DeSantis wants to divide our communities with Pedro Pan closures. We won’t let him | Opinion

He clutches his one-eyed, well-worn teddy bear and stares out the plane window as if trying to find, through the window glass, some familiar face. It, along with the courage he displays on his face, belie the paralyzing fear he feels within.

He’s 9 years old and has never been on an airplane, never been away from his parents. Yet, unexpectedly at dawn that very day, with one final, quick hug and a tearful plea from them to “be brave for us,” his world, and the world of the group of children who accompany him on this journey, is forevermore upended.

When his feet finally touch ground, he finds himself in a strange land with foreign customs, language and food. At arrival, he, unlike some of the other children, has no family there to claim him, and the desperate yearning for his family and homeland intensifies.

But there to greet him, to steady his steps, fortify his courage and nurture his heart, is a member of Operation Pedro Pan. Organized by the Catholic Welfare Bureau of Miami, for two years, it oversaw the largest and most successful exodus of unaccompanied minors in the Western Hemisphere beginning in 1960.

Over the course of those next days, weeks and months, this boy, like the other children, is kindly and generously cared for and watched over and ultimately placed with a loving “host” family that helps him grow into the young man who later becomes an upstanding citizen of this country.

Arrived here alone

I am Sen. Annette Taddeo. I understand this story. I have lived a similar one. Like many of my Cuban, Venezuelan, Mexican and Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, I arrived in this country at the age of 17, alone. One day I was shopping for school uniforms in my native Colombia, and the next I was whisked away to Alabama, where I quickly learned the challenges of learning English while learning to survive on my own.

You see, my father had been kidnapped by the FARC, a Marxist terrorist group funded by the Cuban regime. No, I was not Pedro Pan, and thousands of you who came from your countries, just like me, many fleeing communism, were not Pedro Pan either. However, my parents and so many other parents were also forced to make the unthinkable sacrifice that completely and forevermore changed the course of my life.

Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to close those centers that housed the Pedro Pan decades ago. That action will prevent other children from receiving refuge and comfort while waiting to reunite with their families. DeSantis says that those children, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and others — despite the fact that many have also been fleeing Castro’s communism that plagues their countries — are not the same as the Cuban children who came under Pedro Pan.

This move by the governor is one more sign that DeSantis is unable to feel empathy, for anyone... or anything. But also, for the lowest of passions: political opportunism. I am and have been one with the pain of the Cuban people because it is also our pain and that of thousands of others who, although we are not Cuban, feel twinned with them.

That’s why it’s time to tell DeSantis: Neither you nor anyone is going to divide our communities. There aren’t two types of children here, Mr. DeSantis — those who serve you politically and those who don’t.

Like thousands of Pedro Pan who today thank this great country for having welcomed them with love and generosity, we also thank the American people today for the opportunity to affirm our lives here in freedom and love.

In hope and pain, in joy and sadness, in the desire to live with dignity and freedom, we are one people, and no one is going to divide us, much less a politician who uses children for such low purposes. Somos uno.

Annette Taddeo is a Democratic state senator representing District 40 and a gubernatorial candidate.