In the past month, a complicated tale has unfolded of a political battle over immigrants between the Republi-fascists and Democrats—a tale that concealed a deep truth about immigration and both sections of the U.S. ruling class represented by those parties. The drama that follows has twists and turns, but stay with it—it reveals a lot about the needless suffering inflicted by imperialism, the horror of fascism and the Democrats’ lack of answers to any of this.

Act One: Horror at the Border—America’s Intentional Traumatizing of Refugee Children

In May and June of 2018, the whole world saw the brutal effects of the Trump/Pence regime’s “zero tolerance” policy toward refugees. Without warning or explanation, adults who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border—including those who turned themselves in to the Border Patrol to legally apply for asylum—were arrested and charged with a felony. And if they had children with them, the kids were ripped from their arms and taken to overcrowded shelters and border facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away. The images of children taken away from their parents, crying uncontrollably under detention, shocked the conscience of people everywhere.

As one doctors’ organization wrote: “...the U.S. government’s treatment of asylum seekers through its policy of family separation constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and constitutes torture in all of the cases documented by PHR.”¹

A doctor with the American Academy of Pediatrics told a Congressional committee that “highly stressful experiences, like family separation, can cause irreparable harm, disrupting a child’s brain architecture and affecting his or her short- and long-term health. This type of prolonged exposure to serious stress—known as toxic stress—can carry lifelong consequences for children.”

Here are just a few of the individual experiences described by medical organizations and other investigators:²

• Separated children expressed acute grief that caused them to cry uncontrollably. Others who believed their parents had abandoned them were angry and confused. Staff who dealt with separated children told government investigators: “Every single separated kid has been terrified.”
• A five-year-old girl had to be kept inside because she tried to run away at every chance. And she had to be kept away from other children because she would bite anyone who came near. Pediatricians describe biting and seeking to run as signs of acute distress in a child of this age.
• One clinician wrote of a six-year-old girl from Guatemala that she “is in need not only of stability and the ongoing security provided by her mother’s care, but also of long-term mental health services to address the terror and sense of abandonment she experienced when forcibly separated from her mother.”
• A 16-year-old girl from Honduras displayed serious symptoms of extreme depression. The experience of separation from her family had left her with a sense of severe helplessness, which she described as feeling like others would always have control over what happens to her, and hopelessness.

By the time Trump left office, over 5,500 children had been separated from their parents. The parents did not know the whereabouts of their children, who was taking care of them, or when or whether they would be reunited. Many children and parents did not see each other again for a year or more. Because no plan had been made to track the separated families, there are today still over 1,000 children whose parents were deported and have not been found.

A government investigation determined the policies carried out under “zero tolerance” were intentionally designed to cause lasting trauma to both parents and children in order to put a stop to asylum-seekers from non-white countries.

The great majority of these immigrants had come from the impoverished Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, where the conditions are intolerable for many sections of the people. Political repression, gang violence, turmoil and poverty—the consequences of decades of plunder, military intervention and political domination by the U.S.—made it impossible for them to stay. Many refugees and children had experienced threats of violence, and even murders of relatives, by gangs. And now the environmental catastrophe that the imperialist powers have brought on has hit these regions hard, like other countries of the global South, with increasingly destructive droughts, hurricanes and more.³

Act Two: Restitution for Suffering

Near the end of October, there were news reports that the Biden administration was considering making restitution payments of as high as $450,000 for each child and parent who suffered lasting trauma and harm from being forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump/Pence regime’s “zero tolerance” policy. This stemmed from a federal lawsuit by the ACLU of Arizona and other attorneys, filed in 2019,⁴ seeking a financial settlement for damages to the families and a path for those immigrants to remain in the U.S. legally. At this point, about 940 families have filed claims. Legal experts who understand the seriousness of the charges believe that if these cases aren’t settled before trial, the U.S. government could end up paying far larger sums.

