For the past six weeks, authorities in the United States have adopted a hardline policy of separating illegal immigrants from their children. The reasoning, the officials say, is that as adults are breaking that nation’s immigration law, they need to be jailed. Consequently, their children must be removed from their custody, and these minors then placed in separate holding facilities which, as heart-rendering images of children in cages show, are basic and temporary in nature. This shift in policy was directed by US President Donald Trump and his senior officials.
The barbaric and inhumane practise now is to be stopped after the president gave way to a wave of criticism and protests that transcended party lines, united social activists and garnered negative comments even from within his family circle, with First Lady Melania and daughter Ivanka opposing it. By all accounts, senior officials in previous administrations had cautioned against such a policy on the grounds that it would be inhumane and unjust, putting a black mark on the nation’s human rights’ record. Indeed, the images of caged children have been likened to the photographs of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, or orange jump-suited prisoners held in cages in the Guantanamo Bay. Simply put, it was unacceptable, a grave mistake on behalf of the White House administration and one that rightly brought anger and condemnation — both, from within the US and also from its friends and allies abroad. Illegal immigrants coming to the US need to be treated with dignity — not incarceration and separation. Never again will we see children held in cages, the policy is over, and Trump ending it was a good days’ work.
