March 8 John Kelly, Trump’s head of Homeland Security, announced that his department is considering separating children of arrested immigrants from their parents. Kelly told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer “We have tremendous experience dealing with unaccompanied minors.” Yes, over the past several years desperate, terrified children fleeing Central American countries have been arrested at the U.S – Mexico border. The government has put many of these children and their mothers into what can only be called concentration camps. This is no exaggeration. A report by Common Dreams described one of the main camps as “plagued with human rights abuse including: denial of food and medical care, lack of due process, and allegations of sexual assault”. When the federal government under Obama said only licensed child care facilities could hold immigrant children, the state of Texas, with federal cooperation, simply declared that some of its main children’s prisons were for “child care”.
The Trump/Pence Regime is going one police state step further. Under slavery, families were cruelly torn apart – “sold down the river”, sent hundreds of miles from their loved ones. When the Nazis began filling their concentration camps, they separated most children from any remaining parent. Now the Trump/Pence Regime is moving to expand prison capacity along the border, and to rip already traumatized children apart from their parents. Kelly claims this measure is out of concern for the children’s wellbeing. Exactly the opposite is true. These fascists aim to inflict severe punishment on children and their mothers. And through this, to terrify other people living in poverty and violence in Central America from even trying to escape. Anyone with a beating heart needs to oppose these measures. But they provide only a glimpse into the horrors Trump’s fascism is moving towards, rapidly. His entire regime needs to be driven from power.