There are a number of Guatemalan girls at my school. I teach them. A few of them are seven years old. My heart broke a little when I read that a seven year old Guatemalan girl had died of dehydration after being arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol. The little girl started having seizures eight hours after she was arrested by border agents in New Mexico last Thursday, after entering the country with her father at an illegal crossing. She later died from dehydration, septic shock and fever. She had nothing to eat or drink for several days. Though she was airlifted to a hospital in El Paso, Texas she went into cardiac arrest and died the next day.
In what version of the American Dream is this okay?
Pundits on the side of walls and intolerance lay the blame squarely at the feet of the girl's parents. If they didn't want her to die, why did the father insist on dragging her across the desert? Why did the mother let them go? I can't really call them "pundits on the right," since there's nothing really right about this.
Eight hours.
Why did it take eight hours to figure out that a little girl who had been trekking across a desert, who had nothing to eat or drink for days, might be in need of medical assistance? The idea that this is somehow not "our problem" because we never asked her and her father to come here in the first place borders on the obscene.
Borders.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Fox News the girl's death was "a very sad example of the dangers of this journey."
Tucker Carlson wanted to put blame at the feet of Democrats who have been fashioned by conservatives into the sponsors for illegal immigration: “We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.”
Atonement. Reparation for a wrong or injury.
There is no atonement for the death of a seven year old girl.
No comments:
Post a Comment