Womp…womp…

Corey Lewandowski’s reply to the story of a mother being separated at the border from her 10-year-old Mexican daughter, who has Down syndrome, is beyond comprehension.

Whether his comment was “womp…womp…” as some report or “wah…wah…” as others described it, it is the heartless rhetoric of a person devoid of empathy. The President’s former campaign manager has never been known for exhibiting pc behavior (remember the shoving of a reporter early in the campaign?), but this is a new low. She is a disabled child in terrible distress.

The child was put into a shelter even though her father is a legal U.S. resident and lives an hour down the road. Parents can be sent to detention centers in Texas or Seattle, while their children are sent to Pennsylvania or different states. Recently a report cited immigration services for losing track of over 1500 relocated children. That was before the current crisis swelled the numbers of children and parents being detained. Tent cities are being erected to “house” children, indicating that no planning went into effect before the new “Zero Tolerance” policy went into place. A lack of readiness when a hurricane hits Puerto Rico is terrible. However, to deliberately initiate a crisis for which there is no preparation is criminal. Left in place is a regulation that prevents, for instance, the 4 social workers in a shelter from picking up and comforting any of the 1100 children or babies in their care.

Over the years, being an American and looking at the front page of a newspaper photo of horror done to children allowed us to be too self-righteous. The searing image of a Syrian boy dead on a Greek beach, the gut-wrenching image of a refugee Syrian toddler, his face dirty from the dust of a bomb, sitting alone on a bench in a Croatian train station…these are photos the likes of which we have not seen since that photo of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack. This is America. We were the country who rescues, not the perpetrators of childhood trauma. None of us are allowed to be detached. This is all done in the name of making America great. It does not feel great. This has taken away a feeling of pride we can never regain completely.

Written by Margaret Pendleton & published with permission.