Children are suffering in migrant camps along our southern border. They are living in cramped, filthy conditions. Many are sick. Six have died since last year.
These are children. They have done nothing wrong. How they got here shouldn’t matter. Whose fault it is that they’re here shouldn’t matter. They are here, and one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world is failing to care for them in even the most marginally humane way.
Read these descriptions from recent news reports from the border. Don’t skim over them, and don’t look away, because they describe horrors that we, as Americans, are tolerating.
From The Associated Press: “A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they’ve been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there’s inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station.”
From an ABC News report on Friday: “At another Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, attorney Toby Gialluca said all the children she talked to last week were very sick with high fevers, coughing and wearing soiled clothes crusted with mucus and dirt after their long trip north. ‘Everyone is sick. Everyone. They’re using their clothes to wipe mucus off the children, wipe vomit off the children. Most of the little children are not fully clothed,’ she said.”
ABC News also obtained a medical declaration from physicians who visited two border patrol holding facilities in Texas two weeks ago. In that declaration, physician Dolly Lucio Sevier wrote: “The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities.”
The children were experiencing extreme cold temperatures. They were in holding areas where the lights were left on 24 hours a day. They weren’t able to wash their hands. Teen mothers weren’t able to wash out bottles for their babies.
Sevier wrote that all the children she saw at the facilities showed signs of trauma.
And what have we been doing? We’ve been debating whether it’s fair to call these places concentration camps. The Justice Department last week had an attorney in court actually arguing that the government shouldn’t be required to provide these children — children, for God’s sake — with soap or toothbrushes or beds.
Forget the politics that surround immigration. You can love or hate the idea of a border wall. You can feverishly demand tougher immigration and asylum laws and hunger to see undocumented immigrants rounded up and deported, or you can scream that such steps are draconian and plead for more compassionate policies.
So set aside the partisanship and the political gamesmanship and save it for another day.
The facilities along the border aren’t meant to hold this many kids, and border patrol agents are clearly overwhelmed. John Sanders, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said as much last week and asked lawmakers to pass an emergency funding package that would provide close to $3 billion to care for migrant children.
Pass it. Don’t hesitate.
That doesn’t mean the debate over how best to deal with immigration and border security stops. The U.S. government should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
And the liberal vs. conservative viewpoints on immigration should be irrelevant to the specific issue of keeping children safe. And healthy. And alive.
Remember how these children are presently living: Cold; dirty; sleep-deprived; traumatized.
Don’t pretend it matters that they’re not American. Don’t pretend it matters that it’s not your fault they wound up on our soil. Don’t call them migrant children. They’re children. Period. And this is America. We can do better.
Rex Huppke is a Chicago Tribune columnist. Readers may send him email at rhuppke@chicagotribune.com.
