Child Maltreatment: Whose Responsibility?

"I witnessed loads of kids massed together in large pens of chain-linked fence separated from their moms and dads. Shameful."
"This is something that transcends politics. This is about moms and dads imagining their children being taken from them."
Chris Van Hollen, Democrat senator, Washington

"[The U.S. immigration authorities' treatment of children] meets the definitions of torture under both U.S. and international law".
"This is a spectacularly cruel policy where frightened children are being ripped from their parents' arms and taken to overflowing detention centres which are effectively cages."
Amnesty International statement

"The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."
Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, U.N. human rights chief

"The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility."
"You look at what's happening in Europe, and in other places. We cannot allow that to happen. Not on my watch."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"We do not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this country as a family unit are in fact a family."
"We have to do our job; we will not apologize for doing our job."
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen

Detained migrant children play soccer at a newly constructed tent encampment as seen through a border fence near the U.S. Customs and Border Protection port of entry in Tornillo, Texas.  Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters 
 

From Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, tens of thousands have been streaming across the border between Mexico and the United States fleeing their home countries which have succumbed to total dysfunction, with drug cartels taking over civil society and extreme poverty reflecting the lack of aspirational opportunities available to the populace. They stream across into the United States and in so doing, commit a crime on U.S. soil where it is illegal to bypass legal immigration procedures.

The dilemma is that in refusing these economic migrants otherwise known as illegal or undocumented immigrants, American authorities are faced with the problem of what to do with them. They cannot be marched back across the border into Mexico since they are transiting Mexico for the purpose of reaching the U.S. They must be referred to an American immigration judge. Moreover the U.S. faces a flood of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. as well as children accompanying parents' illegal entries.

In some instances the illegal-entry unaccompanied minors are reunited with family members already resident in the U.S.; in others they are assembled at gathering points while their cases are studied. Violence in Central America is largely responsible for the unstoppable human flood, people anxious to find safe haven and opportunity elsewhere and where else than the wealthy land of boundless opportunities built by immigration?

When illegal entrants are released into the U.S. awaiting notification of a court date there are no guarantees they will show up as scheduled. And those that have been denied residence often leave and then return and the scenario repeats itself. With the Trump administration planning to deal with the huge problem of millions of unwanted and illegal entrants to the United States hidden in an underground economy, the refusal of entry and enforced exits under the previous Bush and Obama administrations has been accelerated and firmed up.

A "zero tolerance" policy has been enacted in reaction to illegal, undocumented entries. With adults taken into custody in reflection of the criminal offence of entering undocumented, the quandary of how to treat the children presents itself and temporary placements with volunteer American families for minor children has been taking place, the children confused, frightened and traumatized by separation from their families. This is an administration that has pledged to end the free-for-all entry to the country and the burden it represents but which is also faced with the acute dilemma of dealing with children.

A photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows people detained at a facility in McAllen, Texas.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP 
 

These are children whom parents bring with them to situations of unknown and sometimes dangerous outcomes, gambling that luck and good fortune, elusive for them in their countries of origin, may grant them what they hope for; the opportunity to make a new life. That decision to gamble with their children is costing them and their children dearly. Their anguished confusion and the bleak unhappiness of their children is also meant to dissuade others in like situations from repeating the scenario ad infinitum.

The United States has every right to determine for itself whether or not it wishes to absorb foreign populations into its own. President Trump has pointed out that children are being used like a "Trojan horse" to gain sympathy and foster outrage for the purpose of their own illegal intrusions meeting with success  and he finds it unacceptable. The flood of migrants has been forcing target nations to make impromptu and desperate decisions to protect the integrity of their borders, their culture and values. Empathy for the plight of those less fortunate tears at the human heart.

Practical considerations also mandate that national administrations commit to judgements and decisions that will promote the well-being of their own populations and the continuation of their national laws, customs and values. There is the example of countries in Europe like France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands and others for whom the absorption of huge influxes of migrants and refugees has been transforming to their culture, the prevailing religion, laws and civil life. For some of these countries the transformation has been incalculably destructive.

The U.S. looks on with a critical eye and the knowledge that it may yet meet success in determining its own fate which European nations have allowed the flood of foreign humanity to determine on their behalf to the great detriment of their future. It is impossible for decent, humane people to look on with equanimity and determination in the face of children's desolating pain at separation from parents. In the same token it is these parents who have with their initiative, inaugurated that situation.

Should American authorities react by a supine acquiescence to all who feel it is their right to gain entry, bypassing normal and lawful immigration procedures, using their children as pawns and leaving it to the Department of Health and Human Services to provide for children whose responsibility they are in effect abandoning, the United States would soon find itself in a situation very similar to that now facing Western Europe.

A photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows the interior of a CBP facility in McAllen, Texas.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP