On the one hand, I'm grateful that people are finally outraged about violence against migrants/refugees/asylum-seekers/human beings. Thank goodness for human decency and solidarity.
On the other hand, so many of the current narratives feel incomplete and, in a broader context of US-Mexico-Central American realities, it is painful to see this all playing out without recognition of a much longer history of violence against Central American peoples.
Just to give you a sense, the current conversation about doing away with the Flores Settlement often misses the point that the settlement was based on the case of a Salvadoran minor who had to sue to achieve basic human rights in detention.
It took a legal battle to get this country to recognize that its practices of jailing Central American minors with unrelated adults in the 1980s were inhumane.
The Flores v. Reno Settlement requires that immigration officials provide detained minors with 1) food and water, 2) medical assistance, 3) toilets and sinks, 4) adequate temperature control and ventilation, 5) adequate supervision, and 6) separation from unrelated adults.
Obama's administration tried to work around the Flores Settlement and Trump is now trying to end it. Since the 1980s, the largest affected group is from Central America.
Central Americans now have about four decades of mass migration to the United States. Think about how often you see us represented on mainstream media. If you can think of any TV or movie characters, what are those roles like?
More than likely, they are negative representations that portray us as either sassy maids or as unexplainably and irreparably violent men and children.
Now think about when Central Americans are discussed in the news. Most recently, as members of MS-13 ("animals" according to Trump) and as "shithole countries" (again, according to Trump).
These representations, beginning with Reagan who portrayed us as dangerous, heartless communists, have been dehumanizing us for decades for political purposes. (And representations on Spanish-language media are not much better or even necessarily more frequent.)
In that context, it is immensely painful to see our children being torn apart from their parents; parents being criminalized for wanting to keep their children alive.
Without ever seeing ourselves represented in media as full human beings, we are now watching images of our people as they are being traumatized, used as pawns, and fueling anger that does not recognize how long all this has been going on. For many of us, it is re-traumatizing.
Much more to say about US responsibility; Mexican government's disgracefully similar treatment of CentAm refugees; reprehensible silence of Central American governments in the face of so much suffering; and about the long-term, likely intergenerational trauma this is causing.
