Americans ignoring cruelty toward immigrants

Reading Etty Hillesum’s diary from World War II Amsterdam prompts chilling comparisons to modern America. Hillesum and her fellow Jews were branded with yellow stars. Here, Haitian refugees, legal until recently, must now wear clunky ankle monitors, symbols of exclusion and humiliation. The walls surrounding Hillesum’s ability to work, travel and participate in civic life caved steadily inward. Here, millions of undocumented immigrants, many of whom have built law-abiding, purposeful lives while properly seeking legal status, face similar banishment. For Hillesum, who later died in Auschwitz, the threat of deportation to a foreign county was an inescapable reality. Now, under the Trump administration, third-country deportations — in which human beings are sent to countries where they know no one and their futures are bleak to non-existent — have become commonplace.

Amidst these cruelties, many unaffected lives carry on with minimal awareness or disruption, consumed by day-to-day trivialities and concerns. My dear fellow Americans, what in God’s name are we doing?

Margaret Edds, Richmond, Virginia