Gut-Wrenching Audio Gives a Taste of the Situation in Immigrant Child Detainment Centers

This is heartbreaking.

While we’re all quibbling over whataboutisms, regarding the “zero tolerance” separation policy at the border, with President Trump blaming the Democrats, White House aide Stephen Miller boasting of it as a deterrent, and Republicans apparently split as to whether we should turn a blind eye or not (We shouldn’t), the stories are getting harder and harder to hear.

And speaking of “hear,” someone captured the anguished cries of frightened children inside one of the detainment centers and published it on Monday.

ProPublica published the audio, which depicts workers attempting to gather information from children as they cry out for family members. Through sobs and sniffles, the children repeatedly ask for their “mami” and “papa.”

I listened to it, stopping and starting, as I tried to get through the whole thing.

One little girl pleaded to the workers to call her aunt, so that she could come get her. She was obviously desperate and trying, reciting the phone number she’d memorized.

One child says they are from Guatemala. Another says she is from El Salvador, and repeatedly asks for her aunt to come pick her up.

“My mommy says I’ll go with my aunt, and that she’ll come pick me up there as quickly as possible, so I can go with her,” the child says.

Others just cried for their parents, calling them over and over.

As for the border patrol agents in attendance, I don’t know if this was just nervous chatter or if they are actually that cold blooded, but this is a punch in the gut.

“Well we have an orchestra here, right? What we’re missing is a conductor,” a border patrol agent is heard joking through the children’s cries.

Earlier Monday, as reporters gathered for a White House press briefing played the audio on their laptops, as they waited for White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders reportedly refused to come out and sent Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, instead.

Nielsen went on to defend the policy, as “not a policy,” and said only Congress could fix it.

Meanwhile, to Miller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions it is policy.

Maybe they need to get their messaging straight in the Trump White House.

I also understand if they don’t really want to claim this. It’s ugly.

Of course, Trump is deliriously undetached.

President Trump has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the separation policy, despite his administration issuing the directive that led to the practice. On Monday, he doubled down on the policy, saying the U.S. “will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility.”

He is a cruel, heartless man.

“But whoever has the world’s goods (adequate resources), and sees his brother in need, but has no compassion for him, how does the love of God live in him?” – 1 John 3:17 AMP