Tired of American excuses

author: john loeppky | editor-in-chief

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This is where we’ve gotten: a crying, unwell, little girl is a flight risk without a passport and at the age of ten? Try again, American government, try again.

I cannot handle American excuses anymore. There is a young girl being kept away from her family because she is an undocumented immigrant in Texas. This girl was escorted to a hospital, and now guards stand watch because she is, according to the authorities, a flight risk. The child’s name is Rosamaria de la Cruz.

This is where we’ve gotten: a crying, unwell, little girl is a flight risk without a passport and at the age of ten? Try again, American government, try again.

Reports have her mental age being lower than ten and yet you keep her from her mother. Why? So you can show how tough you are? So you can prove how far you will go in becoming the most intolerant nation on Earth?

That girl needed medical help as a disabled person, and you decided that border control was more important than her well being. American border security escalation began because of calls against terrorism. You cannot defend against terrorism when you are spending your time splitting apart families who came to your country for a better future. It’s called humanitarian grounds and you should look it up.

If you are the leaders of the free world, why do you act so backward? Interview the family, find out why they can’t get the supports they are looking for in Mexico, and maybe don’t ship them back off to face some pretty difficult circumstances.

Here’s an excerpt from a BBC report:

“‘I’m a mother,’ said Ms. de la Cruz, who also is undocumented. ‘All I wanted was for her to get the surgery that she needed.

‘It never crossed my mind that any of what is happening right now could happen. When you’re a mother, all you care about is your child.’

A lawyer for the family says that Rosamaria wept as she spoke to her mother over the phone on Thursday.”

They travelled over the border because there is very little chance that a disabled child will be admitted entry. This is under the assumption that disabled children will automatically become an intense drain on the medical system, with no tangible economic benefit to their inclusion. They came because this was Rosamaria’s best chance at a better life.

Think, for a second, of this poor girl’s mother. She could not travel with her child for fear of also being deported. According to the BBC, the family rejected a move to a Mexican hospital – presumably because of substandard health care for the child and the want to maintain normalcy for little Rosamaria.

So, here we are, caring more about perceptions and looking tough than actually supporting those in need. This girl moved when she was only as few months old, she knows nothing else, she is more American than she is Mexican, and yet the administration thinks this is how their agents should act.

Meanwhile the actions of a domestic terrorist in Las Vegas seem to have been forgotten. Maybe, in the fight against the bad people they aim to protect against, the American authorities have forgotten who those people actually are.