Trump is separating immigrant families. That’s what slave owners did to Blacks | Opinion

Politics aside. Does anyone care about immigrant children who are being separated from their parents as punishment when the parents refuse to go back to a country where they will face certain imprisonment, or in some cases, death?

As a parent, my heart bleeds every time I read or hear of a story where another child has been separated from his/or her parents. I am still wondering if the children – some suckling babies - who were snatched from their parents’ arms during President Donald Trump’s first administration were ever reunited with their parents.

Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t recall any stories that told us those children had a happy reunion with their parents.

While the Trump policy was meant to keep immigrants from making the dangerous and illegal journey across the border, the real victims were the children.

Some of those children were babies during Trump’s first administration and are now elementary-school age or teens.

In 2018, President Trump, bowing to pressure, ended his policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at our borders as they attempted to seek a better life in America. Later, under President Joe Biden’s administration, an agreement to block family separations at the border was made, with some exceptions, including endangerment of children.

Today, immigrant family separations are being done with a new twist under the second Trump administration. Now, some parents who are seeking political asylum are faced with a heartbreaking and frightening choice: Go back to the country where their life and/or freedom was threatened or stay in the United States and be separated from your child or children.

In a recent NYT article, I learned about a Russian couple, Evgeny and Evgeniia, who came to America with their 8-year-old son Maksim seeking political asylum. Their freedom in America was short-lived when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told them they could leave, with their child, or remain in immigration detention in this country while their son was sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children.

I can only imagine the feeling those parents had when they had to make their decision. They stayed and were separated from their child. I can only imagine the bewilderment of the child, who certainly did not understand why he had to be taken away from his parents. I can feel the pain of the parents.

Young Maksim is just another child hostage in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants.

As I hear more about such separations, I think about my own children and grandchildren. No matter how hard I try to think about what it would be like, I still can’t imagine being separated from them.

Life has not always been easy for many of us. As Blacks, we have lived under some severe threats. Yet, in America we always found a way to hope for a better life, even when we had to reluctantly give our male children “The Talk” once they became of a certain age.

(The Talk was teaching our sons, and sometimes our daughters, how to react if, and when, a white police officer stopped them. We had to tell them to always keep their hands in sight; to let the officer know if they had to reach into the car’s glove compartment for their identification or registration. And to always say, “Yes, sir, or no sir.”).

As life got better for American Blacks, we never forgot the stories we learned from our older folks, stories of how it felt to have their babies snatched from their momma’s arms during slavery and sold to unknown strangers on other plantations. Even after slavery was abolished, some families who sought to find their kin never did.

Aside from the hardships of slavery - the beatings, lynchings and separation of Black families were an act of hate that has followed our people for generations. Some of us are still searching.

So, whenever I hear about children and babies being separated from their parents, I think about those dark days of slavery, when taking a child away from his/her parent didn’t matter to a lot of folks.

Back then, it was all about free labor and money. Nobody seemed to have given any thought about how this kind of separation would affect the victims. Nobody cared.

Today, 160 years past slavery, separating immigrant families is more about politics. Yet we haven’t come very far in protecting our children. While the comparison of slave babies being taken from their mommas, and immigrant children being separated from their parents might seem a bit harsh to some, the pain is the same.

I believe that no matter who the immigrants are, or why they had to flee their native land, our government is inflicting pain upon pain when they separate families – especially when there are young children involved.

Giving parents the choice to go back to a country where they are not safe or stay in detention in America and give up their children should not be a choice for them to have to make. Why do the children have to be separated from their parents? What is the reasoning behind such a move?

America, we need to find a better way to deal with immigrant families. That’s all I’m saying.