I am embarrassed… and ashamed.  It’s the same kind of embarrassment I remember feeling in the 1960s.  Today I watched the television coverage of an attempt by the INS to temporarily house three busloads of children and adolescents at a Border Patrol facility today in Murrieta. The children were being transported from Texas to the Border Patrol facility for a standard processing procedure.  A fairly large group of Murrieta residents blocked the road and refused to allow the buses to come into the town.  People who looked like ordinary folks from neighborhoods like mine except for their ugly angry faces, many waving American flags and signs, and almost everybody shouting a chorus of “Go back to where you came from,” and “We don’t want you here” blocked the road to keep the buses from advancing. The buses eventually turned around and headed south to a place closer to the border with Mexico where the young people will be housed until the necessary work can be done to determine what should happen to them. 

Of course, I know the problem isn’t simple. I am a reasonably well-travelled person.  I don't need a lecture on borders to understand the problem.  What I do know is that when adult Americans line up in the street to shout angry hateful words of rejection to a bunch of children, there is something terribly wrong with the culture those adults represent. A woman whose face was distorted with anger held high a big sign that read, “WE DON’T WANT YOU AND YOUR DISEASES HERE.” She shouted over and over and over, "Go Home!"

What we have here is a humanitarian crisis. It’s not in some faraway place but here.  These are children.