EDITORIAL: This despicable policy must end; separating families not right solution

Mrs. Bush, in a guest column for the Washington Post on Sunday, was expressing what a growing number of Americans are feeling. The shameful policy enacted by the Trump Administration in April to separate children from their parents if they have crossed the border illegally is both unnecessary and inhumane.

It is wrong and must be stopped. Americans must rise up and demand an end to this outrageous practice. This is not who we are as a nation.

According to the Associated Press, nearly 2,000 children were separated from their families over a six-week period in April and May after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero-tolerance” policy that refers all cases of illegal entry for criminal prosecution. U.S. protocol prohibits detaining children with their parents because the children are not charged with a crime and the parents are.

What is so troubling is that it appears Trump and his allies are trying to use the children torn from their parents’ arms as a political bargaining chip to advance the administration’s immigration reforms, the centerpiece of which is a wall along the country’s southern border with Mexico. It was a major Trump campaign promise, but he has been unable to get it started because of a lack of funding from Congress. (Trump also blathered that Mexico would pay for the wall, but that was an empty promise from the start.) Americans understand that immigration is a difficult issue and border security is a legitimate problem. But to assert that there is no solution other than to forcibly separate children from their parents after an illegal border crossing and warehouse them in cages while bureaucrats sort things out is ludicrous.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who favors tighter border security, is attempting to convince Trump and his minions to stop the family-separation practice.

“What the administration has decided to do is to separate children from their parents to try to send a message that if you cross the border with children, your children are going to be ripped away from you. That’s traumatizing to the children who are innocent victims, and it is contrary to our values in this country.”

We applaud Collins for her principled and compassionate response. She is one of a growing number of Republicans who are showing the courage to speak up and call out this terrible practice for what it is. Among those is Indiana 8th District Rep. Larry Bucshon, who issued a statement to the Tribune-Star on Monday that said, “As a father of four children, I believe the separation of illegal immigrant families at the border is heartbreaking, and I am against it.”

Bucshon went on to say in his statement that the best solution to the situation is to fix the immigration system.

The immigration issue will not, however, be resolved overnight. The separation of families can be. In the true spirit of humanity and civility, we urge Trump to put an end to this despicable policy.