Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Trump’s border policies undermine our democracy
The Gainseville Sun ^ | August 3, 2018 | Jim Hightower

Posted on 08/02/2018 10:47:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

In early June, I traveled to “The Valley,” as the McAllen-Brownsville area of Texas is called, down where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

This river, one of the longest in the U.S., forms the entire Texas-Mexico border, meandering south and east 1,250 miles from our far-west desert city of El Paso to the semi-tropical tip of my state. Its cartographic function aside, the narrow and shallow Rio Grande has historically been viewed by families in the region as more a connector than a divider, and it has long fostered a rich, cross-fertilized culture along its length, uniting generations of us Americanos with our Mexicano neighbors.

Though I had gone there to talk politics at a union conference, I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to wallow awhile in the rich Tex-Mex experience. So I took an extra half day to savor some fresh shrimp from the Gulf, quff a couple or three good Mexican cervezas, let my mind drift to the lazy tempo of palm trees swaying in the sea breeze and generally absorb the area’s unique spirit, character and centuries-old sense of place. It was an altogether pleasant experience.

Well, except that, just beyond the palms where I was floating in blissful reverie, a time bomb of sadistic immigration policy was ticking.

Only a couple of days later, the border would explode in a media conflagration that would char Washington and burn across America as the public learned that our tempestuous, tweety-bird president had decided The Valley would be ground zero for his political mugging of border-crossing families. Suddenly (and stupidly) he and his agents mounted a full-scale terrorist attack on thousands of migrant children -- 10-year-olds, 4-year-olds, toddlers and even babies!

Many of these tykes have trekked hundreds of miles with parents and other adults along the dangerous route to El Norte. Others have migrated alone in an urgent attempt to escape rampaging gang violence and life-crushing poverty stalking them in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and parts of Mexico. Hoping for humanitarian refuge in the Land of the Free, these vulnerable people are instead being met at the Rio Grande by Trump’s newly fabricated “zero tolerance” policy against Latinx asylum seekers. His Customs and Border Protection agents had been brusquely separating distraught children from their parents -- mostly moms -- whom they hauled to a McAllen detention jail run by ICE (the ruthlessly cold Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency). Some of the terrorized children have been taken 60 miles away to Brownsville to be incarcerated in chain-link cages inside a windowless, 77,000-square-foot warehouse (a converted Walmart Supercenter) run by a private corporation under contract to Trump’s Refugee Resettlement. Other “alien children” have ended up in facilities as far away as New York City.

There’s no need for me to chronicle each step in this Trump-run-amuck saga, for nearly everyone has seen shocking videos and photos of his troops seizing and ripping apart families.

Again, and again, we’ve heard recordings of bewildered, anguished and sobbing children and absorbed weeks of 24/7 coverage and commentary about this flagrantly immoral assertion of Trumpist autocracy. And we’ve heard the bizarre twists, turns and tweets of Trump, Sessions, Spence, Kelly, Huckabee-Sanders, Nielson, et al. trying to rationalize their intentionally cruel policy. The deeper issue of what their relentless pursuit of zero tolerance says is not just about the implementers of this tortuous policy -- it’s also about all of us.

Although deportation injustices have long been a blot on our country’s “Give me your tired, your poor” pretensions, Trump has turned immigration policy into a despotic nightmare of presumed guilt, mass incarceration and what amount to death-sentence deportations.

The policy of “zero tolerance” violates the rights of immigrants, while undermining our own rights and, in the process, shriveling the basic value of fairness that binds democratic societies together, as well as our own.


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: aliens; democrats; deportations; hightower; illegals; immigration; texas; trump
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-31 last
To: 2ndDivisionVet

Too many people are so ignorant. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...” was written by a New York woman poet in the late 1800s. It was not by one of our nation’s founding fathers, and it is not U.S. law.


21 posted on 08/03/2018 1:55:19 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet
The policy of “zero tolerance” violates the rights of immigrants, while undermining our own rights and, in the process, shriveling the basic value of fairness that binds democratic societies together, as well as our own.

Zero tolerance means 'Obey the law', but this schmuck says it violates the rights of illegal aliens.

What rights?

Who is jimlowtower and who cares what he thinks?

22 posted on 08/03/2018 3:41:52 AM PDT by USS Alaska (Kill all mooselimb, terrorist savages, with extreme prejudice! Deus Vult!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cowboy Bob

Jim Hightower...

A blast from the past

I Lived in Texas for 12 years....

I see he is still an idiot...


23 posted on 08/03/2018 3:57:07 AM PDT by Popman (Wisdom is not what you know about the world but how well you know God.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Like several others here I had also believed that Hightower had assumed room temperature long ago. In my case I thought it was soon after the left tried to launch ‘commie’ radio AKA Air America. I think he was one of the original DJs.

Oh well, ...

Hey Jim ... when you pass, please take Obama with you.


24 posted on 08/03/2018 4:28:01 AM PDT by ByteMercenary (Healthcare Insurance is *NOT* a Constitutional right.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: WVNan

If the US WAS a [true] democracy, abortion would be illegal. Illegal immigrants would be arrested and deported immediately. Current illegals would be rounded up and deported within a very short timeline.

Democracy means the will of the majority.


25 posted on 08/03/2018 4:46:20 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Catastrophic, Anthropogenic Climate Alterations: The acronym explains the science.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: familyop

“YEARNING TO BE FREE”—NOT “yearning to be fed for free!”


26 posted on 08/03/2018 5:22:58 AM PDT by milagro (There is no peace in appeasement!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet
...and it has long fostered a rich, cross-fertilized culture along its length...

Here is a picture of said fertlization


27 posted on 08/03/2018 6:31:36 AM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Patent Bullshit!


28 posted on 08/03/2018 6:55:15 AM PDT by GoldenPup
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Without border control we will soon have no nation.

The Bush Plan for North Mexico continues.......


29 posted on 08/03/2018 7:01:39 AM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents__Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Jim Hightower is an idiot and lies way too much.


30 posted on 08/03/2018 7:03:45 AM PDT by bmwcyle (People who do not study history are destine to believe really ignorant statements.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Jim Hightower. I’ve heard some of his radio screeds on a lefty station in my area. Made me not want to listen to the station, knowing they had such poor judgement and twisted outlook.

Jim Hightower is the guy on the street corner, wearing an old. smelly tench coat, holding a sign and babbling incoherently. Some how he managed to get a gig off of the street.


31 posted on 08/03/2018 5:32:26 PM PDT by PhiloBedo (You gotta roll with the punches, and get with what's real.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-31 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson