America's Rights Failing - 13,000 Migrant Children in Detention

Growing up as a boy in the Caribbean, the seeming democratic ideals of liberty, of hope and of opportunity of the United States (US), appealed to me. I embraced democracy at an early age. Later on during my teenage exploits and discoveries, the ideals and propositions of democracy were again reaffirmed to me by a US diplomat at a time when I skirted with Marxism. I re-embraced democracy again as I immigrated to the Republic of Lincoln back in the 1980s. I believed in democracy. I believed in liberty. I believed in opportunity. 

So when I consider the hopes of recent migrants to the US, especially the very young, I empathize with their obsession and desire for liberty, opportunity and hope.

Therefore, it becomes even more disheartening to learn that 13,000 migrant children, who have dodged death, hardship and injury to reach the "land of freedom", are detained in tent cities scattered across the US - victims of a mean-spirited Trump administration policy to curtail immigration.

That so many children seeking President Ronald Reagan's "beacon" of hope are now confined, parentless and schoolless and subject to privately managed detention centers, clearly speaks of America's failing human rights performance. It is a human rights travesty to have so many migrant children under detention in any modern democracy.

Any policy that supports such large scale detention of children should be condemned because such a policy is capable of creating a new generation of democracy doubters in the Americas who stand to be influenced by another entity, and not the US.

The detention of thousands of migrant children should be ameliorated forthwith and the policy that sustains it, dismantled. For the sake of democracy and of the long term stability and security of the Americas, the US should stand upon its traditional offering of life, liberty, opportunity and hope to all peoples.