Remember it’s about kids

In late October 2017, 10-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez, born with cerebral palsy in Mexico but living illegally in Texas since infancy with legal relatives, had emergency gall bladder surgery. Shortly after, Customs and Border Patrol agents removed her from the hospital and placed her in a facility for unaccompanied minors.

Never mind that kids in hospitals usually are technically unaccompanied sometimes. A Border Patrol spokesperson argued the law offered no discretion in Rosa Maria’s case.

Dickens said it best in “Oliver Twist:” “The law is a ass.”

I can’t believe anyone but the CBP under President Trump would have looked at Rosa Maria and said, “We must strictly enforce immigration law here and detain her now.” Sure enough, public outcry and pressure from Texas U.S, Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, got Rosa Maria back to her grandmother in early November.

The sheer cruelty shown to Rosa Maria was a run-up to the zero-tolerance policy toward illegal immigrants announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the spring. The policy mandates everyone crossing the border illegally will be prosecuted — everyone. So heavy a burden this places on U.S. Attorneys that Sessions has asked the Pentagon to dispatch Judge Advocate General lawyers to the border.

I wonder if James Madison ever envisioned unformed lawyers trying non-combatants in peace time.

At first, the administration separated all illegal border-crossing parents and legal asylum-seeking parents from their children. Before a federal judge ordered the feds to stop, more than 2,000 kids were taken into government custody. How many had disabilities, asthma, other diseases and/or allergies? We don’t know for two reasons.

First, the parents, many fleeing violence and/or oppression, probably came with little or no medical records of their children and may never have gotten a full exam of them back home.

Second, children were taken without authorities asking any questions about their health or disabilities.

As of June 20, A Brazilian woman hadn’t seen her grandson who has severe epilepsy and autism in 10 months. Both conditions demand individualized treatment, which the grandmother understands. But the government has placed the boy on the East Coast while she’s held in New Mexico. A letter from a social worker told her the youth wasn’t adjusting well.

Now that the judge has ordered families be reunited by the July 31, Trump is eyeing detaining families together at two military bases. Setting aside a judge would have to ignore a ruling she made three years ago and the optics of these proposed detention sites, they raise accessibility and educational issues.

If these replicas of Guantanimo Bay for families are built, would American Disabilities Act guidelines apply? Are bases exempt from it? Would any schools at these bases offer special education?

Some Trump supporters hope the border crisis will fade. It won’t. Everyone else remember, to paraphrase a ’90s slogan: it’s the kids, stupid.