To the editor:

It feels like every day there is more news about how the Trump administration is traumatizing immigrant children and families. Children are held in cages, sleeping on concrete floors and denied toothbrushes. These conditions are not due to a lack of resources; they are due to the Trump administration allowing the resources that exist to be used to maximize cruelty instead of to meet real humanitarian needs.

Congress must use this year’s Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill to cut funding for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and other immigration agencies that are responsible for the inhumane treatment and separation of immigrant children and families.

We want our hard-earned tax dollars to go to funding education, nutrition, and health care programs, NOT the separation and jailing of immigrant children and families.

¯ DHS regularly flouts the funding levels set by Congress in order to expand its detention and deportation activities. For example, Congress allowed ICE to steal $200 million in 2018 in order to expand ICE’s detention capacity. Instead of holding the administration accountable for its abuses and mismanagement, Congress has consistently awarded even more money.

¯ The crisis at the southern border is a direct result of deliberate, but unnecessary, decisions being made by this administration. This crisis is not due to a lack of resources; it is due to President Trump and his allies in Congress allowing those resources to be used to maximize cruelty instead of meet the real humanitarian needs that exist.

I believe anyone who has even an ounce of compassion in their heart would agree with this opinion.

Jenn Cantwell

Wilmington