New York Times (Op-Ed)
By Daniel A. Olivas
June 19, 2018
LOS ANGELES — When Donald Trump was announced the winner of the Electoral College — but not the popular vote — I was just finishing a book of short stories. They addressed many difficult issues, like poverty, bigotry and violence. But as the grandson of Mexican immigrants, I felt I had to write one last story, one that would confront this man who got himself elected on a platform of hate and a promise to wall off the country of my grandparents.
So I wrote “The Great Wall.” In the dystopian future of the story, the wall is a golden, gaudy monstrosity decorated with bas-relief scenes from the president’s life, from his childhood to his TV career to him signing executive orders.
But the real monstrosity of the story is the detention center in San Diego, Calif., just inside the wall where the children are kept until they are allowed to wave goodbye to their parents through cloudy plexiglass, before the parents are loaded into black buses and deported.
I wanted my story to serve as a cautionary tale of what our country could devolve into if Mr. Trump’s immigration policies were fully realized. But now this is our reality: Sons and daughters are being ripped from their parents’ arms — in some cases, literally — and detention centers are filled with frightened children. In immigrant communities, the fear is palpable, with parents asking themselves if they should risk taking their children to school, or going to work or reporting a crime, lest they become vulnerable to a sweep by immigration agents.
No one is safe. Just this week we learned of Jose Luis Garcia, a grandfather and authorized resident since the 1980s, who was handcuffed and taken by federal immigration officers while he watered his lawn in front of his home in Southern California. We also learned of Elsa Johana Ortiz Enriquez of Guatemala, who traveled through Mexico and crossed the border into the United States with her 8-year-old son, Anthony, only to be arrested and then separated in the most horrifying of ways: After pleading guilty to unlawful entry, Ms. Ortiz was put on a plane back to Guatemala while her son was transferred to a shelter for migrant children.
If you live in a city like Los Angeles, the odds are that the victims of these policies are your neighbors and co-workers, the classmates of your children and the families who worship with you. You cannot pretend this is not happening here, now, and to people you know.
Some people in the Trump administration have defended the “zero-tolerance” policy — which has separated some 2,000 children from their parents — by pointing to Scripture and blaming their political opponents. Mr. Trump himself is — worse yet — openly using the children’s suffering as a bargaining chip to get funding to build his wall. “The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda,” he tweeted, before demanding that they agree to an immigration bill that pays for the wall. He capped his tweet with a rallying cry apparently aimed at supporters of his immigration policies: “Go for it! WIN!”
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda. Any Immigration Bill MUST HAVE full funding for the Wall, end Catch & Release, Visa Lottery and Chain, and go to Merit Based Immigration. Go for it! WIN!
1:08 PM – Jun 15, 2018
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Nothing, not in Scripture, not in the law, can justify harming children to make a political point.
A dystopia is an imagined, horrific place where people’s humanity is replaced by fear. That’s what I thought my story depicted — a place where my characters were stripped of their humanity and security, a place that was not yet real. I had hoped it would sound a warning about what our country could become if no one stood up to Mr. Trump. I am sickened to admit that — in its essential details — my dystopian tale has come true.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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