Because we are rightly habituated to believe in the innocence of children, because the “othering” of a child requires a special degree of callousness, these images and stories proved difficult to shake off—they caused us to feel, for one reverberating moment, a sense of horror at beholding our nation, our institutions, and perhaps even ourselves. But the separation of families does not represent one isolated, horrifying event in our history; it is merely a chilling extension of the dehumanizing policies that came before it.
