Choice

We have no choice in how we begin, but everything that follows is a furious fight to know what's right and to choose accordingly.

The battle is intense for rich and poor, rural and urban, majority and minority, theist and atheist. What principles rule my life and conscience? And what truths have I yet to see?

For further reference, see Perspective or Anger's End

Enemy of the People

From centuries ago in our history ...
The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion...

When a man, unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents — despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day — it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

No popular Government was ever without [such]. These are its true enemies. ~Alexander Hamilton, 18 AUG 1792

One hundred died yesterday

About 100 refugees died yesterday when their boat capsized and Italy declined to deploy search and rescue. The bodies recovered by the Libyan coast guard included small children.  Perhaps fourteen or so adults and children were the only survivors.  (NC17 Ref)

Refugees around the world face being left to die, or worse. Italy has closed its ports to vessels rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean. Those who attempt to cross from Libya are sent back there where they will face enslavement, violence, and trafficking.

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) urged EU leaders Friday to "show some basic decency" by committing to search and rescue operations for those in trouble at sea -- and then taking them to an actual safe place rather than to Libya.

"EU member states are abdicating their responsibilities to save lives and deliberately condemning vulnerable people to be trapped in Libya, or die at sea," said Karline Kleijer, head of emergencies for the aid group. "They do this fully aware of the extreme violence and abuses that refugees and migrants suffer in Libya."

The U.S. is less receptive of legitimate refugees than many.  Do your own research.

In 2017 16.2 million people were forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict or generalized violence. This equates to 44,400 people every day and is the highest number ever recorded by UNHCR. The asylum seekers we see at the U.S. border are a small fraction of the persons displaced.

Our border difficulties are part of a larger global trend, but there's little discussion in the U.S. beyond insulting and maligning them all as murderers, terrorists, and criminals. What changed? Is there a Christian standard for such times?

A Safer Place

How might we handle the flood of refugees?  Today, perhaps only 1 percent of the world’s refugees are resettled.  Most spend years in temporary accommodations, waiting for a solution; i.e., repatriation, resettlement or local integration.

Then there are the thousands of Somali refugees welcomed in Djibouti.

Somalis have been refugees the longest, as decades of violence and instability have prevented them from safely returning home.  Somalis in the Ali Addeh refugee settlement in Djibouti were born and lived there to adulthood.  It is now their home in every way.

Djibouti presents an alternative to isolationism: hospitality and protection as an intentional response to regional insecurity.  The country is poor and has perhaps little to offer, but it is a safe place for the refugees, a great step up from where they were.  There's help for them there and perhaps some hope for their children.
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Djibouti was established as a host country for persons seeking refuge.  It won independence from France in 1977, just three weeks after war began between Ethiopia and Somalia.  Tens of thousands of refugees flooded across the border, seeking safety, food and water.  All were welcomed.  Eight years later, when famine and conflicts in the Horn of Africa intensified, tens of thousands more refugees came.

Government officials in Djibouti proudly cite their history, a national ethic of hospitality, and the economic advantages of population movement and diversity as all central to the country’s handling of refugees.  Their law ensures refugees, asylum-seekers, and Djiboutian citizens equal rights to education, health care, work, and movement outside refugee camps.

Today, migrants in Djibouti include Yemeni refugees fleeing war, Somalis fleeing political insecurity and drought, and Ethiopians escaping political persecution and deadly poverty.

This is the Loyada checkpoint on Djibouti's eastern border; about 250 meters farther, a Somali guard station.  It was quiet when we were there.  It's just a few miles away from where my friends live.
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I met a gracious fellow in eastern Africa, just a few kilometers from the Somali border.  He has a large family; his wife and children plus a widow and her children who they'd taken in.  He didn't have much, some goats and a camel and a house he'd built from scavenged wood and sheet metal, but he'd accepted them and made a safe place for them.  It's a long and incredible story; they came as refugees.

Waving goodbye, the last time.

His kids dragged me home to meet the family, and we became comfortable friends.  They welcomed me every time I was in country, and they never asked for anything.  They work hard to survive and the kids work hard to help. 

It took me a long time to grasp the depth and breadth of his grace as a man and their nobility as people.  As I remember the smiling faces of his children, I lament what he might think of my country today and how he and his family might have been treated had they come to our border.

Before we move on ...

Central American immigrants await transportation to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing 

the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas. Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, many of them 

families or unaccompanied minors, have crossed illegally into the United States this year and presented 

themselves to federal agents, causing a humanitarian crisis.   (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images/2014)

The immigration problems remain unchanged, the process remains opaque, and the refugee crisis continues as it has in recent years.  It  is unlikely to end until the causes are resolved.

