Footages of undocumented immigrants being arrested and separated from their crying young children have generated a political storm in the U.S.
While many of Mr. Trump’s supporters have voiced against these actions, it is to be noted that the detention policy is nothing new.
What is the situation in border detention camps?
The Trump administration has commissioned a zero tolerance immigrant policy and has tightened the southern border of U.S.
This has led to heartening scenes of young children being torn from their parents and being held in cage like detention centres.
Video and audio footages of these actions have already generated a storm and even unnerved even Trump’s ardent supporters.
Almost all senators (including from Trump’s party), some major religious leaders have opposed the forced separation of kids from parents.
The United Nations went one step further to state that these actions might amount to “psychological torture”.
Are such brutalities new?
Despite the current outrage, police brutality towards children and the separation of children from their parents is nothing new in the U.S.
Foreigners - Mr. Trump has merely unleashed the most comprehensive, vicious and crude manifestation the existing age old U.S. detention policy.
The increase in the number of detainees and the hard tactics of handcuffing undocumented migrants in front of their young crying children is what is new.
Notably, similar detentions have been going even in the previous regimes too, albeit away from the media light and tactful diplomatic cover-ups.
Many detainees in Guatemala Bay suffered the same fate, and some couldn’t fight their cases due to the harsh legal conditions they had to meet.
Poor U.S. children - In low-income neighbourhoods, rather than providing an avenue for upward mobility, schools have become highly policed zones.
School authorities in several poorer districts routinely summon police officers to arrest children as young as six years old for misbehaviours.
This has strengthened racial inequality and distrust so much that the ‘school to prison pipeline’ has become a characteristic of social life in some areas.
Bail Affordability - Hefty fines for minor violations is also a routine affair, and the prevalent poverty implies that many violators land up in jail.
As bail fee is also exorbitant, poor tend to serve their entire pre-trial periods in jail - an open criminalisation of poverty.
Not surprisingly, there is a clear racial demography that spends more time in prisons than the others as economic divide has a racial correlation.
Strikingly, outrage against separation of children form parents seems missing when the poor US citizens are detained due to their inability to afford fines.
Is the current tough crackdown on immigrants warranted?
Undocumented migration has continuously been reducing since 2008 and is presently at record low levels.
Hence, it looks like Mr. Trump is playing to his constituency by orchestrating a racial campaign through hard headed detentions.
Additionally, contrary to Mr. Trump’s claim, the proportion of immigrants involved in crime is far lesser than native born U.S. citizenry.
We are in an era of increasing inequalities, which is being further aided by tax cuts for the rich and rapid automation taking away manual jobs.
In this context, the notion that immigrants are stealing jobs is a ploy to distract the mass fury away from the rich and affluent citizenry.
Nonetheless, this as a political strategy is unsustainable in the long run as the underlying economic strain is too strong to not be noticed.
