Trump uses his power to attack weak
WASHINGTON - How does President Donald Trump act when he feels on top of the economic and diplomatic world? As his influence solidifies within the GOP? As his poll numbers tick upward?
If a recent Cabinet meeting tirade is any indication, political security has not translated into magnanimity. According to press reports, Trump spent 30 minutes dressing down his Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, for insufficient zeal in closing the southern border to illegal immigrants. One consistent source of tension between the two has been Trump's desire to use family separation as a deterrent against illegal crossings.
Trump unbound is increasingly impatient with the excessive humanity of some of his own staff. This is not a problem he has, to be clear, with his chief of staff.
Asked if family separation was cruel and heartless, John Kelly replied, "I wouldn't put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of - put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States." He described the family-separation policy as a "tough deterrent."
No, pulling crying children from the arms of their parents is not heartless at all. They will be taken care of, "or whatever." For Kelly and Trump, the defining characteristic of these migrants is their illegality, not their personhood or their dignity. This is the definition of dehumanization.
A few points. First, the debate over a border wall is a policy matter. The separation of children from their parents as a deterrent is a human rights abuse. And the Trump ad-ministration, at its highest levels, cannot tell the difference.
As usual, Trump and his team are operating in a complete vacuum of historical knowledge.
Family separation is not new to America. It was essential to the practice of chattel slavery. If enslaved people were truly property, they could not also be husbands and wives, or constitute true families.
Inhuman immigration enforcement is not the moral or legal equivalent of slavery. But a nation with this history should take particular care when contemplating family separation as official policy.
Second, if the deterrence of crime is the only standard we employ in immigration enforcement, what is the limiting principle?
The answer, of course, is that America, by definition, has a higher standard than legality. Our country's most basic commitment - and its limiting principle - is universal human rights and dignity.
This does not prevent the government from enforcing reasonable immigration laws. It does forbid the government from inhumanity in the enforcement of immigration laws.
Other American presidents have used their accumulated political capital for humanitarian goals. Trump is a leader who, as he grows politically stronger, is using his power to attack and exploit the weak and vulnerable.
America's president bullies children.
(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group