1/ If evangelicals enthusiastically supporting the forced separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents is surprising to you, understand that evangelicals are fundamentally opposed to the idea of children having human rights. #YouDontKnowEvangelicals #EmptyThePews
2/ Most evangelicals would not directly say “Children do not have basic human rights”, but it is baked into their belief system; they just don’t. Evangelicals do not see children as having an identity independent of their family.
3/ Observe Mike Farris of HSLDA explaining that children don’t have fundamental human rights of their own, while not explicitly saying so (hslda.org/content/docs/h…): 
4/ Parents as adults and heads of families have a direct relationship with the government, and thus have rights under that government.
5/ Parents then have “duties” and “responsibilities” to take care of their children, but their children have no direct relationship with the government (being under the direct authority of their parents), and as such have no independent legal rights.
6/ Children’s ‘rights’ exist only to the extent they serve the interests of the parent(s) and the government.
7/ Parents are free to treat their children however they see fit, free from government involvement.
7b) This includes the freedom for parents to abuse their children. HSLDA has vigorously defended known child abusers under the cloak of “Parental Rights”. homeschoolersanonymous.org/2013/04/22/hsl…
8/ The government is only allowed to interfere with a parent’s treatment of their child(ren) if that treatment causes more harm to the government than the government is willing to accept, ...
9/ ... and there is no other way for the government to mitigate the harm the parent’s treatment of their child(ren) is causing the itself other than by violating the parent’s authority over their children and restrict parents rights to prevent the troublesome behavior.
10/ The example given of such a threshold that might exist for the government is “occult [] child sexual sacrifice”.
11/ Note that the government’s threshold is arbitrary. flexible, and interested only in minimizing disruption and harm to both parent(s) and government (not the child), reinforcing that children have no rights of their own.
12/ Knowing how evangelicals understand the relationships between parents, children, & government should help nonevangelicals understand how such Christians can, with conscience clear, enthusiastically support the forced separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents
