The next time your pro-Trump brother-in-law, or uncle, or co-worker, tells you that Trump is all about fairness and respect for the law, explain to them how his justice department and ICE have created a hell on earth for refugees and their children. After having their children taken from them, refugees are now presented with the possibility of never getting their children back.
Ask your pro-Trump friend, where in the US Constitution does it say that the government–without evidence that children face impending danger from their parents–gets to separate children from their families, and then dangle the threat that they will never be reunited.
Ask your friend about the rule of law, about big government getting into their “bidness,” and ask how in high heaven do they justify permanently tearing families asunder. How is separating children from their parents reconciled with the party of “family values?”
With Trump, we’re past the insidious logic behind Japanese internment camps, when entire American families were unfairly jailed. We’re now talking about something far more sinister, without the threat of world war as a ready justification. With Trump we’re talking wanton, racist action. Action fundamentally designed to terrorize children and to give their parents no option other than to accept their circumstances, no matter what those circumstances may be.
Trump uses the threat of MS-13 as the reason why an iron fist must be brought down on the southern border. But can not two things be true at the same time? Can it be that MS-13 is a dangerous gang, and that the refugees are also fleeing from the havoc MS-13 and others have wreaked on their lands?
Ask your friend to be honest, and to agree that the real reason Trump started his family separation policy was to send a message to non-white, swarthy people, that the United States does not welcome them. The clear objective is to spread fear among people with scant good options.
Incidentally, the US is bound by treaty to accept bona-fide refugees. Ask your buddy about why Trump alone gets to decide when to follow the rule of law. Ask whether they are comfortable with these dictatorial tendencies.
Finally, if your co-worker, racist uncle, or putative friend agrees that Trump is all about keeping America white, then ask yourself whether you need to keep having conversations with rank racists.