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 wasnt 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 areas 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 Trumps 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 Trumps Refugee Resettlement. Other alien children have ended up in facilities as far away as New York City.
Theres 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, weve 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 weve 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 -- its also about all of us.
Although deportation injustices have long been a blot on our countrys 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.
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.
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?
Jim Hightower...
A blast from the past
I Lived in Texas for 12 years....
I see he is still an idiot...
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.
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.
“YEARNING TO BE FREE”—NOT “yearning to be fed for free!”
Here is a picture of said fertlization
Patent Bullshit!
Without border control we will soon have no nation.
The Bush Plan for North Mexico continues.......
Jim Hightower is an idiot and lies way too much.
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.
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