It became the soundtrack of the week in politics — and in the culture more broadly. The terrified cries and wails of the children bored into you, made it impossible for you to ignore their plight — and the policy that led them to such a sad state.
And the power of those crying kids is something that President Donald Trump and his team clearly didn’t plan for. Trump, earlier in the week, insisted a) he was sticking by the “zero-tolerance” policy because it was the only way to toughen the borders and b) he lacked the power to change the policy. (That second part was not true — then or now.)
The whole episode is a reminder of how dry policy crafted in some conservative (or liberal) think tank crumbles when faced with audio or video that speaks to the common human emotions we all share.
What the audio reminds us is this: At root, the most important part of this border story isn’t the parents trying to enter the country illegally. (That’s not to say that doesn’t matter; it does.) It’s the children — blameless in all of this — who are being separated from their parents and, in some cases, flown to other states where they are even more isolated and alone.
No one — not even the hardest of the immigration hardliners — can listen to the audio of the young kids crying and not be reminded that they are the real victims here, and the ones who really need our protection.
Source : CNN