Family Separation Statement

Statement

I would like to begin by acknowledging that the tenuous, degrading, and despairing situation at our border with Mexico has been built on the foundation of decades of failed policies by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House.

We are seeing this situation being exacerbated now with President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' "no tolerance" policy, that is little more than an attack on human dignity and a failure of compassion at our southern border.
Both parties own this situation for being unwilling, for decades, to take real and logical steps to fixing our immigration system. Democrats want to fix it, only when a Democrat is President. Republicans want to fix it, only with a Republican is President. The duopolization of political power is killing our nation at it's core.

President Trump says the separation of families at the border is the fault of laws passed by Democrats and by their unwillingness to negotiate. Attorney General Sessions says the separation of families at the border serves as a deterrent to those unwilling to obey our laws. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Nielson says that families aren't being separated. The current administration can't even agree on what it is doing and why.

It is inexcusable for the United States of America to not have the means to keep these families together, during this agonizing time in their lives. We are the land of the free, home of the brave, and the shining city on a hill, because we are a nation of compassion and understanding! For us to act inhumanely toward these children and their families denies who we have been since our inception. Our former national identity is etched on the Statue of Liberty, the monument of our immigrant light to the nations which reads, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Right now it is irrelevant who is to blame for families being separated. What is relevant is that the practice must stop immediately! This practice creates psychological and emotional damage to these children that will not be undone or fixed by simply having food and a roof.

I'm troubled by the lack of humanity I'm seeing by proponents of this practice. When I put myself in their shoes, I have to wonder how bad things must be where these families are coming from that the parents honestly and sincerely believe that the best option they have of keeping their families safe and alive is to trek thousands of miles across land controlled by cartels, coyotes, and sex-traffickers just to risk this happening upon arrival to our nation in the hope that they can somehow be granted asylum?

How can we, a Christian nation, with many of us raised with Jesus' own words reverberating in our ears and hearts that we should "love our neighbor as ourselves" turn a deaf ear and uncompassionate heart to these families as they are ripped apart at our border to satisfy a political objective.

We don't have to separate families for weeks, months, and years at a time to sort this situation out. President Trump could end the practice today with a phone call and the Congress could end it this week with a vote.
We can do so much better and I fully expect us to do drastically better than this.

I do not support Governor Asa Hutchinson's move to send our national guard to the border because we've been informed by the Border Patrol Union that additional national guard troops are waste of time and resources because the Border Patrol is hand-cuffed from being able to use the national guard appropriately by executive mandate.

In the coming weeks we are going to highlight what we think needs done to help resolve the border issue. Since leadership on this issue isn't coming from D.C., then maybe it is time for "We the People" to lead the way in solving this human tragedy that has existed at our border for far too long.

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