I am not accustomed to feeling helpless, but that’s how I feel. The following I believe to be a factual timeline that is happening now.

• Both US and international law provide means for immigrants to seek asylum. US law restricts that activity to US Ports of Entry.
• As of April 26, 2018, the US government issued a policy change, directing southern ports of entry to turn away asylum seekers on the grounds of insufficient capacity.
• Mexican towns adjacent to ports of entry are filling with asylum seekers under various stages of financial and psychological stress.
• Mexican cartels in those towns now kidnap wealthier asylum seekers and demand ransom for their release.
• Because they are either dangerously low on resources, wealthy but in fear of being kidnapped, or recently ransomed and in fear of being re-kidnapped, asylum seekers are attempting more dangerous between-port border crossings, which are always illegal. Many gratefully turn themselves in on encountering US border patrol agents, requesting asylum.
• Because they are caught entering the US at illegal locations, these asylum seekers are denied asylum applications and detained for prosecution.
• Children of detained asylum seekers are sent to separate detention facilities, alone, regardless of age, including infants. The separation is done in most cases by ruse, for example, We’re going to bathe your child. There is no chance for goodbyes, since neither the child nor the parent realizes they will not see each other again.
• Tens of cases already being pursued by US lawyers on behalf of detained asylum seekers have revealed that there is no tracking system to match the locations of parents and children once separated. Many specific children have been sought in vain for days or weeks.

So here’s what the US can be proud about now: tricking immigrants who are using legitimate means to seek asylum into making illegal crossings so we can detain them, after we further trick them to give up their children, for whom we have no provision or apparent expectation of reuniting with their parent.

Let’s compare this to the Holocaust, just for a moment. I know everyone hates that. After the Holocaust, many people believed that it wasn’t the fault of the simple soldier who followed orders to commit mass murder. How can a soldier disobey?

Later it turned out that many soldiers refused to participate, and they were simply re-assigned. There were plenty who would comply.

Yesterday on the radio I heard the archbishop of Miami opine that the “policy makers” should do some “soul searching” while he absolved the rank and file border patrol agents because they were simply “following orders.”

Is there really not a single border patrol agent who has asked to avoid the assignment of separating children from parents who were tricked into illegal crossings? Or better, someone who quit in protest?

Not one?

Abruptly separating children For Life from their parents in a foreign country after a harrowing journey is pretty close to the Holocaust. Sure, there aren’t as many, so far, and they aren’t actually being killed, just having their lives ruined. Sounds like we’re haggling over the price.

Wow, did we go from City on a Hill to Deepest Pit of Hell quickly. In a handbasket, as it were.

I am no longer satisfied with my husband’s and my plans to retire in California. We should have moved to a country that is not a force of evil in the world.

To paraphrase Eric Garcetti, every patriot over the age of 35 should be running for something.

No one engaged in the activities described above is a patriot. Period.