Act Three: The Fascists Attack

When Republi-fascist politicians and their Fox News propaganda machine got wind of these negotiations for restitutions, they went ballistic. To them the very idea that human beings they consider “law-breakers” from non-white countries would be offered such large settlements “at the expense of American taxpayers” was “shameful,” “reprehensible,” and so on.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called it “a slap in the face to our law-abiding citizens who wake up, go to work, and pay their taxes.” Never mind that crossing the border to apply for political asylum is NOT a crime under U.S. or international law. But putting immigrant children and their parents through the terror and torture that followed the border separations IS a crime against humanity.

For Mike Pence it was a chance to uphold the crimes against immigrants committed by the regime he was a big part of: “The Biden Admin unleashed the worst Border Crisis in more than 30 years all because they dismantled policies that were working & sent a message south of the border that America’s borders are OPEN.”

Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Congressman and Navy SEAL veteran, tweeted: “For perspective, if a service member is killed in action, their next of kin gets an insurance payment of $400,000. Let that sink in.” But what were these troops actually doing? Committing war crimes in service of defending and extending the U.S. empire. To name just two examples out of countless thousands of such crimes carried out by the U.S. military: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians slaughtered in two wars, an invasion, occupation, and 10 years of murderous sanctions⁵; and 174,000 people killed in the U.S. war in Afghanistan.⁶

And on FOX “News,” Greg Gutfeld declared “This has nothing to do at all with immigration.... This is about draining the power of America.”

Act Four: The Democrats Backpedal and Double-Talk

When a Fox News reporter questioned Biden whether the reports of “high-priced” settlements for separated immigrants were true, Biden caved in: “That’s not going to happen.” And Biden’s Justice Department notified the ACLU and other attorneys that the amounts for restitution reported in the press were too high.

Then Biden and the Democrats regrouped, and the next time the question came up Biden changed his tone: “If, in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border, whether it was legally or illegally, and you lost your child—You lost your child. It’s gone—you deserve some kind of compensation, no matter what the circumstance.” And a White House deputy press secretary said that “if it saves taxpayer dollars and puts the disastrous history of the previous administration’s use of zero tolerance and family separation behind us,” Biden is “perfectly comfortable with the Department of Justice settling with the individuals and families who are currently in litigation.”

The Democrats’ concern was that Biden’s initial “That’s not going to happen” stand on restitution for the immigrants was doing damage to public opinion in this country, as well as their attempt to restore America’s image worldwide. There is also concern that if these cases aren’t settled and they go to trial, the payments will likely be even more costly to the government. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with the well-being of immigrants and interests of humanity overall. In fact, the Biden administration continues to use some of the same policies Trump used to block asylum seekers and deport massive numbers of immigrants.⁷

Act Five: The Horror at the Border Goes On—but It DOESN’T Have to Be This Way...

The reality is that neither the Republi-fascists nor the Democrats fundamentally have a solution to the crisis of people being forced to flee from their homelands because of intolerable effects of poverty, climate change, and reactionary violence—except more repression and brutality. Today, tens of millions of human beings in the most oppressed countries around the world cannot survive and are desperately seeking a haven in the countries that are responsible for their suffering. Tomorrow it will be hundreds of millions, and after that.... Think about it. This is not a future any decent person can accept. This is not a future you can “turn your head and pretend you just don’t see.”

But another world IS possible—through revolution. In the world we need—and that is actually possible—immigrants would NOT be vilified, criminalized, and deported. They would be given the aid of their fellow humans, and then made part of working to figure out how to solve climate change and other kinds of disasters and problems. This is not just miles apart but a whole world away from what either the Republi-fascists or the Democrats stands for. As the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, makes clear:

The orientation of the New Socialist Republic in North America is to welcome immigrants from all over the world who have a sincere desire to contribute to the goals and objectives of this Republic… Anyone who applies for asylum in this Republic and, through the relevant procedures that have been established for this purpose, is found to have been persecuted, or to have a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of having taken part in just struggles against imperialist and reactionary states or other reactionary forces, or on account of scientific, artistic, or other pursuits which have brought them into conflict with reactionary powers and institutions, shall be afforded asylum in the New Socialist Republic in North America, so long as they pledge to act in compliance with the Constitution of this Republic, and do act accordingly.⁸

That is a world worth fighting for.