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Following claims that he kept the child immigrant crisis during his own presidency “quiet,” former President Barack Obama is breaking his silence on the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy on illegal border crossings, which separates undocumented families at the border.
In a lengthy Facebook post in honor of World Refugee Day, the former president slammed the current policy by asking readers to put themselves in the shoes of immigrants who are “desperate to flee persecution”:
That’s the reality for so many of the families whose plights we see and heart-rending cries we hear. And to watch those families broken apart in real time puts to us a very simple question: are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms, or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together? Do we look away, or do we choose to see something of ourselves and our children?
Obama then called on Americans “to find a way to welcome the refugee and the immigrant — to be big enough and wise enough to uphold our laws and honor our values at the same time.” He also gave a reminder that we’re a nation of immigrants:
After all, almost all of us were strangers once, too. Whether our families crossed the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we’re only here because this country welcomed them in, and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, how our last names sound, or the way we worship. To be an American is to have a shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us deserve the chance to become something better.
Finally, Obama urged people to take action, saying, “We have to do more than say ‘this isn’t who we are.’ We have to prove it — through our policies, our laws, our actions, and our votes.”
The former president’s words come as the Trump administration faces major backlash for its policy, which has already separated over 2,000 immigrant children from their parents and is now housing them in immigrant detention centers .
Obama’s statement also follows a claim from Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) that his own administration attempted to keep the child immigrant crisis — which involved officials detaining such children in cages — “very quiet.”
Carlin Becker is the Deputy Editor at IJR. Previously, she wrote for Rare and Red Alert Politics….
