Time to restore America’s ability to lead by example

The cries of grief-stricken children, torn from the arms of their parents, detained, alone, confused and frightened have not left our minds. To hear a guard casually joke as innocent children weep inconsolably, warehoused in detention centers, not even allowed — by government policy — to be hugged or comforted seems a story from a despotic regime, not from the world’s shining beacon of freedom and opportunity.

The United States has inspired the dreams of millions around the world. Today it provokes nightmares. The administration has retreated— but the damage will be permanent. More than 2,300 children who were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy are still in federal custody, spread across the United States without transparency or coordination, and nearly impossible for parents and immigration attorneys to locate. The rights of children are a universal value and, I will always add my voice to the rejection of this repugnant policy.

{mosads}Amid the rhetoric and debate, many seem to have forget that the victims are innocent, as young as three months old, toddlers — children.

It makes it easier for us to brush them aside when we criminalize their parents, take away their names, when we call their detention centers “tender age” facilities — even as the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics calls this “government-sanctioned child abuse. 

And why this unconscionable cruelty? All of this pain was inflicted for violating one of the most minor crimes in the U.S. legal code. Chris Carlin, a Federal Public Defender in Alpine Texas reminds us that “a petty misdemeanor is the federal equivalent of a parking ticket, and the consequences of a parking ticket should not be that you lose your child.” 

Let it not be mistaken, this is a policy that was willfully and purposefully created to fulfill someone’s political ambitions. Thousands of children are still being held hostage for an absurd border wall, and a nebulous list of campaign promises.

We in Mexico are familiar with the perverse logic of keeping people hostage as leverage. We despise it and call the people that act on these premises kidnappers.

Human lives — children’s lives — are never bargaining chips, to be played at the will of politicians. 

The worldwide condemnation for tearing families apart is resounding. Yet, only after days of holding out, as story after story of distressed children shattered the image of the United States, did the Trump administration finally bow under the pressure.

But this is not over.

Thousands of families are still separated, and Washington is leading a race to the bottom, debasing the political debate, creating a new normal for horror that we cannot let stand and we will not, as a world, forget. 

Even if this policy comes to an end, the conversation should not. Not only in Mexico, where perceptions of the U.S. have hit a new low, but all around the world. This administration’s despicable actions have all but destroyed U.S. standing among free nations. To add insult to injury, the U.S. pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council.

The impact on the United States’ international reputation will take years to mend — if that is even possible. Contrary to hawkish beliefs, the international influence of the United States does not reside in its military might but in its “soft power,” it’s ability to lead by example.

This administration has relinquished U.S. global leadership. On a human level, the psychological trauma inflicted on these children and torn families may never heal.

The U.S. was born as an idea — as a safe land to pursue one’s inherent human rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This idea brought millions to the “the land of the free.” But Washington should be careful what it wishes for, since this may no longer be the case.

Ricardo B. Salinas is the chairman and founder of Mexico-based Grupo Salinas and founding member of FIRST Global, which work to develop future generations of innovative leaders.