Save The Migrant Children

 

A Humanitarian Crisis Here in the US

Reports have come out that there are as many as 1,500 missing or unaccounted for migrant children. CNN is reporting that this is not necessarily because of Trump’s new 100% prosecution policy. But his policy does require that any illegal immigrant crossing the border be prosecuted. Which means that, if they have children, those children will be separated from them.

Migrant Children in Detention Facilities

Trump’s 100% prosecution policy increases the amount of children being separated from their families. But it does not account for all of them. Some of the children are crossing the border without a legal guardian.

When the migrant children are separated from their parents or don’t have a parent, they are placed into what is essentially a detention facility. An over-crowded child jail. Many reports have surfaced about the deplorable conditions inside these facilities. Two children have even died — one from a high fever, another from not having her Asthma medication.

Even if the children don’t die, the conditions must be pure hell. Imagine for a second hundreds of children ripped away from their parents and crammed into a tiny space with little adult supervision. Crying. Yelling. Hysteria. They want their moms! They want their dads! They’re in a foreign land hearing a language most don’t understand. They’re hungry. Thirsty. Sick… How would you react if your child was sent to one of these facilities? I know I’d be busting down the door and nothing in hell would stop me from reaching my children. So why should my, or anyone else’s, reaction be different just because these aren’t our children or they come from a foreign land?

Our reactions SHOULDN’T be different. We SHOULD be just as OUTRAGED!

Child Sponsors and Lack of Accountability

The detention facilities are temporary. Ultimately, the migrant children end up with a sponsor, like foster care or a relative, while their parents are prosecuted or are contacted. Sometimes these sponsors can offer a welcome refuge for the child. But most of the time they don’t.

Here is where the big problem lies: many of the sponsors that are responsible for these children are illegal immigrants themselves. So when the feds try to contact them with a phone call to check on the child, often the phone number has changed, or they don’t answer the call. Are the children okay? Have they been fed? Are they getting their medications? Have they been sold into sex-slavery? The feds DON’T KNOW.

These sponsors are usually relatives or friends of a child’s parents. Many of them do not want to be contacted by the feds so the feds lose track of the child. This is what feeds into the missing child reports. But this in no way lets the feds off the hook. The problem is that only a phone call is required to check on the child once they are with a sponsor. It is very unlikely that anyone from the feds will go and physically check on a child. Requirements to be a sponsor are also poor.

This is a humanitarian crisis. I believe that any child within our borders should be treated with the absolute best care as if they were our own. Most of them don’t understand the difference between legal and illegal immigrant or why their parents were taken away from them. These children are 100% innocent.

An Immediate Change to Government Policies

Our government is keeping us from being directly involved in a humanitarian crisis happening right on our own soil.  We’re not allowed to free the children or their parents.  If we do, we’ll be arrested and treated like criminals.  We are only supposed to rely on our politicians and our departments to find a solution. But what happens when they don’t find a solution?  What happens when they don’t want to find a solution? Who holds them accountable?

We’ve known about these problems with migrant children for YEARS now and NOTHING has changed.

Relying on politicians or just voting in the next election is not fixing the problem.

In my opinion, we have got to enact a system of organization and protest where we can march and demand change at the source. We should literally show up at these detention facilities and demand accountability.

We have got to stop letting our government put barriers between us and the crisis that they have created. We have a moral responsibility to take care of the children in our country, whether they are legal or illegal, and we should not be stopped from doing that.