Separated: Inside an American Tragedy

Thank you, Jacob Soboroff, for being on this story from the beginning and never letting it go. “Separated” is a searing and moving record of the Trump administration’s cruelty and incompetence, reported at a depth never before told. Read it.

As many of us do, I believe the separation of migrant children from their parents is a shame that the United States will never be able to live down. Our souls were darkened by this horrible policy. Jacob Soboroff reported on the separation and his book shows us how it happened. His inclusion of the tale of a father and son caught in the trap brings a reality and heart to his reporting.

Although Jacob Soboroff’s overwhelming documentary “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” in the Kindle version has been in my hands only for a few days since it became available on July 7, 2020, the issue of family separation of asylum seekers at the US Southern Border has been one of my greatest concerns for over two years. Indeed, so much so that for several months during the summer of 2018 when this atrocious policy was most in the news, many of my Facebook posts and even my “cover photo” on that site featured various photographs of a little statuette I have featuring Mary riding a donkey while breast-feeding the Baby Jesus during the “Flight into Egypt”. It was obvious to me then, and I still maintain the strong conviction today, that for a nation that claims to hold \”Christian Principles” and “Family Values” in high regard, tearing children and parents apart to enforce draconian and totally illegal immigration restrictions is both hypocritical and unconscionable. The first part of Soboroff’s narrative deals with his experiences while trying to develop a documentary on the border situation for the NBC Newsmagazine “Dateline”. In some ways it feels confusing and disjointed, because he intersperses personal reporting vignettes with background information on the (at that time) seemingly unrelated “policy discussions” between Administration officials and the affidavits submitted by individual asylum seekers whose cases were in an ACLU class-action lawsuit. However, as the narrative builds, the threads begin to converge and present a truly horrifying tapestry of the cruelty, incompetence and irrationality involved with application of the “Zero Tolerance Policy” implemented by Attorney General Sessions and other Cabinet officials and underlings at the behest of our obsessed president. In addition to being a deeply powerful and completely empathic delineation of the atrocious and ongoing family separation process, Soboroff’s book offers an intriguing insight into the day-to-day processes and adventures of modern-day reporting for a cable news network. He also includes some extremely authentic personal notes, including a description of being in the throes of a nauseated migraine while visiting one of the more remote border crossing outposts in the Sonoran Desert at night. As a one-time migraine sufferer, I have to say this description made it “real” to me as nothing else could. The author’s on-line reporting is of course magnificent, as anyone who has encountered it knows, but his book is – I can think of no better term – TOTALLY WHERE IT’S AT!

When I was nineteen and studying abroad with Stanford University, our first outing was to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. With no preparation, I was tossed in the throes of one of history’s darkest chapters and asked by the sights and personal relics of those who had passed there to bear witness and take responsibility for never allowing us to forget the horrors that happened there. I am 69 and the gut punch of that shameful human chapter remains with me today. In this riveting book, Jacob Soberoff, shares a similarly life changing window into a shameful but rarely spoken of chapter in recent American history and the unimaginable cruelty perpetuated on thousands of children and their families. He too was marked by what he saw. He is an invaluable witness to these events recorded in real time. Please do not turn away. Witness. Hopefully we can find ways to heal the unhealable and stop this ongoing tragedy now. Also be aware that the players in this inhumane story , like Alex Azar are now orchestrating our distastrous response to the Corona Virus Pandemic applying a similar lack of caring about human life and families. Buy it for your schools. Give to your families. Be a witness.

We all need to read and be more educated on the plight of these poor children and families. Thanks for writing on this painful topic and forcing us not to look away.

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