By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Fred Rogers spent decades asking children each day, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” It was an invitation to engage and understand. It was an offering of friendship and a call to build community. These are values lost on Donald Trump.
Within a month of the Trump Administration announcing its “zero tolerance” policy on May 7, 2018, Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez was shot in the head and murdered by a Border Patrol agent in Rio Bravo, Texas, Trans woman, Roxana Hernandez, died while in ICE custody, Marco Antonio Muñoz, committed suicide while in custody after being separated from his wife and three year-old son, and an estimated 1,300 (the number grew to 2,500) children seeking asylum were forcibly separated from parents and guardians at the border and placed in makeshift government detention centers, one being a desert camp in Tornillo, Texas reminiscent of a WWII Japanese detention center.
Though Trump ended forcible separation after a country-wide outcry on June 20th, a September 13th report from USA Today counts 416 children are still separated, and an October 3rd article in The Guardian, reports the Tornillo detention center has not only not shut down as expected, but continues to grow, currently detaining an estimated 2000 minors. Continue reading “Won’t You Be My Neighbor: A Call to Action in Trump’s America”