As I hear the stories of immigrant parents separated from their children at the US-Mexico border, I can’t help but be torn. On the one hand I want laws enforced, the integrity of our border protected, and humane, well-controlled immigration. The Rule of Law, foundational to this nation and essential to its continued survival and success, must be preserved. But I can’t help to view this situation through the prism of my own immigrant experience.

I am back in 1980. I am entering a Cuban military base for out-processing (or whatever they called it — I’ve forgotten that part). I’m getting looked up and down by a Cuban military official because, tall as I am, I’m looking like I should be of military age, and hence not qualified to emigrate. We get through that, and think the worst is over, when my little brother and I are separated from my parents.

What for? For how long? No one bothers to tell us. My mom’s assuring look is the only thing we have to get us through the next hour. Just an hour. But it’s not fun. I, the oldest, get frisked. My brother, not yet six years old, is carrying in his underwear our birth certificates and my parents’ university degrees. Paperwork to get us going in the new country. That’s not allowed. No smuggling of anything. Will they frisk him, or leave him alone because he’s too young?

They leave him alone. Then they question us, a thirteen and almost six year old. Do we really want to leave? Do we really understand what’s going on? Do we really want to abandon the Revolution? Go be with the gusanos? This will be our last chance to stay. Otherwise, we are renouncing our Cuban citizenship. Do we really want to do that?

I sit there and think for a moment: who would have the temerity to ask me whether I want to be split from my parents?

An hour and ten minutes later we rejoin my parents. I nod to Mom to, letting her know her ruse worked. Our papers still enjoy the safety and warmth of my little brother’s underwear.

A week later we make the voyage across choppy seas to Key West. We enter through another military base, Opa Locka. Curiously, while a miserable little government saw the need — the “goodness” — of splitting children from parents, the most powerful country in the world doesn’t see it that way. We are processed as a family, caught and released, as it were, under promise that we will show up at another processing facility for further documentation and adjudication.

We were refugees. As Cubans back then, we enjoyed a special defacto status. Our criminality, much less the need to split our family fit nowhere within the legal or policy landscape.

No doubt, the current situation is different. Yes, violating an international border should strike us as a pretty serious offense — much more than a misdemeanor, if I had my choice. Yet, the Trump-Sessions administration has determined that a misdemeanor and prosecution thereof is all they require to justify splitting families, parents from children, mothers from babies, and yes, on this not-so-happy Father’s Day, dads from sons and daughters.

Again, the Rule of Law part of me wants to defend this. Those parents, did, after all, put their kids in jeopardy by bringing them across a dangerous country to brave a hot and murderous desert in yet another. A detention facility is Disneyland compared to the hell both parents and kids have already gone through.

But didn’t my parents do likewise? Who is crazy — desperate — enough to brave a dangerous sea crossing to arrive at an unknown country to achieve uncertain ends?

My parents did. My dad did. Because he loved me and wanted so much better for me. As I think of calling Dad tomorrow to wish him a Happy Father’s day, I can’t but think of all those sons and fathers who won’t be able to do that tomorrow — and how doing so isn’t even number twenty or twenty-one on their priority list. I think of their fear and desperation.

And I think that law or not, we can do better. I think of what a terrible, cruel world we live in when abandoning what you know — your home — to risk life and health because you have no other alternative is all people can do. I think that we shouldn’t make that world worst yet by hurting and punishing the oppressed. By terrifying children.

I also think what a mangled Republic we live in when those who object vociferously about terrified children, though having the power to improve the legal landscape to avoid said terror, elect to bicker instead. Because their talking points are so precious to them. Because scoring points with bases wins elections. Because leaving the terror in place gains them more than to repair that which is broken. Because the wedge of division and rancor is all they have left to justify their existence.

Someone had the cheek and temerity to quote scripture in defense of splitting parents from children. The words of the Apostle Paul, he said. Let me offer in closing the words of someone who was wont to proclaim, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you…”

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. ~ Matthew 19:14