In the last six weeks, thousands of children have been separated from their parents at the U.S. border, and some of them are being housed in West Michigan as a result.
Some of the most vile and notorious adoption/child welfare agencies in the country are now in possession of these stolen children. It's a hop, skip, and a jump before people acquiesce into believing that it's ok/better if these kids are in loving (or any) foster or adoptive homes and get lulled into complacency.
Don’t you dare for a second think that the answer to this will ever be in one single case that some nice white family should adopt a single one of the kids kidnapped at the border. Every single one of us should refuse to participate in this solution. This may sound inhumane, but adoption is propelled by demand and money, like any other business. If there is a release valve for the government to take them and place them out, then they will. If there isn’t a release valve they will stay in the system. We cannot allow this either. We must DEMAND a different solution and not rest until they make it happen. Adoption is NOT a solution. Foster care is NOT a solution. They are the erasure of family bonds and the fracture of identity. They are traumatizing and re-traumatizing. They are racist, classist, ableist, misogynist, and colonialist at their core. They are billion-dollar, capitalist projects and systems that are not built to care for the actual welfare of a child, even if good people who really care do lots of hard work inside them.
DO NOT fall for the redemption narrative: “At least they're in a loving home.” “At least they aren’t languishing in foster care.” These are the typical ways in which people rationalize and allow for the permanent (and temporary) dismantling of families. But these children belong in THEIR homes. With THEIR families. They have been kidnapped by the United States government and we must ensure their return to their families of origin. Take it from those of us that have lived foster care and adoption, that live with the lifelong effects of family separation and erasure: mental illness, suicide, addiction, homelessness, prison. Foster care and adoption are NOT the answer. They are failed, piss-poor solutions to and release valves for systemic oppression. They are insidious systems that dismantle communities and funnel vulnerable kids away from their families and often into prison and homelessness. Just because someone gets loved by whomever takes them in, doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. Even when it was the least worst thing to do. Even when it seems like the best option. Families are NOT interchangeable.
Family separation and loss at any age, even infancy, changes your entire life forever. It rewires and reorganizes your body, it disrupts and derails your development. When a body – a brain, a nervous system - develops around separation trauma and loss, we KNOW that body is now, and maybe forever, altered—PTSD, depression, anxiety, lifelong difficulty with attachment and relationship, the list goes on and the science is clear.
And please hear this: If these children are fostered and/or adopted to ANYONE they will have 100% been trafficked by the United States government. If they end up being adopted through foster care or remaining in the system, about $20,000 per year of public money and services will wrap around them during the years until they age out (which could be 18-20 years, do the math). At which point they will likely be left, traumatized and disconnected, to fend for themselves. Public agencies get paid by the kid to keep their doors open, so it is an industry and a self-preserving ecosystem, just like private adoption, only with public/government dollars. Either way these kidnapped children will be commodified. This is child trafficking.
If you’re confused about exactly what child trafficking is, I will refer you to Unicef’s definition: https://www.unicef.org/…/SAF_pressrelease_notetrafficking.p… And then I'll remind you that political exploitation and emotional labor are still exploitation and labor. Even without commodification, these kidnapped children are being exploited for political gain and therefore already fit the definition for child trafficking. We are child traffickers. That is what this is. Full stop. Airlines, buses, trains, government agencies...anyone assiting in the movement and/or placement of these children...are all participating and complicit in child trafficking. And I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face, the United States has ALWAYS kidnapped, exploited, and trafficked vulnerable children. Predominantly children of color, but also vulnerable white children because, guess what? White kids turn a big profit. Surprise: white supremacy hurts everyone.
Listen, I am in no way saying children do not require the absolute best care possible while we work to reunite them with their families, - of course they do, and we have to ensure they have it - but this HAS to look different and we have to do something drastically different to make sure separation doesn't happen in the first place. No one will ever be able to undo the damage that the United States government has done to these children and their families. EVER. The longer it drags out, the worse it gets. I’m not saying that detention is better than being in a home. What I am saying is that NONE of these solutions are adequate. NOT A SINGLE ONE. And we must not settle for them because the rest of these families’ lives depend on it. This will NEVER go away for them. We will forget, go onto the next atrocity, the next donation drive, but their lives have been forever altered. If we do not push for the absolute only solution there can be – that all the families are reunited, granted asylum, and given the support they need to heal and thrive – then we will have failed them.