Donald Trump and his inhumane border treatment of migrant children

This echo opinion letter was published in the Maryland newspaper the Capital Gazette

Detaining children is inhumane

Fort Sill migrant children

There is simply no excuse for migrant children being detained at the border in traumatically inhumane conditions, crowded, hungry, filthy, minimally supervised, some of them ill and sleeping on concrete floors for weeks on end. The United States has truly sunk to a new low.

Plus we all thought that family separations had ended. Most of these children, some of them toddlers, arrived with asylum-seeking family at the border but were taken away from the adults if they were not their parents even though it may have been a close relative.

They may also be separated if the parent is ill. One infamous example of DHS depravity is of a father separated from his three young children because he is HIV positive. The children's mother had previously died of AIDS.

By law, migrant children cannot be detained longer than 72 hours. Most of these children have family in the United States that they were hoping to join. Moving them on to their families should be a priority for Homeland Security. The administration complains that their detention facility problems are due to inadequate funding provided by Congress. Cruelty to children and DHS incompetence cannot be blamed on a shortage of funding.

It is easy to feel helpless in the face of this government-sanctioned cruelty, but we can all do our bit.

There is a local group, the Annapolis Immigration Justice Network, doing heroic work to help asylum-seeking migrants in our area. You can donate to their legal fund or volunteer for their accompaniment program, driving people to their immigration hearings and check-ins with ICE in Baltimore.

You can donate through their website,aijnetwork.org. or send a check to AIJN, 8 Carvel Circle, Edgewater, MD 21037.

From Marilyn Higgs, Severna Park Maryland