Over the past several weeks, or more accurately since the inauguration of President Trump, we have seen an increasingly draconian policy pursued in all of American life. Nowhere is this more apparent that in US Immigration policy. While sincere people of good faith can disagree about many aspects of that policy, including how many people should be allowed to enter the United States legally, there are some things that cannot be debated. These are issues of fact, which science has proven, the truth of which cannot be overcome by opinions to the contrary – no matter how frequently or how loudly they are repeated. Among educated people, opinion can never trump fact.

Except in cases where the parents are actively abusing their children, children should never be removed from their parents’ care because doing so is detrimental, potentially in cataclysmic ways, to that child’s well-being. This means that removing those children is an act of child abuse. The United States currently is housing over 2300 children that have been separated from their parents because their parents committed a misdemeanor of trying to enter the United States illegally. At least one of the detention centers is forcing the children to take psychotropic medication without their parents’ consent and without a court order. Such actions are illegal in this country.

These are dark times. The American experiment is experiencing unprecedented crises on a daily basis. The American people and the American Congress seem to lack the will to do anything about it. The American President is most often the perpetrator of the crises. His cabinet is bereft of the integrity and courage required to stand up to the President’s dictatorial delusions. President Trump’s executive order discontinuing the process of separation does not remedy the situation for those 2300 children already in custody, nor does it end the incarceration of any children arriving at the border. It merely ensures that they will be locked in the same concentration camps their parents are locked in. This executive order isn’t a solution at all, it merely shifts the problem while posing no solution at all for those children already legally detained.

Therefore, I hope you will join me in calling for the following steps to be taken immediately.

1. A special prosecutor should be named to prosecute the President, Vice-President, members of Congress, and members of the cabinet who are complicit in these crimes against humanity. Governors of States who cooperate with illegal detainment must also be prosecuted.
2. The Attorney General and the Directors of Homeland Security and ICE should resign immediately and face prosecution.
3. All detainment camps must be immediately closed and their prisoners released on their own recognizance, per law and the practice of the previous two administrations. Free counseling and medical care must be offered those who are released, including medically supervised removal of any psychotropic medications administered during their captivity.
4. The President, for repeatedly violating his oath of office to protect and defend that Constitution, must resign immediately.

This is hardly a comprehensive list, but it is a start. We can do no other.

Craig Bergland