Letter: Separation at border amounts to kidnapping

Friday August 3, 2018

Actions by administration will lead to devastating results for families.

Editor:
On July 26, the Trump administration announced it had complied with a federal judge's order and returned to parents most of the children separated at the Mexican border. However, hundreds of children still remain apart. The administration claimed it reunified all family members who were "eligible." Say what? How can children be deemed ineligible to be with their parents?

First, many parents were swiftly deported to their home countries without their children. Evidence suggests this was intentional. Statements by the administration indicate that it felt such behavior would deter future refugees from seeking asylum in the U.S.
Second, through sheer incompetence, negligence and maliciousness, the administration lost track of which child went to which parent.

This behavior is nothing less than legalized kidnapping - similar to when children were brutally separated from parents in the slave trade. It is a human rights catastrophe that has sullied the reputation of the United States.

As a student at University of Maryland School of Nursing in the early 1970s, I was forced to watch films of infant monkeys separated from their mothers. The behavioral-emotional result of parental separation is what we now call reactive detachment disorder. I urge readers to Google it. Then they will know why such research has been banned for primates, including Homo sapiens sapiens.

Zane Beller Szurgot
Ruscombmanor Township

Separation at border amounts to kidnapping