The recent response to family separation has opened border management and crisis response to public inquiry, but little has been uncovered regarding record keeping and a process for reunification.  Will focus on the abused individuals continue until solutions are provided?  Or will we relegate the concern to others and move on?

U.S. Border Patrol - Southwest 
Border Apprehensions FY2018

Numbers below reflect Fiscal Years 2013-2017, FYTD 2018 (October 1, 2017 - May 31, 2018)

Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions by Country of Origin
Country	FY 2013	FY 2014		FY 2015	FY 2016	FY 2017	FYTD 2018
El Salvador	5,990		16,404	9,389	17,512	9,143	2,690
Guatemala	8,068		17,057	13,589	18,913	14,827	16,480
Honduras	6,747		18,244	5,409	10,468	7,784	6,350
Mexico	17,240		15,634	11,012	11,926	8,877	6,690

Family Unit* Apprehensions by Country

Numbers below reflect Fiscal Year 2016 and 2017, FYTD 2018 (October 1, 2017 - May 31, 2018)

Family Units* Apprehensions by Country of Origin
Country	FY 2016	FY 2017	FYTD 2018
El Salvador	27,114	24,122	7,167
Guatemala	23,067	24,657	29,278
Honduras	20,226	22,366	20,675
Mexico	3,481	2,217	1,461

*Note: (Family Unit represents the number of individuals (either a child under 18 years old, parent
or legal guardian) apprehended with a family member by the U.S. Border Patrol.) 

Note: 24 JUN 18, we still don't know where the girls are.

A refuge in time of trouble - Update

Fleeing gang threats of death
against her young son, a mother 
brought her three children from
El Salvador to the U.S.   After 
3000 miles and 3 borders, 
her children were forcibly
taken from her.  It was three
months before they were finally
reunited in Houston. [ref]

Others aren't so lucky.

Headlines for June 2018 - Infants and children are being taken from their parents.  

The problem grows.  Forced separation of children from parents has irreversible impact, of course. Traumatic severity increases with the length of separation and has greater effect on younger children.

Desperate families fleeing for their lives, who've struggle for weeks just to survive, are being harmed further by current policy and practices.  Around 500 children have been forcibly taken from their parents in the last two weeks alone.  

     As of May 2018, DHS reports there are 10,773 unaccompanied children in U.S. detention centers. Even those families arriving legally and requesting asylum have been similarly abused though there are no legal grounds for separating them from their children.  Once separated, children are transferred from DOJ to DHS and processed separately.  There is no organizational support for reunification.
     DOJ reports there are now 76,634 backlogged cases for separated and unaccompanied children.  The numbers are a problem, and understandably, the Border Patrol, ICE, DOJ, and DHS are overwhelmed.  A former Walmart center has been converted to house 1500 boys, tent cities are planned, ....

It's about more than numbers, though; it's about people, children, and unusual cruelty.  
This must change.

And an interesting perspective, there's the problem we see at the border, and then there's the cause ... What are they running from? Is there some way to change things?  

Behind the increasing numbers of refugees:

• Conflicts that cause large refugee outflows, like Somalia and Afghanistan – now in their third and fourth decade respectively, are lasting longer.
• Dramatic new or reignited conflicts and situations of insecurity are occurring more frequently. While today’s largest is Syria, wars have broken out in the past five years in South Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Ukraine, and the Central African Republic.  Hundreds of thousands have fled widespread gang violence in Central America, from the world’s most murderous countries.
• The rate at which solutions are being found for refugees and internally displaced people has trended downward since the end of the Cold War, leaving a growing number with no place to turn.

18 JUN:  Children arriving at our border are already traumatized by having to flee their homes and the life they knew. Now, they've endured the dangerous 2000+ mile journey, and they've faced things no child should see. They come to us to beg for help. For those then forcibly taken from their parents, the trauma continues and deepens. I cannot imagine so abusing a child, or a parent for that matter. Let's not treat them like pawns in a political contest.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called on the president last week to use his executive authority to end the policy, emphasizing that no legislative action was needed.

"President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call," Graham said on Friday. "I'll go tell him. If you don't like families' being separated, you can tell DHS: 'Stop doing it.'"

20 JUN:  An executive order has ended the forcible separation of children from parents, but 'zero tolerance' remains in effect.  Refugees are still being treated as criminals.

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Part I

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