facebook-pixel

Letter: Separating mothers from their children is cruel and inhumane

(Juan Carlos Llorca | The Associated Press) In this Sept. 10, 2014, file photo, an unidentified Guatemalan woman stands inside a dormitory in the Artesia Family Residential Center, a federal detention facility for undocumented immigrant mothers and children in Artesia, N.M. The nation's immigration courts are already overwhelmed, facing a backlog of more than half a million cases. Recent directives from President Donald Trump's administration to step up enforcement of immigration laws and expand the number of people considered priorities for deportation could funnel even more people into the overloaded immigration court system.

Separating mothers from their children does not represent the values we teach our children or aspire to as a nation. The Trump administration’s anti-immigration and anti-refugee actions harm our families, communities, economy and country.

I had a friend who had a lady who helped her take care of her elderly father and it slipped out she was here illegally. She came here to have a better life for her son, away from the violence and the corruption. She panicked when the information came out and left her son with a friend and returned to Mexico to try get the paperwork so she could be here legally. She could not get back here because of Trump’s immigration policies. So her son is without a mother and she is stuck there.

This is so cruel and inhumane. We can’t allow this to go on.

Gail Jenson, Sandy