In one of the greatest countries in the world, Americans are always getting confused and mixed up with semantics. It is very easy to justify a behavior or a system, when the words identify something else, instead of something that is happening right now.
Racism is a word in 2019, no one will identify with, but it is a system that functions in many different areas of peoples’ activities in America. Instead of working to get rid of the system, White people have amnesia, and they believe that it does not exist anymore. They refuse to listen to Blacks who want reparations, and they are tired of hearing that people of color are being discriminated against.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. criticized the Trump administration’s practice of holding migrants seeking asylum in what she called “concentration camps.” Many Republicans and some Democrats are upset with her terminology, and they would prefer calling these human cages, “holding centers.” Others are calling these cages, detention centers and some are calling them detention camps.
But, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.”
As migrant families are split up and mothers, fathers and relatives have no idea where the children are taken, very few of our leaders are talking, and saying that this is wrong. The conditions are horrendous and inhumane, where the children receive no baths, no extra clothes, and floors to sleep on.
The administration has jailed children and violated human rights, and no one from the administration is able to provide accurate numbers and lists with names and relatives. Concentration camps are considered by experts as the mass detention of civilians without a trial, and that is what is happening now on the southern border.
The history of America appears to repeat itself again, when 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II for their background. Trump is planning to house 1,400 undocumented children in Fort Sill, where 700 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in tents in desert-like heat, surrounded by barbed wire and guards.
On June 22, 2019, a group of Japanese Americans in their 70s and 80s protested outside Fort Sill, and urged US officials to not repeat America’s shameful history. Ms. Satsuki Ina, 75, of San Francisco said, “There are many similarities that resonate through our own experiences. Imprisoning children without meeting certain standards of care, and we had family separation and indefinite detention. We suffered long-term health problems and mental health problems long afterward.”
Building a wall and throwing children and families in detention centers will exacerbate the problem, and make it worse. Immigrants and migrants are challenging America’s moral values, because they are dying and living under violent dictatorships.
There is no easy answer to this crisis, but the people seeking asylum deserve dignity and compassion.
“What Trump fails to see is that sovereignty is not an absolute privilege, but a moral responsibility,” says Rev. Daniel G. Groody, associate professor at Notre Dame University. “If more has been given to America, then even more is expected of us, and unless we attend to human insecurity outside our borders, we will not have national security inside our borders.”
President Trump and his administration can spend billions of dollars sealing off the border, but the migrants will then use boats to get to America. Building the wall is just political bravado, because migrants and immigrants are looking for a better and dignified life.
“To further close our doors not only deprives the stranger in need but also diminishes who we are as human beings, says Rev. Groody. “Trump does not understand neither the lessons of history, the challenges of immigration, nor the founding spirit of American democracy.”
