Letter to the Editor: What's happening at our borders is a crime against humanity

The Department of Justice, Jeff Sessions and the White House administration are denying the recent charge made by US Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, that youngsters as young as 4 and 5 years old are being imprisoned alone without their parents.

The senator made his charge public after visiting an immigrant detention center in Texas. Merkley reported that he saw kennel-like wire structures, cages, with hundreds of unaccompanied children locked inside them. He said the children had been torn from their parents a short time before, parents who were legally seeking asylum here in the U.S.

He said the kids ranged in age from approximately 4 to 15 years old, and that they slept without mattresses or blankets. Each one had been given a light, foil space blanket. They were required to line up for food, the littlest ones first. Unlike concentration camp prisoners, I imagine.

In video that can be found online, Merkley was turned away from a second detention center in Texas while he was attempting to be allowed inside the facility. A distinguished United States senator and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, being escorted off the premises by the local police. CNN and other networks have recently covered the story. I don’t think you’ll find it on the Fox “News” show.

I’m sick and tired of feeling helpless in the wake of this latest inhumane action by the present administration.

I keep waiting for news that churches of any denomination, the Quaker Church, for example, or a synagogue are actively involved and advocating for these poor innocent children. But I’m not aware of any.

I wonder why religious leaders are not vocal in demanding political action to remedy an immoral situation like this one.

Why aren’t they sponsoring buses to take concerned citizens to Texas or any other state housing children in immigrant detention facilities? I bet the buses would be filled with people who want to demonstrate peacefully to show their outrage over such barbarism.

It’s up to each and every one of us, especially the mothers and grandmothers among us, to get involved and take our own action steps. We can contact religious and social organizations requesting that their leaders get involved. We can contact all of our elected politicians, regardless of political party or branch of government in which they serve, demanding that they advocate for immigrant children separated from their grieving parents. We can keep calling them and asking for periodic updates.

Let’s not accept lame excuses that because this is not a state issue they can’t act or that it is useless to get involved since the Republican-led Congress refuses to challenge any Trump approved policy.

This is a crime against humanity. Silence on this horrible matter means we are condoning it.

Brenda Burke

Westport