United States corporations and United States political policies brought turmoil to Central America. The resulting civil and drug cartel wars have put innocent people’s lives in danger, and people want to escape what we have wrought.

When families arrive at our Southern Border, they are greeted by the military and Border Patrol agents who look like the military, and children are taken from their parents. This is not what these people had expected.

Their alternative is to avoid what is happening at the entry points and attempt to sneak past that mess and, if they are successful, get into the country with their families intact.

As it is not our shared experience, most of us have no idea what this whole process means to those subjected to them. It is the same naivite’ based reaction many people have when vets talk of actions based on PTSD or sexual assault victims tell us the trauma is still real.

Not our circus, not our monkeys.

When I taught in Southern California in the 1980s a number of our students and their families had fled the wars in Central America. The middle school had started a Junior ROTC program,  and for the assembly for families to welcome them to the new school year, it was decided to have Junior ROTC kids carry in the flag with some standing at attention at the auditorium doors. It was going to be their first appearance in their new uniforms, and the administration saw this as a self esteem booster for those kids and a sign of school pride.

What was not considered was that the last time the refugee families had seen men in uniform it meant the massacres and forced military service they had fled. And so it was that as the auditorium doors opened and people in uniform entered with the flag while others simply stood at attention in the doorways, there was panic among the refugee families, many of whom rose from their seats and rushed to the doors.

Clearly the decision to use the Junior ROTC was innocent enough to those who made the decision, but there was an experience of others that made it something else.

When the practice of family separation at the Southern Border was begun, Jeff Sessions warned,

“If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

He made the purpose of the policy clear.

If your children are facing death, forced prostitution or military service in a civil war even on the side you know is wrong, or you don’t want them to become involuntary mules of drug cartels, stay in your home country and deal with it. If you come here, we will punish you and your kids by taking them away.

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In the case of Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin of Guatemala that alternate route proved deadly.

Caught entering the country with her father, this 7 year old girl and her father were taken into the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, and she died of dehydration and shock more than eight hours later.

Jakelin’s father had reported that she was ill and vomiting, but she was given no medical attention, and by the time she arrived at the border station an hour-and-a-half later, she was not breathing. Emergency workers revived her twice, and transported her by air to a hospital in El Paso, Texas, where she died of cardiac arrest.

Jakelin and her father had been traveling with a group of 163 people who approached agents to turn themselves in on Dec. 6. They weren’t at an official entry point, but it must be remembered that they did not flee from agents, but approached them.

Customs and Border Protection said the girl had not eaten or consumed water in several days.

When taken in by a Border Patrol agent, a person gets processed at a facility usually spending no more than 72 hours in custody before they are either transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or deported.

People have left bottles of water in the desert so those crossing the border could have water, but, as is seen in a now famous video, border agents empty them when they come across them. Certainly, having been found in the desert, the possibility that Jakelin’s group might be thirsty is not all that farfetched.

Although the number of refugees at the border has been overwhelming, it is no surprise that there are many children, and traditional procedures need to be modified to deal with that. As one supervisory agent pointed out, the procedures in place were designed to deal with single males coming to the border. But, with family separation having begun last summer in earnest, someone would have had to notice a need to find a way to handle families and children by now.

Those arriving have been walking up to agents and turning themselves in instead of trying to circumvent authorities.

Displaying the empathy so well exercised by the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen echoed the sentiments of Jeff Sessions when she said on Fox News,

 “This family chose to cross illegally. We’ll continue to look into the situation, but, again, I cannot stress enough how dangerous this journey (is) when migrants choose to come here illegally.”

To her, it is the father’s fault because he had chosen to save his daughter from life threatening conditions and took the chance for a better life for his daughter in the country that had messed up his homeland and helped create the conditions they were fleeing.