Independence Day camping

Age of the Geek Column: This weekend at an extended family get-together I found myself serving as the de facto babysitter for the kids playing inside the air conditioned house while the adults sat out in the humidity. Pretty sure I got the better end of the deal there.
With a phone in one hand and a cold drink in the other I can't claim to have been the most attentive caretaker, but nobody got hurt and nothing got broken so I considered it a success. At some point the littlest of the kids had enough activity and decided to climb up on my lap for a nap. So there I was, holding a sleeping toddler and watching "Ralph Breaks the Internet" while the older and infinitely more energetic kids chased each other around the couch with a toy lightsaber.
And as I sat there watching these kids enjoy the quintessential American childhood I couldn't help but think about the ones that were brought to this country seeking the American dream only to find themselves in a living nightmare.
It's hard to avoid reports of the inhumane conditions that immigrant children are forced to live in following the filing of a restraining order against U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last week. It's just the latest in a series of similarly horrific findings from detention facilities across the country. Teenagers are essentially adopting younger children, struggling to keep them properly clothed and fed while locked behind razor wire fences. They spend weeks and months in facilities not designed to accommodate people for more than a couple days.
The summaries reported on in the news are heartbreaking, but they only scratch the surface. Going through the actual court documents shows the horrific results of weaponizing an already broken system against the most vulnerable.
These conditions would be unacceptable for anybody to live under, but to inflict them on children, many of whom have legal relatives in the U.S. willing to take them in, is a special kind of cruel.
To be fair to the current administration, the inhumane conditions of these facilities are not a new phenomenon. An ACLU complaint filed in 2015 described a CBP facility in Arizona as subjecting detainees in inhumane and punitive conditions, stating "They have been packed into overcrowded and filthy holding cells with lights glaring day and night; stripped of outer layers of clothing and forced to suffer in brutally cold temperatures; deprived of beds, bedding, and sleep; denied adequate food, water, medicine, and medical care, and basic sanitation and hygiene items such as soap, sufficient toilet paper, sanitary napkins, diapers, and showers; and held incommunicado in these conditions for days."
These conditions were already unacceptable, but the current administration's hardline stance on immigration has exasperated the issue exponentially with zero tolerance policies and excessive prosecution of misdemeanor border crossing while at the same time doing everything possible to hobble the avenues for immigrants to "do it legally."
The result is an overwhelming of our immigration system that has forced it into gridlock, setting policies that ironically violate both the Constitution and international law in the process. So much for respecting the rule of law.
The system is so broken that even those that want to go back to their home countries have found themselves trapped in these concentration camps, waiting for months for the bureaucracy to allow them to leave.
These facilities resemble the worst aspects of America's Japanese internment camps, arguably the worst atrocity this country committed in the 20th Century. It is a mark of shame that will forever stain the honor of our country.
Now, less than two decades into the 21st Century, we have a new mark.
A half-dozen children have died in CBP custody since last December, which is a half-dozen more than the decade prior. Forget the politics. Children are dying in our care. Whatever we're doing, we need to do something else. We need to do better.
We are the self-proclaimed greatest country on Earth. Land of the free, home of the brave. And we couldn't keep an eight-year-old boy in our care from dying of the flu on Christmas Eve.
Is that the America we will be celebrating this week as the fireworks go off and the flags wave?
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and has nothing funny to end this with. Happy Independence Day.