The humanity at the center of policy

There is something I very much wish more people understood. While you are entitled to feel how you feel about policies, you are not entitled to actively harm the people at the center of those policies. A critically important distinction that too many people in this country fail to make. Right now, as we approach January and march ever closer to Inauguration Day, I find myself thinking about this a great deal. Because we have an incoming administration that is clearly hell bent on radical policy change that will by definition cause a tremendous amount of harm. And they’re also quite determined to go out of their way to further punish the people impacted by these policies. Including the most vulnerable children.

There are way too many examples of this, but for now I want to specifically focus on immigration and what feels like the inevitable return of the horrific practice of separating children from their parents at the southern border.

Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan, Trump’s first two picks for immigration policy jobs, are both unapologetic defenders of Trump’s horrific approach to immigration during his first administration. They were also both central to envisioning and implementing the practice of separating thousands of children from their parents, theoretically to deter more immigrants from coming to the U.S. It is unforgivable that they justified committing violence against children in service to influencing the decision making of people who were themselves experiencing extreme violence in their home countries. Violence, by the way, which is often driven by American guns — an inconvenient fact too often left out of the immigration conversation. Miller and Homan, along with way too many enablers (including Trump himself), put something in place that remains a moral stain on the soul of this country.

An important note: if you want to learn more about the vast amount of planning that went into the family separation machine that operated at the southern border, as well as the vast amount of trauma it caused, I implore you to read Caitlin Dickerson’s searing piece in the Atlantic, “The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Family-Separation Policy”. A long and painful read, the piece won earned the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and it exposed a level of coordinated cruelty that is unfathomable. Except that too many families had to fathom it, because they lived it. What is also unfathomable to me is that we know this is what the Trump administration did and so many people STILL voted for him. And by voting for Trump, they also voted to hand power back to the very people who committed the atrocities outlines in Caitlin Dickerson’s incredibly thorough investigation. I will continue to lament this until the very end of my days.

Now, with a second Trump administration looming, let’s revisit some important details about the two people who will again be in charge of this country’s response to immigration. Stephen Miller, who declared at Trump’s October Nazi-evoking rally at Madison Square Garden that “America is for Americans and Americans only” is known for his doomsday rhetoric not just about immigration, but immigrants themselves. Tom Homan has promised to execute "the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen” and also talked about “shock and awe” regarding immigration on day one of the Trump administration. Both seem to forget, or be disinterested in acknowledging, that they are talking about human beings. Human beings who will be irreparably harmed by the decisions they are now charged with making.

And here’s the thing, Trump has promised sweeping action on immigration in his second term. He famously did so when he ran for his first term as well. But now we know what his administration is capable of doing AND he has the very people who have already figured out how to do it poised to do it all over again. His two primary White House advisers on immigration have already done this before. This means they will hit the ground running and will have considerably more know-how on how to enact harmful immigration policy and practice. And they are already well-versed in how to cause harm to immigrants themselves.

Now I return to my opening point. If you take issue with our current immigration policy as being too lax, you have every right to do so. I acknowledge that right, even if I vehemently disagree with a hardline approach to immigration. But I hold with every fiber of my being that no one has the right to willfully cause harm to immigrants. It is one thing to go after the policy, it is a whole other thing to go after the people at the center of that policy and intentionally cause them suffering. Suffering is not a deterrent and punishment is not prevention. Separating a child from their family is incredibly cruel and should never be adopted or even talked about as an acceptable practice.

I sat in close proximity to the trauma of families being separated through my work as an advocate for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. I will share just one story, one that has haunted me ever since it happened. Many years ago and early on in my career, I was asked to come and meet with a young mom who was in an abusive relationship to provide some options and support. The child protective service workers offered to watch her two children while we met, ostensibly to give the mom privacy. Which was very appropriate given the nature of the conversation. Completely unbeknownst to me, they had already planned to remove the children from her custody and place them in foster care, and they set those wheels in motion while I was meeting with the mom. I sat there absolutely horrified when they told the mom what they were doing, that the kids were already on their way to a placement, and that she would see them once they had visitation arranged - and they could not guarantee when that would be. There’s a lot to say about child protective services and their role in systemic harm, but I will save that for another post. What I will share now is that 20 something years later, I can still remember the look on that mom’s face and the sound that emanated from her body when she was told her children had been taken away. I just don’t have the words to describe it. And not to center myself, but it’s worth noting that I was totally traumatized by the experience too. Because I witnessed the unbearable pain of that mom and I was used to facilitate it. It was one of the worst experiences I ever had in my long career of responding to trauma. It’s informed so much of how I think about the world now.

Which is why when I think about the thousands of children separated from their families during the first Trump administration, my heart hurts. I hear the wail of that young mom who lost her children because of the violence someone else chose to perpetrate against her. And when I think of an incoming Trump administration that may very well do the same thing, separating children from families also fleeing violence, I literally become nauseous.

We cannot allow our country to perpetrate such violence again. The United States has a long history of inflicting family separation, from slavery to boarding schools for native children, to the disparate impact of mass incarceration in communities of color. This is history and current practice we must contend with, not perpetrate more of. No matter what you think our immigration policy should be, we have no right to inflict such pain on immigrants. There is policy, and then there are human beings. Human beings that we have a responsibility to care about even if we don’t agree with the policies around them. Human beings that we should not attack, vilify, lie about, or dehumanize. Families that we should not tear apart.

With 2025 approaching in just a few short hours, and the inauguration right behind it, I ask that you all join me in shouting this from the rooftops. Call out the practices and policies that do harm. Speak out against family separation. Read the article I referenced above and share it, share it, share it. Write letters to the editor and to your congresspeople. Violence thrives in silence, and we need to get plenty loud about the evil practice of ripping children from their families. Which I fear will start again, even before all the children taken during the first administration have been located. Because some of those children are still missing. And I shudder to think of what has happened to them.

What we did to them.