January 31, 2018
Page 13
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O PINION
Disgraceful, Costly and Preventable Poverty
Children are the
poorest Americans
m arian W right e delman
It is a national disgrace that
children are the poorest Amer-
icans. The Children’s Defense
Fund’s new report The State
of America’s Children 2017
details the immoral, costly and
preventable poverty, homeless-
ness, hunger, health problems, poor edu-
cation and violence plaguing children who
are America’s responsibility and future.
The U.S. has 73.6 million children.
Nearly 1 in 5 are poor—more than 13.2
million. Children of color, who will be a
majority of our children by 2020, are dis-
proportionately poor. About 1 in 3 black, 1
in 3 American Indian/Alaskan Native and
1 in 4 Hispanic children are poor compared
to 1 in 9 white children. Nearly 70 percent
of poor children are non-white. Imagine
a young girl—let’s call her Janie—who
is one of those millions of poor children.
Maybe she lives in California or Texas, the
states with the biggest numbers of poor
children, or in New Mexico, Mississippi,
Louisiana, or Kentucky, the states with the
highest child poverty rates. What else do
we know about what Janie’s life may be
like?
Janie may be one of the 3.9 million chil-
dren who still lack health coverage or one
of the nearly 9 million children who were
at risk of losing coverage before Congress
finally extended the Children’s Health In-
by
surance Program (CHIP). She might be
one of the nearly 1 in 5 children—14.8
million—who live in food-insecure house-
holds and don’t have enough to eat.
As a poor child she probably
didn’t get the best chance to start
school ready to learn because less
than half of poor children are ready
for school at age 5 compared with
75 percent of their wealthier peers.
Only 5 percent of eligible infants and
toddlers are in Early Head Start and
54 percent of eligible 3- and 4-year-olds are
in Head Start. As she grows up, Janie may
never catch up: The majority of all public
school fourth and eighth graders cannot read
at grade level and more than 75 percent of
lower-income fourth and eighth grade public
school students could not read or compute at
grade level compared with less than 55 per-
cent of higher-income students.
Growing up poor means Janie is more
likely to be involved in the child wel-
fare system—every 47 seconds a child is
abused or neglected, the majority of them
victims of neglect, and the number of chil-
dren in foster care is increasing rapidly as
the opioid crisis spins out of control. She
may even be one of the more than 1.2 mil-
lion public school children who are home-
less. She also would be more likely to be
involved in the juvenile justice system, one
of the 2,805 children arrested every day.
Finally, growing up in America puts her at
risk of the very American scourge of gun
violence.
Although the U.S. accounts for less than
5 percent of the global population, our
civilians own 35-50 percent of civilian–
owned guns in the world, most recently
estimated as high as 310 million guns. In
contrast, U.S. military and law enforce-
ment combined owned only 4 million
guns. Eight children and teens are killed
with guns every day and gun violence is
the leading cause of death for black chil-
dren and teens.
How are the leaders of our wealthy
nation addressing the grim child surviv-
al needs of children like Janie across the
country? Making them worse. It is a dis-
grace. What kind of leaders and people cut
essential food and health care from babies
and children to give massive tax cuts to bil-
lionaires and corporations?
This is one of the scariest times Ameri-
ca’s children have faced in the struggle to
level the playing field as the last 50 years
of progress in child health coverage, nutri-
tion, education, and other child and family
programs are ravaged. We should be build-
ing on what we know works and moving
forward, not backwards, to improve the
odds for children who need our protection.
We urge the American public to stand up
and stop this savage war on children. The
White House and Republican members
now celebrating the massive and morally
obscene tax cuts are expected to add to the
outrageous injustice by slashing Medicaid,
SNAP, education, housing and other cru-
cial child investments to pay for welfare
for non-needy millionaires, billionaires
and corporations.
We can and must do better – and need
to follow up on proven solutions that work
to improve the odds for America’s children
at the same time that we fight all efforts to
take away the gains we’ve already made
after laborious work over a half century.
The State of America’s Children report
is a critical tool for everyone who cares
about whether children are treated fairly
and our nation’s future. It provides a com-
prehensive overview of children’s status
nationally and in each state. The report also
addresses the especially dire needs facing
children in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin
Islands even before last year’s hurricanes,
which worsened them; offers a portrait of
immigrant children; and describes how
poorly we rank among rich countries for
investing in children.
Despite our great wealth, the U.S. lags
behind other industrialized nations in in-
vesting in our children and consistently
ranks among the worst on key child out-
comes. We should be ashamed. Addressing
our moral poverty and preparation of our
young for fruitful lives should be our pri-
ority.
