CRUELTY AND BEYOND

by Ruth A. Sheets

May 21, 2020



I just finished reading an article that made me say “enough!”  It seems ICE is making an appalling  choice available to immigrant mothers in detention, a kind of Sophy’s choice.  This time if a mother gives up her children to ICE, they can be taken from the detention/internment camp.  If she does not agree, the child or children will remain in detention and potentially suffer with her the ravages of COVID19.  There is simply no language to describe the cruelty of this and the inhumanity of anyone who would offer it. 



The families being given this choice are innocent of anything but wanting to escape violence and poverty in their home countries.  They came here for refuge and safety and get cruelty beyond belief.



What is going on here?  Who is it that gave ICE either permission or the order to commit these acts of inhumanity, and in our name?  This unnecessary agency is under the Department of Homeland Security and is the knee-jerk response to 9/11.  How the agency morphed from protecting us from terrorists to destroying families is a long troubled trail of agony and injustice.



ICE was clearly active during the Bush and Obama administrations, but it became virulent, malignant under the current administration.  Mr. Trump has made no secret of his hatred for anyone who is not rich, white, straight, and male.  For most of us who don’t fit that category, it has meant cuts in funding for necessary services and infrastructure maintenance.  It has meant obstruction to voting, increased pollution in areas where we live, dismissal of the needs of front-line workers and more.  For immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented persons it has meant criminalization, imprisonment, concentration camps, separation of children from their parents with no paper trail, unwarranted deportations, and more.  It  has meant that anyone seeking our help is condemned to Mexico’s Northern border where those already suffering and stressed people are preyed on by actual criminals.  They face rape, murder, enslavement, and other agonies for no apparent benefit to this country. 



So, what is going on?  Here is my theory.  Immigrants are coming to fill the place African-Americans, Jews, Irish, and other hated groups once held.  African-Americans and Latinx persons still are in the ranks of the hated.  But, there is now more attention placed on the brutalities they have faced and continue to face, so white straight men wanted a new target, one a little less prominent and present in our society.  They needed a target they could readily convince a lot of privileged white people to hate and blame for all their ills. 



Dumping folks into concentration camps with no reporters allowed to know what conditions are like inside has emboldened the current administration to approve atrocities that would most likely not be permitted to occur if the victims were white.  It has been easy to call these mothers and children criminals.  This makes whatever is done to them OK with the rich and wannabe rich white people who are far removed from the suffering and are encouraged to believe these folks are the cause of all their woes.



Of course, the immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented persons are not the cause of white problems, but are often conveniently, the vehicle for easing their worries.  These people often work the fields, living in conditions none of the privileged would allow their pets to live in.  The white privileged eat the food they pick, though.  These immigrants et al work the meat processing plants under outrageous conditions that allowed COVID19 to spread unchecked.  The privileged eat the meat and cheer on Mr. Trump’s order that the plants start up again no matter the risk to the workers. 



Perhaps this treatment is the new lynching.  It is not as brutal as was done to African-Americans nor as public, but it does produce fear, intimidation, pain, and often, death.  In addition, a lot of Republican politicians benefit from the hate they spew and the pain they cause.  They get elected by the people they have injected with anger toward and hatred and fear of the “foreigner.” 



How has the United States permitted this cruelty?  Why are so many Americans willing to stand by while the cruelty sprouts up around us and grows with the sunshine and water of hatred and fear.  Are we really so frightened?  Are these mothers and children truly a threat to us?  Are those farm and processing plant workers so threatening that we have to force them to work under whatever conditions the bosses decide are right for them?



When do we as a nation say “enough?”  When do we declare that we are better than that and work to change it?  When do we start living the words of the “Declaration of Independence” that all men (people) are created equal?  Is it so hard to believe that other people are of as much value as we are and we are of as much value as all others?  Clearly it is. 



We can’t change Mr. Trump and his gang.  I suspect they have been cultivating their belief in their own superiority for so long they won’t/can’t change.  The only way to  deal with them is to vote them out of office and ditch their fearmongering as the garbage it is. 



We also need to work on ourselves to be sure we are not dismissing others because they don’t look or act like us.  Do we respond when we hear of inhumane treatment of others?  Do we call people out when they make comments that are not only inappropriate, but hurtful to others?  Do we promote peace?  If we do not, perhaps, we need to make some changes in our own lives so we don’t keep moving down the slippery slope toward accepting things as they are, cruelty and all. 



A first step might be to ask ourselves if we would be OK with someone offering us the choice the imprisoned immigrant mothers have been given.  Would we give up our infants to strangers so those in power could do to us whatever their corrupt minds could manufacture?  If our answer is “no,” the answer should be “no” for everyone else too.  If we can’t get to that place, we need to do some heavy lifting to rework our values and re-examine our beliefs about humanity and our place in it.  An election is coming up in November.  Let’s pledge to take the necessary steps to end the cruelty.