Reflections on the family separation crisis, as a parent and a Jew

By Neal Schindler

President Donald Trump has taken a lot of well-deserved heat for his administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration. The policy’s implementation has produced a crisis of family separations — kids taken from parents, some of whom were asylum-seekers — at the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration’s insistence on forcing these separations, supposedly as a deterrent against unlawful border crossings, drew intense criticism from former first lady Laura Bush, Human Rights Watch, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, to name just a few detractors.

Now Trump has signed an executive order intended to stop the separations. Unfortunately but predictably, it doesn’t eliminate the “zero tolerance” policy, which mandates that both asylum-seekers and people crossing the border illegally face criminal charges rather than civil ones. This move is a tacit admission of something the president had previously refused to acknowledge: that at any point he could have ended the nightmarish reality of families torn apart and terrified children held in bare-bones detention centers.

As any parent knows, simply being left with a babysitter can bring a toddler to tears, even if that sitter is a trusted family member or friend. When my wife and I are preparing to leave our son with a caregiver, he catches on pretty quickly. By the time we’re out the door, he’s bawling. We tell him: “Mama and Dada always come back.” I think he’s beginning to understand. Usually, within a few minutes, the sitter reports that he’s back to doing classic toddler things, like drumming on his djembe or pushing his toy cement mixer around.

It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like if I couldn’t assure my son that I’d be coming back.

Some people I know on Facebook are taking what they see as a measured, logical approach to the family separation crisis. This often involves bringing up the Obama-era deportation rate and asking why Americans who are fuming now weren’t doing so then. They might also suggest that the current separation phenomenon isn’t as widespread as its most vocal critics believe.

To the first charge, many of us progressives must plead guilty. Yet there’s bountiful evidence that this new wave of separations is unlike anything perpetrated by previous administrations. Regarding the second argument, I have to wonder: Speaking of “zero tolerance,” how much family separation is morally acceptable? A little bit? A moderate amount? Was this draconian policy remotely necessary, for any defensible reason, or was it simply another expression of the Trump administration’s hostility and xenophobia toward nonwhites generally and Spanish speakers specifically?

As a parent, I find the whole thing very troubling. I’ve seen John Moore’s infamous photo of the sobbing toddler; that my own 2-year-old’s struggle with sleep regression has coincided with the separation crisis adds further emotional charge. When toddler tears are a common occurrence in your home, it’s hard not to think about the asylum-seeking parents who did everything right in approaching the border but still can’t promise their little ones that they’ll be back. For that matter, why do people who cross the border illegally deserve such torment?

Previous presidents and their appointees oversaw very bad things (e.g., torture). Some quoted the Bible and referred often to their Christianity. What I don’t recall is seeing the Bible trotted out in defense of policies clearly opposed by many prominent conservatives and Christians and a majority of the American people. As several media outlets have noted, Jeff Sessions’ beloved Romans 13:1 doesn’t have the best track record as a political defense.

I’m not Christian, but to me the WWJD when it comes to families crossing the border seems pretty clear. Trump assures his base that the U.S. won’t become a “migrant camp”; at this point, after so many dog whistles, all I hear is: “Nonwhites will not replace us!” Weren’t my grandparents asylum-seekers, fleeing Hitler’s Germany? If they’d arrived with children in tow, what version of the American dream would they have come to understand if they had been separated from their kids?

There’s a distinctly Jewish angle on the separation crisis as well. About 350 American Jewish organizations, including 13 based in Washington state, have signed on to a letter that condemns the “zero tolerance” policy and invokes both the Holocaust and the Torah to make its point. If a Holocaust comparison has you reaching for Godwin’s law, you should read survivor Yoka Verdoner’s powerful essay in the Guardian titled “Nazis separated me from my parents as a child; the trauma lasts a lifetime.” Of course, Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser who was a chief architect of the egregious policy (and is Jewish) has, irony of ironies, his own immigrant roots.

But the icing on the rotten cake came when Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan recently told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson: “I think it’s an insult to the brave men and women of the border patrol and ICE to call law enforcement officers Nazis. They are simply enforcing laws enacted by Congress.” Newsweek’s Christina Zhao noted the painfully obvious: “Homan seemed to be unaware that he used the same ‘just following orders’ defence that was used by Nazis during the Nuremberg trials following WWII.”

Every issue, however thorny, has its intellectual side. Usually I get lost in all the wonkish policy stuff. But on this issue, because I’m the father of a toddler, and because Jewish values so clearly address the issue at hand, my feelings prevail. And while our heads should guide us much of the time, our hearts shouldn’t be ignored. I have to believe, after all, that a profound lack of compassion and empathy is what led us to these dark days in the first place.

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