Jul 15, 2018 3 min read

In my 69 years of living as an American citizen, I never imagined the days would come that I would see our once benevolent federal government go out of its way to intentionally harm people; especially children who have no way of defending themselves, and are too young to understand what has happened to them.

It is abundantly clear that the separating of parents from their children at the southern border was, by design, in order to create a dastardly deterrent to people fleeing from obvious harm, intense poverty and hopelessness in our neighboring, Third World countries. Now, let’s be perfectly clear about this. Illegal entry into our country is just that, it’s illegal! However, the Trump administration has made no distinction in treatment of those who are attempting to enter the USA as seekers of asylum from gang violence, tyranny and government-created brutality.

In any case, the separation of families (or children from a single parent) without any adequate method of registering them with tracking methods has proven to be incompetent, inept and downright ham-fisted. In our modern, computerized world, personal identity verification is readily created. It is as simple to administer as generating the I.D. wristbands we are given when we check into a hospital for diagnostics or treatments. On my last visit to Canonsburg Hospital for X-rays, I was issued an extremely durable wristband that had my I.D. and pertinent information, bar-coded onto it.

If the Trump administration had any humanity at all, a similar method of wristbands, for parents and children, should have been generated. It would have been remarkably easy to scan the bar codes in order to track a parent’s and child’s movements and location, and would be a reliable method of matching a parent to a child upon unification. But, alas, no such method was ever contemplated, simply because benevolent and competent handling of a complex issue was intentionally ignored out of governmentally designed stupidity and cruelty.

This stain upon America’s reputation for charity and humanity to the world’s oppressed will be borne by the Trump administration for decades. It deserves all of the scorn and derision from the entire free world that can be heaped upon it. A review of the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty would be abundantly appropriate to any hardhearted person who finds no fault in the Trump administration’s handling of this dark and perverse subject.

Ronald J. Yamka

Canonsburg