Splitting Families
As the Trump administration focuses on deportation, families across America live in fear every day that their loved ones will be taken away. (TIME)
Splitting up a family is a difficult, ofter terrible ordeal. Yet, in all our years as a Nation, we have not discovered a way to stop doing so while enforcing our laws which are the foundation of this Republic we call the United States of America.
It happens every day. A dad, a mom, a son or daughter, goes out for an evening of “fun” and relaxation. There is the consumption of alcohol – too much – underage – careless, or there is illicit drug use, or perhaps a joy ride in a stolen vehicle, and there is an arrest. It’s the Law. Someone is going to jail. Maybe it is just overnight, or a few months, or a few years. A family is divided – split up, if you will, and it brings hurt and pain and a agonizing degree of destruction to the family unit.
A hungry family with both mom and dad out of work will do almost anything for food. Shop-lifting at the grocery, a quick “stop and rob” at the 7-11 after dropping off the kids at school, and with the arrest another family will be divided. Down the street or across town, headed home from Church, someone is writing a “hot” check, or the beginning of many, and when all is said and done, someone is going to jail – another family split-up. It’s the Law.
A major consequence of this new policy has been an explosion of fear among immigrant communities, which are reacting not so much to the spiking number of arrests but to the apparent randomness of the roundups. “When everyone’s a target, no one is safe,” says Luis Zayas, dean of the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. He cites instances of ICE agents arresting people who had just filed paperwork for a green card, left church or dropped off their kids at school. “The arrests feel arbitrary, and that’s different,” he says. “The fear is worse now than I’ve ever seen it.” (IBID.)
It’s the way the Law works. Everyone who violates it is a target. Sometimes it seems arbitrary – not everyone is arrested in the multitude of “crime sprees” that envelope our society – but the Law is the law, and a little fear on the part of would-be criminals is a “good thing” perhaps. It might help someone down the line to make better choices. At least we could hope so.