Shades of Manzanar: Trump's actions on immigration could destroy the GOP

The Trump Administration has been subjected to a barrage of criticism from many corners over its zero-tolerance immigration policy that has resulted in approximately 2,000 children being separated from their parents and placed in facilities reminiscent of WWII Japanese internment camps.

This issue has created fissures within the Republican establishment like no other, and if sober, mature minds don’t come up with a solution, could be the issue that puts the final nail in the GOP’s coffin.

In the face of criticism of the policy of separating children from parents when the parents are detained for illegally entering the U.S., the president has blamed the Democrats, an accusation that fails to convince any but his most diehard supporters given the fact that the GOP controls the House, Senate, and White House. The law allowing this inhumane practice has been in place since the Bush Administration and was applied in a limited way in both that and the Obama Administration, but it wasn’t until the current administration that it has been so widely applied. Moreover, Trump, though he publicly says he ‘hates to see kids taken from their parents,’ is using the tactic as a bargaining chip to force congress to cave on some of his other immigration demands, a callous attitude if there ever was one.

And then there’s Attorney-General Jeff Sessions using the Bible to justify the practice, and not so smartly using a biblical passage that was at one time used to justify the practice of slavery.

It’s not just Democrats and human rights activists objecting to this odious practice, either. Church groups have spoken out against it. Some prominent Republicans have expressed t heir disapproval. Even figures within the Trump Administration, and other Trump supporters, such as short-time White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, have come out publicly against it.

If the bulk of the Republican Party, with its trademark ‘family values’ stance, doesn’t publicly denounce this practice, and then take immediate legislative action to end it; if the conservative religious institutions don’t speak out against it; and if the administration doesn’t step back and consider the long-term consequences of its actions, we could reach a crisis point, and the GOP could find itself on the brink of extinction or irrelevancy. With the exception of that portion of the American population that is so angry that it cares about nothing about assuaging its anger, I can’t imagine the majority of the American people not being shocked at what’s going on.

This is not my America. Have we not learned from Manzanar? As bad as that was, we at least kept families together? Just because an act is legal doesn’t make it right, and I’d like to point out to Mr. Sessions that the Bible also says that the laws must be just and moral. We have a moral duty to oppose unjust, immoral laws. That’s the America I want to live in again. Forget ‘Make American Great Again,’ it’s always been great, let’s focus on making America ‘Good’ again.

I’m convinced that we will eventually wake up and do the right thing. I just wonder if the GOP will still be sleeping when that happens.