These are not Democratic or Republican questions

You’re a mom in La Ceiba (or Amatitlán or Ilopango).

A cop (or a gang member or your ex-husband) tells you to transport drugs (or prostitute yourself or prostitute your 9-year old daughter.)

He tells you that if you don’t, he will cut that 9-year old daughter into pieces and leave them on your doorstep.

You pack your daughter and your two sons (six and three) and you flee north.

You tell none of them about the particulars of this threat; you’re a mom and you want to protect your children. You just tell them that things will be better in the north.

You survive hunger, thirst, and predators (human and otherwise) as you travel by foot, truck and train the 1300 to 1500 miles to the US Port of Entry at McAllen, Texas.

You feel that sanctuary may be in reach as you and your three children start walking across the international bridge to request asylum in accordance with international law.

Armed CBP agents block you. You tell them you are requesting asylum. They tell you to take your children and go back to Mexico.

You return to the Reynosa side with your children, and hope to try again tomorrow.

You and the children try again. CBP agents turn you back again.

After a week you decide to try floating across the river itself into the wildlife refuge on the Texas side and then turn yourself in and request asylum.

Instead of processing your asylum request, CBP agents arrest you for crossing the river at a place other than the Port of Entry that they blocked you from approaching all week long.

CBP agents inform you that you will be incarcerated for this misdemeanor. Your daughter and your sons will not be incarcerated, however. They will be taken from your arms and declared “unaccompanied minors.”

At booking, CBP agents offer you the option of returning to Honduras (or Guatemala or El Salvador) where the police (or gang or ex-husband) is waiting to dismember your child or - as an alternative - to never see your children again.

CBP turns over your children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, who separate them from each other and fly each of them 2000 miles to New York (or San Francisco or Buffalo.)

CBP and ORR “lose” the documentation connecting you to your children.

CBP and its captive court system quickly process your case and deport you back to Honduras (or Guatemala or El Salvador)

(Or you remain incarcerated in a for-profit prison, awaiting trial for ten days or fifty days or a hundred and fifty days. Or you are released with an ankle monitor.)

In any case, you have no idea where your children are, or even how to find them. CBP gives you a piece of paper with an 800 number which cannot be called from outside the country. In any case, nobody picks up the phone at that number. In any case, nobody at that numbers knows where your children are.

Your children are brought in separately to immigration court and asked why they are here. They don’t know about the threats of death and dismemberment. You tried to protect them by not telling them. They can only answer that mami said it would be better in the north.

Maybe you are one of the few and the lucky who locate their children because a journalist happened to witness your arrest  (or a lawyer was present or you made your eight-year old daughter memorize a relative’s phone number in Orlando.) They want to make you pay exorbitant bond. They want to make you pay for a 2000-mile trip. They want to make you prove that the children are yours. They want to make you prove that you are a fit mother.

And if you get your children? And if you get an asylum hearing? The Attorney General of the United States says that those threats to the life of your child (or gang violence or domestic violence) are not grounds for asylum in the United States.

If all this does not trigger your outrage and despair, I question your humanity. If any single part of this does not trigger your outrage and despair, I question your humanity. These are not political questions. These are not partisan questions. These are human questions.