“Mommy, Mommy, Please Don’t Go!”

My five-year-old grandson was lucky to be born in the United States. He has loving parents and a group of great pals, and lives in a safe home in a safe neighborhood. But little boys like Primo who were born in Central American countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, aren’t safe. Their parents aren’t safe. Their neighborhoods aren’t safe. Many of them are victims of the gangs and drug cartels that now rule their countries. Young girls are taken as property of the gangs and are raped. Young boys become gang members. Families are coerced to make payments to gangs. Murder runs rampant.

So parents are taking their children and fleeing these horrible circumstances to take asylum in the safety of Primo’s country.

But we aren’t giving them protection. Instead, we’re grabbing their children from their sides, from their arms—and from their breasts—and sending them by the thousands to detention centers. These children were scared before. They took a scary journey to get here. Now they’re still scared. And they don’t have their parents to comfort them.

Their parents, in the meantime, are being prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. They don’t know where their children are or when they’ll see them again. They’ve come with little more than the cloths on their backs.

“These are the most desperate people I’ve ever seen in my life,” said a TV reporter. “They’re fleeing violence and persecution and coming here to save their kids’ and their own lives.”

But we aren’t giving them protection.

“You do not become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering this country,” said the person who holds the office of President of the United States. “You will have your children taken away from you and you will be prosecuted,” said the person who holds the office of Attorney General.

It doesn’t matter if you are a victim of gangs, rape, extortion. We will not help you.

The current President of the United States wants to keep out the rapists, drug smugglers, murderers and gang members of Central America who are terrorizing the families seeking asylum here. His puppets claim the crying kids who have been taken from their parents are “actors.” He maniacally lies that many members of these families are pawns of the drug smugglers, murderers and gang members. In fact, that’s the case with less than 1 percent of those seeking asylum.

When the Nazis were running wild over Europe, prior to the outbreak of World War II, many frightened Jewish parents organized to send their children, without them, on a “Kindertransport” to the UK. Over 10,000 children were taken to live in homes in England, where many of them were subsequently adopted. Most of their families perished during the Holocaust.

The parents from Central America don’t have the resources to do what the families in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia did 80 years ago. But even if they did, the United States in 2018 would undoubtedly turn its back.

PS: Reacting to intense pressure throughout the country, the man who holds the office of President of the United States signed an executive order yesterday that will keep families together. He stressed, however, that the order would not end the “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults caught crossing the border illegally. The order aims to keep families together while they are in custody, expedite their cases, and ask the Department of Defense to help house them.

He does not want immigrants in this country from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.  Period. The only thing his order does is allow families to stay together until they’re kicked out.

What’s more, the man who holds the office of President of the United States said he will not lift a finger to reunite the 2,500 children currently in detention with their parents.