The United States continues to take children away from their families. We then transport many of them great distances, to detention centers.

We have been told that some are offered up for adoption in our country and abroad. Congressional members have struggled to gain access to the facilities and the information on the children’s whereabouts. When congressional leaders struggle to gain access inside facilities holding children we know nothing good is going on. When congressional leaders do finally obtain access and return visibly shaken and deeply moved, it is clear that these facilities are not about children’s safety. They are about making a lot of money, and they must be closed now.

Many of us have reached out repeatedly to our representatives asking them to take a leadership role and condemn what is happening, to unite and work together to end this inhumanity and what many around the world are calling a humanitarian crisis.

But in response to what many consider to be the most defining issue of our times, we hear nothing but silence here in Maine and across our country. This is happening not only on our watch, it is on their watch, too. It is what they will go down in history for and be remembered by.

Call them. Each one of them. Tell them it is not too late to get on the right side of history and do everything within their power to end the incredibly inhumane conditions that greet those seeking safety at our southern border, including the separation of children from their families.

And while you are at it, ask them to raise their voice to stop the return of children to our country’s largest for-profit child detention camp, in Homestead, Florida.

Mary Dunn

Oakland

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