I've taken a sabbatical from my blog because something urgent needs my attention. As Americans we have to reckon with our government's increasingly draconian declarations against immigration. Once we were seen as the free world, the hope of the world, the leaders of the free world. Now we should be ashamed of the images and all media showing our treatment of migrants is similar to concentration camps. Our collective pride is wounded. The trust the world placed in us has finally crumbled.
There is still a silver lining. Leaders on both sides of the political fence have spoken out against the practice of separating parents and children after they turn themselves in close to the border in the southwest. On May 7th the practice was announced and the country exploded in outrage. We have had enough of the step-by-step evils. This past Sunday there were Father's Day rallies and speeches in the southwest and many other places, following other protests on June 14th. The pressure continues to build and now we're in an uncertain stage.
The country acknowledges that what we're doing is wrong. But what do we do to reverse it? First it has to stop. Then how do we reunite families? Then how do we make the system efficient enough to separate the criminals from the parents? And the immigrants from the asylum seekers? Many tough questions loom. This will not be an overnight fix. But I'm proud of my country for blowing the whistle when things went so far out of hand. We can do better and we will.
When I came to the US, there weren't any cages. But that was decades ago. We need to find a new normal that maintains the dignity of the people who come to our borders. If they enter our criminal justice system in the new "zero tolerance" policy, they will not be treated fairly because the safeties guaranteed citizens and legal residents are not guaranteed to migrants.
Globally we all need to start putting together the puzzle that leads to unprecedented migration everywhere. Unstable governments, drug cartels, terrorism, these are all connected and they cause the problem of people fleeing for a better and more stable place to live. Sometimes they're fleeing the agitators themselves.
My personal opinion is that we need to start decriminalizing low risk street drugs like marijuana to remove as much revenue as possible from the cartels that support global instability. But ultimately, effective police / security within South American countries will limit the reach of gangs into every neighborhood, and slow the flow of boys fleeing for the safety of our border.
The most important thing we can do with this new anger and outcry about America's current mistakes is to keep paying attention to global affairs. I recommend this website as a good source of global news, but you can also go to any "news bias" website, and seek out balanced and high truth news sources. Let the conversation continue.
Unit: Army, 1st Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Riley, Kan.
Army Specialist. Killed in combat operations. College student at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. Simeon dreamed of one day becoming a doctor and joined the United States Army in 2001 to finance his graduation. He was assigned to the 1st Armored Division while patrolling Al Khadra, an Iraqi civilian approached him and shot him with a pistol. He was a husband and father.
Army Spc. Simeon Hunte, five months in Iraq, was wearing down. Friends had been injured and killed in guerrilla attacks, he wrote. The country's withering heat sapped energy and morale. Most importantly, the letter said, he missed his wife and daughter and the newborn son, Simeon Jr., he hadn't yet seen.
"He was getting depressed," Shirley Vigilance, Hunte's grandmother, said yesterday. "He said he didn't know how much more he could take. He wanted to come home so badly.
Hunte, 23, a Newark native assigned to the 1st Armored Division, was shot in the face and killed Wednesday as he patrolled in Al Khadra, a suburb of Baghdad.
The military has released few details about the incident, in which an Iraqi civilian approached Hunte, raised a pistol and opened fire. It was not immediately known if the shooter was caught or killed.
The details don't do much to ease the pain, anyway, the man's grandmother said. The letter, written to Hunte's wife but shared with Vigilance, offers even less comfort.
"It hurts more than I ever knew I could hurt," Vigilance, 70, said in her Irvington home, the walls lined with photos of Hunte and other relatives. "He was really going through hell over there."
Hunte tried to put the best face on his situation. He called Vigilance and her husband, Andrew, a half dozen times from Iraq, his message always the same.
"He told us not to worry," said Andrew Vigilance, 62. "I'd keep warning him, 'Take care of yourself. Watch your back. You don't know who you can trust.' And that was true. They shot him in the face. He never even had a chance."
"He was a young guy so full of life and courage," Shirley Vigilance said. "He knew he had a job to do, and he was doing it."
A tank driver with the 1st Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Riley, Kansas, Hunte was mostly walking patrols in Iraq, his grandparents said.
Through frequent letters and phone calls, Hunte kept in touch with his grandparents, his mother, Brenda, in Newark and his wife, Tara. The couple's daughter, Anaya, is 1 1/2. Hunte was especially looking forward to seeing his son and, eventually, teaching him how to be a man.
Brenda Hunte was not at home and could not be reached yesterday. Tara Hunte, who has been living with her family in South Jersey since her husband deployed from Fort Riley in April, also could not be reached.
Shirley and Andrew Vigilance said their grandson grew up on South 14th Street in Newark, graduated from public high school and attended Montclair State University, though he did not graduate.
He joined the army in 2001, hopeful the service could help him earn enough financial assistance to fund his ultimate goal.
"Since he was this high," Shirley Vigilance said, holding her hand at her waist, "he always wanted to be a doctor. He said it didn't matter how many years it took him."
On South 14th Street, neighbors recalled Hunte as an intelligent, polite teen, one of three siblings. Hunte has an older sister and an 11-year-old brother, Danny, who spoke with neighbor Catherine Bell after a military chaplain delivered the news of Hunte's death.
"He told me to pray for him and his brother," Bell said yesterday, shaking her head at the memory. "I surely did."
Shirley Vigilance said her grandson loved art, pointing to one of her most prized possessions, a large decoupage work Hunte completed in high school. It depicts Jesus before a golden sun, the hand of God reaching out for him from billowy clouds. Composed of thousands of slivers of paper, the work took weeks to complete.
Once deployed, Hunte befriended an Iraqi artist, with whom he had discussions about art and techniques, the grandparents said.
That friendship helped him keep an objective outlook, refusing to blame the Iraqi people when fellow soldiers were wounded or killed by insurgents.
Guerrillas have lodged about a dozen attacks on U.S. troops each day since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In that time, at least 179 soldiers have died in Iraq, according to Defense Department figures updated Friday.
"He told us the hardest thing for him over there was to see one of his friends dying or getting injured," Shirley Vigilance said.
Today, she said, Hunte's unit in Iraq will hold a memorial service for him. A second service will be held at Fort Riley on Thursday. Funeral arrangements were incomplete yesterday.
Scanning from photo to photo - Hunte in his high school graduation cap and gown, in his sharp dress blues, in camouflage atop a tank - the grandmother fought back tears, images rushing through her head.
"He made me feel young," she said. "He would hug me and tell me he loved me and make me feel happy."