Child Separation at the Border

With all the new talk about the mass deportations that Trump and his horror-filled cabinet keep bragging that they are going to do as soon as they get in office. Hopefully, it could be averted, but I don’t have much faith in our government justice system so I’m anticipating the worst of Trump’s first term to happen again, with all the classism, sexism, racism, and neo-colonialism intact and stronger than ever. This an older post from 2018 that I’m almost sure is just the beginning. This will be coming out on Christmas… what a way to remember to appreciate what you have while you have it.

This practice is the continuation of colonial endeavours from centuries past and present day, the only difference now is that it is being hashtagged and retweeted. As the contemporary ultimate symbols of innocence, children are often used for the epitome of “child-like” goodness showing that children doing “un-child-like” things are polluted and are being harmed in some way (Suski, 2009). This was not always the case as childhood innocence and freedom are not always a given in various societies throughout history, and yet there was still an idea that there should be an “ideal” or “normal” childhood (Suski, 2009). By examining the documented history of what the expanding white population had done worldwide to people of color we can find the shallowly dug line of racism and elitism that stems from the United States governmental body as shown through their scape-goating, downplaying, and outright lying about what is happening and why. And most specifically, how the separation of children at the US-Mexican border should be seen from a viewpoint as colonization, one of the great evils of humanity.

As one of the earliest European examples, the conquest through the Americas was mostly a blood bath with the remaining survivors being pushed out of their land and the missionaries ‘convincing’ them and their children to ‘join’ the church (Schneider & Panich, 2014).

Figure 1. Before and after images a Pennsylvania boarding school gave Indigenous American boys "proper" haircuts and dress. Photo credit: John N. Choate/Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections.

In countries around the world, the governing body decided what land would be theirs and colonists would kill anyone standing in the way, while also engaging in reprehensible sexual acts, leading to children of a mixed race that the European rapists could’ve claimed anytime. In the slave trade, rather than kicking the large variety of African peoples out of their homelands they kidnapped them as slaves. And the owners having relations with one or more of these women led to them having children could be sold off (Contreras, 2018). For the slave owners, this familial separation was a powerful action for breaking the will of the children who were forced to continue to serve. Whatever path an “unattached” slave child’s life could take in the future, they were treated like chattel, less human than the white people who owned them (King, 2011: 30-32).

Figure 2 - Stolen Children in Australia, published in a 1930s Darwin newspaper.

Even as recent as the 1990s, Canada and the USA had boarding schools built and used as housing and education centers for the children of the Indigenous populations (Dawson, 2012). At the more than 150 US schools children were forced to “Americanize” by cutting their hair, speaking only English, and adopting Christianity (Contreras, 2018). Continuing the trend of “In 1814, Governor Macquarie launched a school to “civilize” native children, a program that entailed teaching them English and religion, and, as far as possible, separating them from their parents” (Moses 2000: 95). This period was illustrated within the Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence wherein two Aboriginal children were taken from their home to the mission schools across the country and after escaping followed the fence to find their way home (Moses, 2000). The majority of these children of minority groups were ‘lawfully’ taken in times when the families were ‘below the poverty line’, which the book "In the Shadow Of the Poorhouse: A Social History Of Welfare In America" by Michael B. Katz discusses, though it was written in the 1920s, perpetuating the idea that colonialism has not ended (Contreras, 2018, Dawson, 2012). Calming language was also part of the Missionary’s few public statements so people the truth just like today when conservative reporters call the jail or animal pen set-ups “essentially summer camps” (Ingraham in Berkowitz, 2018) or ‘tent cities’. One reporter called the fencing ‘chicken coops’ to make it sound harmless, but by putting the children in chicken coops they are shown that they aren’t humans anymore, they are animals.

Figure 3. “Tent cities” on the US-Mexico border. Photo credit John Moore, 2018 (Getty Images)

Figure 4. Child watching a movie in the pens built in an empty warehouse near the border. Photo credit: John Moore, 2018 (Getty Images).

Using the language in this way creates a lingering idea of ‘othering’ and dehumanizing the children and the parents who ‘left them’ in that situation, making it easier to lay blame and to eventually hate them (Morton, 2004). From what the US government has said and how they’ve acted, there is a clear line being drawn in the sand between who is good and who is evil. Even without the Christian centered moral view Trump’s ideas are dubious at best, the word ‘deterrent’, which Chief of Staff John Kelley used, makes this a warning, where all involved will be punished, to frighten others from doing the same thing. When signing the policy’s official executive order, “[i]t is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources", but gave the reason for separation as the unity of the family was harmful for the child (Domonoshe & Gonzales, 2018). Even the current governmental leaders seem to be aware that what they are putting these children through is wrong and blame their enemies, the Democrats, citing a law of zero-tolerance (that never existed) to force separation (Timm, 2018).

