Readers React: Separating migrant children from their parents is outrageously cruel — even for the Trump administration

To the editor: As a citizen and a mother, I am outraged by Atty. Gen. Jeff Session’s new “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy of charging all undocumented migrants, including asylum-seekers, at our borders with a crime and then separating parents from their children.

This is morally despicable. It is a Gestapo tactic designed to deter migrants by striking at the deepest emotional bonds and at the most vulnerable — the children. It is also very likely illegal, according to international law, which requires that an orderly asylum process be followed.

This “law” makes me ashamed and reminds me that Henry David Thoreau wrote about a “higher law,” which calls for civil disobedience when the state violates basic ethics and human rights.

Martina Ebert, Claremont

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To the editor: Sessions recently said, “We can’t take everyone on this planet who is in a difficult situation.”

No one is making that argument — but how about taking in people from those countries that the United States has helped to make unstable?

According to State Department cables published by WikiLeaks, the Obama administration supported the 2009 Honduras coup that overthrew that country’s democratically elected president. The new government immediately launched a crackdown that killed hundreds of people.

The Trump administration has close relations with the government in Honduras, which held onto power last year via an election widely condemned as fraudulent.

We helped create the “difficult situation,” and now we tell the people trying to flee from it that they must stay home. So much for being the land of the free.

Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: I understand that immigration is a complicated issue, but while reading about implementation of new policies in which children may be separated from their parents at the border, these words kept echoing in my mind:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

What has happened to our country?

Ann Kleinsasser, Glendale

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