Verified by 
More people are reacting every day to the Trump policy of separating children from their parents as they cross the border into the United States. I am glad to see it, because I know that only a widespread revulsion to this practice has any chance of stopping it. Still, seeing these children, and listening to them, has a palpable effect on all of us. Most people become upset, some very upset. They prefer not to hear the news at all, which is difficult to do. The sounds of children crying are played over and over. God knows what people would feel if the television coverage was not strictly limited by the administration. As of this writing, we have not yet been allowed to see the girls’ or toddlers' residences.
There are other observers who quickly become inured to watching children suffer, and they feel little or nothing. Extreme examples of this were the concentration camp guards who were able to react, seemingly normally, to their own families, but had only a blunted emotional awareness of others. This is not Nazi Germany, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not the Gestapo. Still, if these officers are continuing witnesses to cruelty, they may experience post-traumatic syndrome, and even if not so severely affected, they are likely to show some degree of emotional blunting. Already there is a recording of a custodian making a joke about being in “an orchestra” in response to many children crying at the same time.
When I was stationed in Germany as an army psychiatrist, I got to know some German physicians who served with me at the 20th Station Hospital. One told me a story which I think is relevant to this discussion. In 1962, the time of which I speak, penicillin had become more or less readily available, but certain medical practices that should have disappeared because of the use of penicillin were still common. He was treating a case of scarlet fever, as he usually did, with strict isolation in a hospital. (And, also unbelievably, with a warm scarf.) Scarlet fever, which is caused by streptococcus and presents with a sore throat and reddish skin, is important, because in a certain number of cases, the sick individual develops an allergic reaction to the bacteria and a week or ten days later may develop rheumatic fever (a condition that damages the heart) or Bright’s Disease, which in a similar way injures the kidneys. Those conditions are still around today and are the reason that a strep throat is always treated with ten days of medicine. Isolating an affected child may prevent his transmitting the condition to another child, it but does nothing to cure him.
The strict isolation I am referring to took place in a local hospital behind a heavy glass window. The child, a 6-year-old, was on one side of the window, and his mother on the other side. Neither could hear the other. Both cried throughout visiting hours, the doctor told me, off-and-on for most of the ten days he was hospitalized. The physician wondered whether any emotional reaction both of them had was likely to be permanent. I did not know the answer. He went on to say that he was affected, as he always had been in this situation, no matter how many times he was responsible for this treatment. He visited his patient as infrequently as possible and left as soon as he could. Separation of mother and child, even when they are in sight of each other, is traumatic to both. And bystanders, such as hospital staff, will be affected also.
Let me point out one difference between what went on in that hospital and what is going on right now at our southern border. The pain experienced by that sick young child was inflicted unintentionally in order to help him with his illness—however misguided. It was only inadvertently cruel. On the other hand, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made clear that the purpose of separating parents and children is precisely to craft a situation so painful that parents will be dissuaded from coming to the United States to seek asylum. “If they don’t want their children to be taken away, they should not break our law in the first place,” he said. It is only a matter of time before some child or parent commits suicide, which, I can see ahead of time, will be decried by the authorities, but which, of course–if publicized–may further deter asylum seekers.
We are all of us altered by this atrocious policy. We have to do something about it. This country has always depended on immigrants to make its economy grow. Accepting the poorest among them has seemed a moral imperative. Immigrants have made this country stronger, not weaker. Now, we have to hurry to the front lines, which are in every state, next door to all of us, not just in Texas. The country will survive, but unless we fight for it, it will not be the same country.
