A few years ago, a friend faced with a family dilemma that involved competing loyalties, asked my advice. Obviously, I was not going to make her choices for her, but I offered a basic rule for testing the morality of potential action or inaction: Will this (my actions) result in harm to little children? A simple enough moral test that my friend found useful in resolving her conflict.
The Trump administration has taken the opposite tack in its conflict with Democrats over immigration. Trump has directed that Central American migrant families who present themselves to US customs requesting asylum are to be detained, their children separated and held elsewhere. The purpose of these actions when they were introduced in 2017 was to force Democrats to agree to fund Trump's border wall — a campaign promise he made that resonates with his most ardent supporters, and which leaves him politically vulnerable as he struggles to fulfil it.
The forced separation of children from their parents is inhumane and immoral. Its results are irremediable damage to the children in impairment of systems of basic trust which underpin the neural processes of cognitive and emotional development. Normal development is impaired with actual damage to brain pathways. In short, Trump's use of the children as pawns in his conflict with Democrats and some Republicans result in real harm to little children.
Trump has moved on in recent weeks in terms of his immediate targets. He has threatened to conduct raids and deport thousands of undocumented immigrants currently living in the US unless Democrats acquiesce in his wish to alter the rules for asylum seekers. He had threatened use of the economic weapon of tariffs on Mexican goods imported to the US to force Mexico to change asylum rules. The goal — dismissed by most people knowledgeable about immigration — was to stop all immigration. Like other of his most recent threats — firing missiles at Ira,n for example — he quickly changed his mind and the threat was allowed to remain just that: a threat