Make the toddler choose
At a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas, an agent told a Honduran family that one parent would be sent to Mexico while the other parent and their three children could stay in the United States, according to the family. The agent turned to the couple’s youngest daughter — 3-year-old Sofia, whom they call Sofi — and asked her to make a choice.
Sofi’s choice. Ironic, isn’t it. I don’t suppose the agent knew her name or knew of Sophie’s Choice.
“The agent asked her who she wanted to go with, mom or dad,” her mother, Tania, told NPR through an interpreter. “And the girl, because she is more attached to me, she said mom. But when they started to take [my husband] away, the girl started to cry. The officer said, ‘You said [you want to go] with mom.’ “
Marvelous, isn’t it? Pick out the youngest child and make her choose – so as to scar her for life.
Tania and her husband, Joseph, said they spent parts of two days last week trying to prevent the Border Patrol from separating their family. They were aided by a doctor who had examined Sofi and pleaded with agents not to separate the family, Joseph and Tania said.
But it’s our official policy to be as inhumane and cruel as possible, to discourage people from trying to escape to a better life.
Because the doctor made a huge point of it, in the end the family was allowed to stay together and they’re now with relatives in the Midwest…but Border Patrol did its best to wreck their lives.
The family fled Honduras after Tania witnessed her mother get killed. Her sister-in-law also was a witness and was later kidnapped, tortured and slain to keep her from testifying. The gang MS-13 then posted a note on the family’s door telling them they had 45 minutes to leave, Tania said. That’s when the family left to seek asylum in the U.S.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat whose office assisted the family in its efforts to be removed from the MPP program, said she is asking DHS to investigate allegations that the Border Patrol planned to separate the family and asked a 3-year-old girl to pick which parent she would go with.
“It’s an outrage, and it’s absolutely horrifying that a toddler would be asked to choose between two parents. It was just stunning to me. It’s one thing to read about it; it’s another thing to actually hear a parent recounting the story firsthand in their own voice,” Escobar said.
H/t Rob
“What’s best for the little child?” Fine. Good question.
“What does the little child prefer?” Okay, as far as it goes.
“All right, kid: decide the fate of your family.” Not good.
I wonder whether the fuckwit actually had read “Sophie’s Choice”? (A book I read at the utterly inappropriate age of nine – I was a very precocious reader – when my father borrowed it from the library. It left permanent scars.) I could imagine some Nazi admirer thinking it a grand joke. But that would require a high degree of sophistication and self-awareness of how cruel these US actions are, so maybe not..
This sounds like the exact sort of case that asylum is designed to help. We have a moral obligation, even if not a legal one, to help others in this sort of trouble. (And I think our UN standing does give us an obligation? Not sure, got in real late last night, feeling too lazy to look it up. Sorry.)
Trump lacks basic humanity. That isn’t a surprise. I wish I were more surprised at how many other people are eager to collaborate with him.