Figure 5. Child crying at the US-Mexican border. Photo by John Moore, 2018 (Getty Images).

Pediatricians worry that locking the children away causes irreparable psychological harm, having the long-term effect of behavioral and medical problems because of the ‘toxic stress’ factors while the brain is still developing, especially those within the ‘tender-age’ range of 5 or less (Rose, 2018, Sacchetti, 2018). The “prolonged separation of a child from his mother (or mother substitute) during the first five years of his life stands foremost among the causes of delinquent character development and persistent misbehaviour” (Bowbly in Rutter 1971: 233). It is shown from recent studies that around 30% of adult issues of mental health disorders are related to some sort of trauma or adversity during childhood (Bowbly, 1958a & 1958b in Rutter 1971: 233-234, and Green et al, 2011).

This is kidnapping, whether or not the people involved feel that this practice is best, the children are being taken away from their parents. How is this different from a madman driving around in a van, snatching children from school? Even in prison, there seems to be an agreement that harming children is one of the vilest things that a person can do, as child molesters are among the most hated inmates and are often socially isolated (Van De Berg et al, 2017).

The US government is repeating the evils of colonization with the justification of othering minority groups out of fear and anger, the language being used, making the children less than human by putting them in cages, and the reoccurring psychological effects and patterns that follow the colonization patterns.

“It is too late to undo the damage that has already been caused to the 4,000+ children that were taken from their parents, and, as of August 31st over 500 of them who had still not been reunited.”

Work Cited

Berkowitz, Joe. “All the Ways Fox News Is Defending Trump's Child-Separation Policy.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 19 June 2018, www.fastcompany.com/40586942/all-the-ways-fox-news-is-defending-trumps-child-separation-policy.

Bowlby, J., Bowlby, R. (2005). The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds. London: Routledge.

Contreras, Russell. “Other Times in History When the U.S. Separated Families.” Chicagotribune.com, 21 June 2018, www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-family-separation-history-20180620-story.html.

Dawson, Alexander S. “Histories and Memories of the Indian Boarding Schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 39, no. 5, 2012, pp. 80–99. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41702285.

Domonoske, Camila, and Richard Gonzales. “What We Know: Family Separation And 'Zero Tolerance' At The Border.” NPR, NPR, 19 June 2018, www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border.

Green, J G, et al. “Childhood Adversities and Adult Psychiatric Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication I: Associations with First Onset of DSM-IV Disorders.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2010, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20124111.

KING, WILMA. “‘You Know I Am One Man That Do Love My Children’: SLAVE CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN THE FAMILY AND COMMUNITY.” Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America, 2nd ed., Indiana University Press, 2011, pp. 30–70. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzk3n.8.

Morton, A. (2004) ‘Evil and otherness’, in On evil. Routledge, pp. 1–33.

Moses, A. Dirk. (2000). An antipodean genocide? The origins of the genocidal moment in the colonization of Australia, Journal of Genocide Research, 2:1, 89-106.

Rizzo, Salvador. “Analysis | The Facts about Trump's Policy of Separating Families at the Border.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 19 June 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/19/the-facts-about-trumps-policy-of-separating-families-at-the-border/?utm_term=.31f0c9d7b046.

Rose, Joel. “Doctors Concerned About 'Irreparable Harm' To Separated Migrant Children.” NPR, NPR, 15 June 2018, www.npr.org/2018/06/15/620254326/doctors-warn-about-dangers-of-child-separations.

Rutter, Michael. “PARENT‐CHILD SEPARATION: PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS ON THE CHILDREN.” The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Wiley-Blackwell, 7 Dec. 2006, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1971.tb01086.x.

Sacchetti, Maria. “Still Separated: Nearly 500 Migrant Children Taken from Their Parents Remain in U.S. Custody.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 31 Aug. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/still-separated-nearly-500-separated-migrant-children-remain-in-us-custody/2018/08/30/6dbd8278-aa09-11e8-8a0c-70b618c98d3c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c59ab5ec23df.

Schneider, Tsim D., and Lee M. Panich, editors. “Native Agency at the Margins of Empire: INDIGENOUS LANDSCAPES, SPANISH MISSIONS, AND CONTESTED HISTORIES.” Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory, University of Arizona Press, 2014, pp. 5–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pbc1.4.

Suski, L. (2009) ‘Children, Suffering, and the Humanitarian Appeal’, in Wilson, R. A. and Brown, R. D. (eds) Humanitarianism and suffering: the mobilization of empathy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 202–222.

Timm, Jane C. “Fact Check: Did Obama Administration Separate Families?” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 20 June 2018, www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/fact-check-did-obama-administration-separate-families-n884856.

Van Den Berg, Chantal, et al. "Sex offenders in prison: are they socially isolated?." Sexual Abuse (2017): 1079063217700884.

"The Constitution of the United States," Amendment 1.