With typical disregard for the consequences to human life or for the U.S. responsibility in creating the conditions that forced these people to leave their countries, White House chief of staff John Kelly, in an NPR interview, called the recently announced cruel policy a “technique” and a “tough deterrent:” “They’ll be sent to foster care — or whatever,” he said referring to the children.

The infamous border wall, the National Guard, drones, troops, the border patrol, they are all now part of daily life at the U.S.-Mexican border. For this, we can thank Donald Trump.

Yet, despite his hysterical lies, there are no Barbarians at the gate ready to invade the U.S. and threaten “our way of life” in the mythical America the huckster in the White House promised to make great once again.

There are only thousands of frightened children and families from Central America and Mexico seeking refuge to protect the most fundamental of all human rights — their right to live.

Were it not because by now the Trump presidency has earned its place as the most deceitful, corrupt and inept in memory, it would be hard to believe that all this hysterical beating of the drums is geared to stop thousands of poor mothers and fathers, boys and girls who are fleeing murderous drug cartels and runaway gang violence from finding protection in the richest country in the world.

It is a tragic exodus of the innocents that keeps confronting this nation with its own political, legal and moral contradictions both under Democratic and Republican administrations.

Because if there is anything clear about the heinous policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the South border is that neither Democrats nor Republicans give a damn about them. It was Barack Obama who presided over a record-breaking number of deportations including Central American children who arrived unaccompanied at the border after a desperate journey out of their countries, not to take advantage of their rich neighbors of the north, but to save their lives.

But as Trump, John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made abundantly clear, for this administration horrific brutality in countries with some of the highest murder rates in the world is no reason enough for this supposedly human-rights-proud nation to offer terrified families and children its protection. 

That the U.S., by financing devastating armed conflicts during the Cold War and supporting illegitimate and criminal governments has a huge historical responsibility in creating the conditions Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala find themselves in that are making their people flee, doesn't matter to Trump or the holier-than-thou Democrats in Congress.

That much of the current brutality in those countries, as well as in Mexico, is fueled by the existence of a multibillion-dollar illegal drug market in the U.S. is of no real concern to the administration either.

Whatever Trump and his band of fraudsters say, the wall, the hysterics about immigrant crime and the merciless policy of taking children from their parents have little to do with border security and will not stop the influx of desperate people fleeing for their lives. This is just another cruel act in the immigration theater of the absurd.

These children and these families—we have said it before—are not “illegal immigrants” but persecuted people whose lives are in danger and deserve all the protections and guarantees afforded by national and international laws to refugees and asylum seekers.

Not that the administration of a man who stooped so low as to call immigrants “animals” can be expected to honor such commitments, of course. Which is why come November 6 every self-respecting American must vote to return at least a little decency to Washington.