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| 39-YO Honduran father Marco Antonio Munoz committed suicide on May 12th |
Few cases illustrate the intentional cruelty of that policy more than Marco Antonio Munoz, whose death in a Texas jail cell has sparked outrage.
As initially reported by the Washington Post, after Munoz crossed into the U.S. with his wife and three-year-old son at the border in Granejo, Texas on May 12th, he turned himself into Border Patrol agents and requested asylum for his family.
After the three family members were taken into custody and brought to a processing center in McAllen, TX, about nine miles away, Border Patrol agents informed them that they would be separated, and Munoz, understandably upset and likely exhausted after traveling hundreds of miles north from Honduras, became enraged.
Unable to calm him down, agents took him to the Starr County, TX jail where he was eventually found dead in a pool of his own blood on the floor of a padded cell with some cloth wrapped around his neck on the morning of May 13th.
That horrifying scene (Border Patrol agents reportedly had to physically pry Munoz's three-year-old son from his arms) seems totally devoid of compassion, more like a chapter from a dark dystopian sci-fi novel than a snapshot of 21st century America.
Munoz's death is so far removed from the words inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
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| Even Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Jeff Sessions to stop separating migrant families |
In response, Trump had the gall to blame Democrats for a policy that he himself initiated in order to fire up the loyal right-wing base of support that feeds off his xenophobia and bigotry.
But not all conservatives are comfortable seeing children ripped from the arms of parents seeking asylum in the U.S. - or the effect it's having on the image of the Republican Party.
Last week Jeff Sessions sat down for an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Knowing how much damage Trump's policy is doing to undocumented immigrant families as well as the image of the Republican Party just five months before the November midterm elections, Hewitt pleaded with the notoriously anti-immigrant attorney general to at least stop separating children from their families.
Sessions' response was to self-righteously insist that he's bound by the law - even though there is no existing law mandating that Border Patrol agents separate families who enter the country illegally.
As if separating children from their parents wasn't already making him seem like some kind of soulless monster who crawled out of a primordial ooze, earlier today Sessions insisted that fleeing deadly gang violence or domestic abuse from a spouse or family member in another country is not grounds for an asylum claim in the United States.
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| DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen & Sen. Kamala Harris |
As the Denver Post and other news outlets reported, Nielsen got an earful from the no-nonsense California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris.
The former California Attorney General, whose reputation for unrelenting questions and demanding answers in Senate Committee hearings has riled more than one Republican on Capitol Hill, grilled the Trump cabinet member on the reasoning behind ripping parents from their children.
"What we'll be doing is prosecuting parents who've broken the law, just as we do every day in the United States of America." Nielsen insisted.
As if she's proud of that.
As if Border Patrol agents literally pulling Marco Antonio Munoz's terrified three-year-old son from his arms in an immigration processing center in McAllen, Texas is making the country safer.
As if immigration authorities currently housing some 11,500 undocumented immigrant children away from parents who came here to seek asylum is a noble cause that must be defended.
When in fact, she and Sessions (at Trump's behest) are in effect, twisting U.S. immigration policy to churn out death, injury, terror and heartless family separation to justify the xenophobic hysteria of a man who didn't even know the words to God Bless America at a fake "Eagles fans rally" on the White House lawn last week that no actual Eagles fans attended.
That's the guy claiming that ripping children from their parents arms in the name of border security is a noble cause as he blunders his way through the G-7 summit in Canada by insulting our allies and embarrassing Americans with his ignorance of diplomacy and foreign affairs.
The November midterm elections can't come soon enough, and as Mr. Munoz's death demonstrates, lives are literally at stake.
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