McCauley Column, NYT Editorial Provoke Compelling Questions about Ohio Mom’s Deportation
The headline of Byron McCauley’s column in the Cincinnati Enquirer about Oswaldo, Maribel Trujillo’s eldest son, is heartbreaking: “His mom deported, 15 year-old boy left with questions,” and so is the entire piece. Just read the first lines:
Deported mother separated from 15-year-old son
If you’re a 15-year-old boy, the top things that concern you are doing well in school, playing sports or deciding if you should finally let someone else know about your crush.
But what must you worry about when you are 15 and your name is Oswaldo, and you know your mom, Maribel, won’t be home for a long time? What do you tell your friends? How do you concentrate when you take a test? What role do you play to your three siblings? And, how do you wrap your still-developing brain around what just happened?
McCauley reviews the high-profile deportation battle of this Ohio mom and the outpouring of support she and her family received from the faith community.
Said Lynn Tramonte, Director of Ohio’s Voice:
At the bottom, the question is one of moral proportionality. Does the consequence Maribel received equate to justice or mean-spirited overkill? Are we really going to be a society that condones separating intact, loving families? What about the rights and wellbeing of Oswaldo and his younger siblings, who are Americans and just want to be with their mom?
NYT editorial: “Torn from Their Families for No Good Reason”
Also today, the New York Times editorial board points to the cases of Maribel and Dreamer Juan Manuel Montes as examples of the“unjust consequences of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s hard-line immigration policy.” The editorial, “Torn From Their Families for No Good Reason,” states in part:
Americans need to recognize and reject this great conflation of unauthorized immigrants with criminals.
Mr. Kelly spoke of lurid violence and existential threats while dismissing as inevitably false any accounts of enforcement overreach. Don’t believe, he said, any “partial and oftentimes inaccurate media reporting on some alleged incident at an airport, in a courthouse, or at a border crossing.” Those “alleged” events that Mr. Kelly scoffs at are doing real harm to immigrant families around the country.
This is not reasonable, it’s not smart and it does not keep the homeland safe. The reckless deportations of harmless immigrants like Ms. Trujillo and Mr. Montes are spreading fear far and wide, and dismaying those who recognize their senseless cruelty, like John Kasich, Republican governor of Ohio, who said, “We have enough broken families in the country.
“Maribel’s case received national and international attention, because it cleanly illustrates the disconnect between the Trump Administration’s rhetoric on deportations and their actual policy as carried out. They say they are targeting bad people, but they are actually targeting productive and well-regarded members of society. Maribel is not a bad person, she is a mom, and her children need her,” said Tramonte.
