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If you're angry and upset that our government is separating thousands of children from their families as they seek asylum from the violence in their countries, you're hardly alone. What Trump and his administration are doing is both shameful and shameless. No matter what you think about immigration policy, ripping children from their parents' arms is morally indefensible. Immigrant families are being treated as bargaining chips to fund a border wall and further a cynical, openly racist agenda.
We should be furious. We should be heartbroken. The one thing we shouldn't be is surprised. The callous cruelty we see at the border has provoked outrage from everyone but the most fanatical Trump sycophants, yet it has run like a rotten vein through this presidency from the beginning. Does anyone really think that Donald Trump cares about anything or anyone other than himself? The man is a black hole of selfishness that has already consumed an entire political party. He is determined to drag this country down to his own petty, deceitful level and, even if he doesn't succeed in the long run, he will do his best to hurt anyone who gets in his way -- including children.
Horribly, incredibly, the Trump administration has imprisoned thousands of innocent children at the border, but it doesn't stop there. There are the innocent children of Puerto Rico. There are the innocent children of Flint, Michigan. There are the innocent children who are growing up with polluted air and unsafe drinking water across the country. Children whose future Donald Trump has tossed aside because it has no value to him.
Our nation's immigration policies have been broken for decades. But instead of working on solutions that would treat human beings with respect, this administration has chosen a policy of intimidation and brutality. And though some of Trump's congressional enablers profess they don't have the stomach for what's happening to these children, their spinelessness makes them just as culpable.
We can hope that near-universal public outrage will be enough to finally shame them into decency. At this point, though, hope is not enough. We must act. We must do everything we can this November to reject their vision of an America where the land of hope and dreams is transformed into a citadel for the privileged.