We must persist but we need your help.
We ask you to use the data in the State of
America’s Children report along with sto-
ries of children you know or work with
and share them with your Members of
Congress and with us. Please rev up your
engines of outrage and courage in 2018
and make sure we keep moving forward
with persistence to protect our children’s
futures and the future of our nation and
world.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of
the Children’s Defense Fund.
Prosecutions for Sanctuary Cities is Unconstitutional
Threats are lawless
and baseless
C ody W ofsy
In recent testimony before Congress, Sec-
retary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Niel-
sen confirmed that her agency is seeking the
prosecution of state and local officials in ju-
risdictions that limit their entanglement with
federal immigration enforcement.
Even in the context of the Trump admin-
istration’s frequent disregard for the Consti-
tution, Nielsen’s threat to prosecute mayors,
legislators, and police chiefs over policy
disagreements is shocking. There is no ba-
sis in federal law to prosecute government
officials who decide, with and on behalf of
their constituents, that their communities
are better served by opting out of participa-
tion in the federal deportation system. And
that kind of prosecution would be an assault
on the principles at the core of our constitu-
tional system.
Nielsen’s threat may or may not be emp-
ty. Either way, it is unacceptable.
We are now nearly one year into the
Trump administration’s seemingly endless
attempts to threaten, cajole, and coerce local
governments into abandoning what is com-
by
monly referred to as “sanctuary” policies.
There are hundreds of such jurisdictions
(including Portland and the state of Ore-
gon) that, in a variety of ways, have decid-
ed not to entangle themselves in the federal
government’s deportation program. Those
communities have decided it’s not worth
the financial burden or legal risk or harm to
public safety and community trust — or all
of the above.
Unhappy with those decisions, the ad-
ministration has tried a laundry list of tac-
tics over the last year to intimidate localities
into giving up. Its attempts to take away
federal funding, for example, have been met
with defeat after defeat after defeat in the
courts. And its attempt to publicly embar-
rass localities into changing their policies
with a weekly report had to be suspended
when Immigration and Customs Enforce-
ment’s rampant errors came to light and law
enforcement rightly balked at this form of
bullying.
The most recent broadside in this cam-
paign is the administration’s decision to float
the possibility of criminal prosecutions. In
an interview earlier this month, Acting ICE
Director Thomas Homan said he had asked
the Justice Department to look into charging
local officials with violating a federal stat-
ute for “harboring” noncitizens. Secretary
Nielsen doubled down, confirming that her
agency had sought such prosecutions. And,
like Homan, she made clear that the threat
of prosecution was being used as a political
cudgel.
These threats are lawless and baseless.
Local officials commit no crime when they
and their communities decide not to partic-
ipate in deportations. They do not, as Ho-
man wrongly claimed, harbor anyone from
deportation by simply opting out. ICE can
arrest people on its own — and in fact Con-
gress gives the agency billions of taxpayer
dollars each year to do just that.
But local police are under no obligation
to use their time and resources to help with
arrest, detention, and deportation. Local
jails need not allow ICE agents to roam
their facilities, conduct interrogations, and
make arrests without a judicial warrant.
And government officials need not share
home addresses of local residents to make
it easier for ICE to carry out its mass de-
portation campaign. The point of sanctuary
policies is non-participation, meaning that
if ICE wants to arrest and deport people it
must do the work itself. There is nothing at
all criminal about that, and it is irresponsible
to suggest otherwise.
In fact, state and local governments’ abili-
ty to opt out of the federal deportation system
is constitutionally guaranteed. The framers of
the Constitution recognized that distributing
authority — including between the federal
government and the states — protects against
the accumulation and abuse of power by a
tyrant or group of tyrants. As the Supreme
Court has explained, this principle prevents
the federal government from requiring state
and local officers to become de facto feder-
al agents. Therefore, even if the administra-
tion’s imaginary crime of declining to help
ICE deport people actually existed, it would
be struck down as unconstitutional.
Of course, these threats may be emp-
ty, like the now-disavowed threats to strip
“sanctuary” cities of all their federal fund-
ing. But, regardless, the idea of these pros-
ecutions is insidious. At bottom, the admin-
istration’s complaint is that localities are
adopting policies with which it disagrees.
This idea of locking up elected officials for
their political speech, beliefs, and votes is
contrary to the First Amendment and the
democratic principles on which our country
was founded. Even the suggestion is dan-
gerous and reprehensible.
Cody Wofsy is an attorney with the ACLU
Immigrants’ Rights Project.