family | Stephanie Rutt

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October 22, 2025 · 1:04 pm

The Cries of the Children

“Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.” Hebert Ward

Imagine you knew Gabby. A bouncy six-year-old who lives with her mother next door. You remember when she was born, at home, as there was no insurance or money for the hospital. Still, a joyous occasion. Growing up, every Halloween, she’s come over all excited to show you her special costume, and at Christmas you’ve gladly wrapped a couple of small gifts especially from Santa. On Easter, you’ve enjoyed coloring eggs with her and, later, helping her mom make her special Easter basket and hide the eggs. On her birthday each year, you’ve helped decorate with balloons, hang streamers and put up a rickety card table covered with a party theme table cloth, hats, horns, plates, cups and napkins all from the local thrift store. Perfect.

Her mother, originally from Mexico, has been here many years after escaping the horrific daily violence back home. She goes to work, pays taxes, and contributes to her local community in a multitude of ways. But because she’s an immigrant, she’s not eligible for the many safety-net services available to U.S. citizens. That’s okay. She’s made her way by working hard and is ever grateful to live in the U.S.

Not feeling she’s a threat, she doesn’t fear deportation and voluntarily checks in with ICE about her immigration status and to ask about next steps. However, on her last visit, she along with about 20 other people are taken off in a white unmarked van while their relatives can only watch helplessly. (For the original story, see “ICE Separated a 6-Year-Old,” Chicago Tribune, June 22, 2025.)

You, being right next door and very close to Gabby, are among the first to have to tell her that her mother is gone.

“Where’s my mommy? I want my mommy!” she screams, thrashing wildly, smearing tears on your sleeve. You try in the kindest way to tell her you’re sure her mommy is okay and will be home soon. You desperately try to comfort her with a warm bowl of mac and cheese, her favorite. And you huddle close, read her favorite bedtime stories, until her cries gently soften from exhaustion and she falls asleep in your arms. Then you too have a good cry.

Her mother, now far away, has no idea where she’s being taken, how long she’ll be there and when, or if, she’ll ever be able to go home again. There’s no warrant for her arrest. No court date. No due process. None of the normal pillars of standard operating procedure within the U.S. judicial system. Stunned, numb and alone, she too curls up on a makeshift bed sobbing and squeezing herself pretending she’s holding her Gabby. “What’s going to happen to my little girl?” her heart cries, desperately trying to quell the unthinkable, “Will I ever see my baby again?”

Sadly, similar scenarios are being played out every day all around the country. According to, “ICE’s family separations are forcing children to parent themselves,” by Diana Fishbein, The Hill, 08/08/2025, “All this is happening to meet an arbitrary goal toward the mass deportation of 15 million immigrants, which would amount to about 3,000 each day. Because only a small fraction are criminals — in fact, immigrants commit significantly fewer violent crimes than those born in the U.S. — ICE has resorted to detaining law-abiding residents, many of whom have deep roots in their communities and children who depend on them.”

But Gabby is no number. Her mother is no number. They are human beings, our neighbors. Their children run with ours in local parks, pray with ours in Sunday school, sit in the same schoolrooms hoping for playdates. Their hopes and dreams, once possible to imagine in America, now dashed in an instant by unprovoked, unprecedented, cruelty.

Yet, we shouldn’t be surprised. As I reported in my 3-17-2025 Opinion, 4,600 children were separated from their parents in the first Trump administration. The Biden task force successfully reunited many families but, as part of Trump’s first executive order, he rescinded the task force leaving the remaining 1,360 still searching, stranded.

Worst of all, none of this was necessary. Remember when a bipartisan immigration bill, the first to map out comprehensive reform, came up for a vote before the election? Trump made sure it didn’t pass. Why? He wanted this. And every day we’re told this is what the majority of us want too.

I don’t buy it. Not here. Not in America. I stand with our Declaration of Independence and wish for Gabby and her mother, and all those like them, the same “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” promised to the rest of us. And I pray that the abuse being perpetrated every day, casting a shadow the length of a lifetime over our neighbors, will soon be eradicated by all of us who can hear the cries of the children.

Grace in the Land of the Lost

“I was saved by God to make America great again.” President Trump 2025 Address to a Joint Session of Congress

Many in his MAGA base also believe that. Some Evangelical Christians even exalt him as a prophetic figure, divinely appointed to be here at this time to save the lost. However, I, as a woman of faith, have difficulty reconciling that prophetic belief with President Trump’s actions over the years. In fact, I would argue that most are clearly antithetical to the Christian life.

Can we imagine one who truly follows Christ mocking the disabled, the one who stutters? Can we imagine such a person describing the violence and destruction, the threats to hang Vice President Mike Pence on January 6^th as a “day of love,” and then to call the perpetrators the true victims and pardon them? Can we imagine such a person showering accolades on Putin, one of the world’s most notorious dictators, while publicly chastising Zelenskyy, a courageous leader desperately trying to defend his country from an unprovoked takeover?

Meanwhile, as Elon Musk parades like a rock star with his chainsaw, tens of thousands of federal workers are being sent home with little notice, some wondering how they’re going to pay the rent or mortgage next month, put food on the table or how to tell their children their favorite activities have to stop—all challenges the world’s richest oligarchs couldn’t possibly imagine. And who knows what the inevitable fallout of services will be to many of us who rely on them daily. Could we imagine one who follows Christ casually dismissing and justifying all such collateral damage as simply a small price to pay for cleaning up the nation’s waste and fraud?

But, in my view, perhaps the most egregious anti-Christ-like example was conveniently made silent and invisible by the stroke of an executive order on day-one, the “Executive Order Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” Among an array of former immigration policies Trump rescinded in conjunction with this Order was Biden’s Executive Order 14011 that had established a task force to reunite families separated by Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy.

On Dec. 19, 2024, The Latin Times cited a joint 135-page report by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), and Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic highlighting the over 4,600 children who were deliberately separated from their parents between 2017 and 2021 and the lasting harm incurred as a result.

The report states that children were held in overcrowded conditions and often lacked adequate food, hygiene supplies, and supervision. Guards often ignored crying children or subjected them to verbal abuse. No doubt, as many health professionals warned, such separations could cause severe, lifelong psychological harm.

Today, as many as 1,360 children still remain separated from their parents. Think about that. 1,360 children who may never know where, or perhaps even who, their parents are.

Images of the separations, the children, are well documented. I often think about the very young ones, those just old enough to feel it all but not yet old enough to know what’s happening or to understand. If you are strong of heart, take a look. See their faces. We did this.

“Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Matt. 19:14

No one argues that we need immigration reform. No one disputes that we need to target the most violent criminals attempting to cross into our country and that we need to stem the flow of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. No one. But to have perpetrated such violence on innocent children and their parents, many of whom came here to escape horrendous conditions, is not only far from Christ-like, it’s indisputably inhumane and cruel.

But on day-one, President Trump took it a step further. He doubled down on the cruelty to ensure that those remaining 1,360 children would no longer have any governmental support to find their parents.

There’s a clear and present danger here. Perpetrators, domestic and foreign, are praised. Victims are ignored or blamed. Unloading our national debt has been transferred onto the backs of tens of thousands of everyday Americans, while the oligarchy running our country celebrates numbers on the national spreadsheet. And gangs haven’t paid the price at the border. Children and families have.

If Trump was sent to save America, I would say it is we who are now living in the land of the lost. But I still believe, as John Newton wrote in the well-known hymn, Amazing Grace, that with just a little true Christ-like care for one another, we too as a nation may one day be able to say, “I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see.”