1/ Last year, I went to volunteer at a detention center that housed refugee women and children who were in the process of applying for asylum. These women and children were escaping truly hellish situations and had been traveling for days and weeks to try and find safety. Some of

2/ these children had the gentle smile and easy laugh that we see from our own children, but far too many of these children were glassy-eyed and traumatized, and they averted their faces, cried softly but consistently, or screamed any time they were separated from their mothers.

3/ In 2017, the federal government instituted a program of separating children from their parents at the border. The reason for this program, stated over and over and over, was to cause so much fear, anxiety, panic, and trauma that potential refugees would too scared to come

4/ apply for asylum. Fast forward to 2020, and we still can't find the parents of 545 of these children. These 545 children were torn from their parents' arms as part of a deliberate strategy to scare other people away from seeking refuge. The parents of these 545 children have

5/ most likely been deported back to the hellish situations they tried to escape from, and it's almost 100% certain that some number of these parents have since been killed by the people and circumstances they were escaping.

6/ The last thoughts of these parents were certainly with their children, who they last saw being dragged away by the United States government.

7/ I'm normally pretty level-headed, but I'm so angry and so disgusted by this that I can't think straight. These children were taken by my government and in pursuit of policies carried out in my name. There are countless reasons to vote against Donald Trump in 2 weeks, but I'm

8/ voting against an administration that purposefully causes as much pain and trauma as possible among vulnerable, poor, desperate, helpless parents and children. There are valid reasons to be concerned about Biden/Harris, but tax plans and economic regulations

9/End and wokeism and literally anything else pales in importance to voting against a group of people that conceived of and executed such a morally abhorrent, cruel, transparently evil policy.