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Letter: America is now repeating the atrocities of slavery, Native American abuse and Nazi concentration camps

(Gregory Bull | The Associated Press) In this May 7, 2018, file photo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions listens during a news conference in San Diego near the border with Tijuana, Mexico. A judge allowed a lawsuit challenging U.S. immigration authorities for separating parents from their children to go forward on Wednesday, June 6, but said he would decide later whether or not to order a nationwide halt. Splitting families has emerged as a high-profile and highly controversial practice since Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy at the border in early May. Any adult who enters the country illegally is criminally prosecuted, even if it means separating parents from children.

It has now become an accepted practice for our government to separate migrant children from their families at our border. No trial, no human rights. A weapon we have chosen to use against illegal immigrants is to terrorize them and their children as punishment. "I believe for the most part they’re well taken care of,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said of the children.

Have we learned nothing? Have we lost our humanity? This is obscene. In our country’s earlier years, we did this to the families of slaves and Native Americans; the Nazis did this in concentration camps; extremists in Africa and the Middle East kidnap and exploit children taken from their families. What has happened to us?

I came to this wonderful country as a legal immigrant to join my mother’s family, my mother having been separated from her family in Austria at the onset of World War II. She was sent to England and the rest of the family to the USA, due to American quota issues at the time. They were all lucky to survive. It took 20 very difficult years for the family to be reunited.

“Give me your tired, your poor,<br>your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,<br>the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.<br>Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.<br>I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”<br>I guess no more.

Rose Bauman, Draper