Welcome to America / Bienvenido a América
After it was reported the Trump Administration had lost over 1400 immigrant children, separated from their parents at the Mexican border by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the practice came under intense scrutiny. Trump falsely blamed the Democrats for this “horrible law.” There is no law authorizing this action. The present administration’s “zero tolerance” policy against undocumented immigrants is the cause. These aren’t people sneaking across the border. These are people seeking asylum from the violence in their home countries.
In March 2018, the ACLU sued the government for this practice, stating the forced separation of children from their parents while they wait for asylum hearings “violates the Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).”
Colleen Kraft, a pediatrician, wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Studies overwhelmingly demonstrate the irreparable harm caused by breaking up families. Prolonged exposure to highly stressful situations — known as toxic stress — can disrupt a child’s brain architecture and affect their short- and long-term health.” Sometimes, she stated, parents are deported, leaving their children alone in government custody.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House chief-of-staff John Kelly defended the practice. Sessions stated, “If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them.” Kelly was even more cavalier: “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.
Update: June 2019
The Trump administration continues to separate immigrant children from their families. The youngest was only four months old. He spent five months of his first year in foster care. On June 22, 2019, The New Yorker reported that after reports surfaced of “dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions” at centers housing these children, lawyers went to one facility in Clint, Texas, to interview some of these children. They found 350 children being housed in a facility that was designed to accommodate only 104 adults. Over 300 children were being held in a warehouse with no windows.
They were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once. …some of the children…told us that there was a lice infestation as well as an influenza outbreak at that facility, and so a number of the children are being taken into isolation rooms, quarantine areas where there’s nobody with them except for other sick children.
The government’s reaction to these conditions is hard to fathom. They argued in a federal court that “it shouldn’t be required to give detained migrant children toothbrushes, soap, towels, showers or even half a night’s sleep inside Border Patrol detention facilities.”
The outrageous message this country is sending to these children is we don’t care about you and, by the way, you’ll never see your parents again!
These posters are part of a series of posters Jeff Gates does under the guise of the Chamomile Tea Party. Often taking World War II-era propaganda, he remixes them with new text and imagery about the rancor so prevalent in American political discourse. These posters were remixed from a 1938 Ken magazine cover. Download a high resolution copy of these posters for free (in English and Spanish). In fact, all Chamomile Tea Party posters are free to download under a Creative Commons license.