Trump and his administration are kidnapping and incarcerating children of refugees seeking asylum in America. I’m sorry. Are my words politically incorrect?
What else would you call forcefully taking a child from a parent, taking them to an unknown location, and giving no assurance that they will be reunified in the future?
What else would you call corralling children into pens, removing their freedom and denying them contact with the outside world?
In 2014, Boko Haram abducted 276 school-girls in Nigeria. The world was shocked but not surprised. After all, Boko Haram is a violent, terrorist group. Still, we were appalled. We imagined it happening to our own daughters. We imagined the horror of living with the image of our child being brutally snatched. The horror of not knowing where they were. Not knowing what was happening to them. Not knowing if we would ever see them again.
Today, in America, over 2,000 children have been abducted from their asylum-seeking parents, and transferred to “holding facilities” around the country. We are now finding out that no process was in place to register the children and parents in order to facilitate an easy reunification. How does a baby or toddler tell you their parent’s name or even where they came from? Even if they are reunited, what long-term mental and physical damage and trauma will be suffered by these children and their parents?
From where I sit, approximately 200 km north of the 49th parallel, the daily news from the USA is unfolding like a dystopian novel or movie. Only, it’s not fiction. This is not the stuff for big screens and bowls of popcorn. This is not the stuff for book club discussions over a glass of wine.
This is REAL.
This is HAPPENING.
NOW.
IN AMERICA.
Trump claimed he would make America Great Again. He has either failed miserably, or his version of greatness is unspeakably cruel, inhumane and evil. What will he do next? And, there WILL be a next! There will be another horror, another crisis that will need to be addressed. Resisted. Fought.
There will be another horror, another crisis challenging us not to take our attention away from these 2,000 children, or the victims of Parkland, Florida, or the other mass shootings, or Flint, Puerto Rico, Russian investigations, love-fests with dictators…
Yes, there will be a next.
And another.
And another…
Until Trump is removed from office.
catholic dialogue 
True. There is a further perspective. Donald Trump has lifted the lid on a cross-section of the United States of America, a surprisingly significant segment that is imbued with, pursues, is prepared to tolerate and leverage what decent people of good will see as repugnant. He and what he is about would be impotent without the complicity of those who claim “legitimate authority” both of the body politic and of the body of Christ.
The persons of so many nations who watched and prayed for the Thai boys and coach signal the “what next”. So too the expertise, the personal dedication, coordination and cooperation, willingness to risk of so many people, countries, cultures united in a common task of such magnitude of difficulty, risk and value have been a shining light of what can and should be. On one hand one can experience the “Daniel Webster” morality tale of a “pact with the devil”, how it festers evil, hate and harms. Then we experience (and even feel the trepidation and joy) of “good” and “goodness”. It is the “what can be”. That’s why there is anger. That is the impetus that must impel an equivalent movement to restore and resume the fragile, imperfect and painfully slow move towards the good. Before it is the “good” of Christianity or any faith system, it is the “good” of human interdependence, of civility, of “mutual benevolence”. Christians also know it as “the image and likeness of God” that is as communitarian as the Trinity. Jesus did not start it he “confirmed” it.