with Trump's anti-immigrant views, and also with his pattern of nominating outright racists for government posts, including most recently, Ronald Mortensen, who among other things believes that all immigrants commit multiple crimes after arriving in the U.S., and that all DACA participants are criminals.

Mr. Mortensen has been nominated as the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. It would be funny if it weren't destroying families. Meanwhile, the Trump administration doesn't seem to care:

John Kelly acknowledged in a recent interview with NPR that family separation “could be a tough deterrent” to illegal immigration. In that same interview, the White House chief of staff argued that it wasn’t cruel and heartless to take children like Jose away from their parents because, “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever.”

"Whatever". No big deal. Just a child, perhaps an infant, in a strange country, taken from the only parent they've ever known, to be separated from them indefinitely.

Whatever.

I make no secret that I believe Donald Trump is a horrible president and a horrible human, and that impeachment is the nicest thing that he deserves. This isn't about politics, and it shouldn't be. It's about those families.

You can hate illegal immigrants. You can even hate asylum seekers. But America should never, EVER be a country that tears families apart. That's not making America great. That's making America fascist --- U.S. Customs and Border Protection even makes the parents wear yellow wristbands in custody.

This isn't America.

So I hope everyone reading this --- no matter whether they're Republican, Democrat, independent or Zoroastrian --- will speak out against this immoral policy, and urge others to do the same. Here are some ways to do that:

1. Always, always, always let your elected representatives know your thoughts and feelings.
2. There are organizations out there fighting this policy in the courts. The ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center are two of my favorites. You can give them money, or contact them about other ways to help.
3. Informed Immigrant keeps a list of organizations which might be in need of volunteers. You search to see whether there are any in your area (I have not done this yet myself, but I plan to).
4. Look for the #WhereAreTheChildren hashtag on Twitter.

This is it, folks. When the history of the Trump administration is written 20 years from now, THIS will be at the center of it, and our response as a nation will define how history views us as a nation.

Choose wisely.

UPDATE: This shouldn't surprise me, but it did. Some folks on social media --- hardcore supporters of Emporer Biggott P. McTreason, no doubt, argue that if people come to the U.S. illegally, they deserve whatever happens to them. Even if that means never seeing their children again. In case it's not obvious why this view is horribly, horribly wrong (or if you just want to see the reasons summarized nicely all in one place), look here.