Real talk

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Generally speaking, we try to focus on local issues here at the RN&R. Sure, we like to talk about movies and music, but most of the time, our news and commentary deal with Nevada. If we tackle a national issue, we usually try to give it a local angle. (See this week’s feature, page 13, for example.) That said, sometimes there are national or international issues that warrant comment from free thinkers everywhere, no matter where their megaphones are usually pointed. And it seems like, for some reason, that kind of thing has happened a lot more often since November 2016.

The policies currently used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, under the leadership of Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, are scandalous. If you’ve been under a rock, here’s a nice summary from NPR: tinyurl.com/y98c3f4w. The bottom line is, Trump administration policy is to separate children of illegal immigrants from their parents and then detain the children in holding facilities that look suspiciously like cages.

Despite fierce competition, this policy might be the most disturbing action perpetrated by this administration so far. And it’s still happening now. In spite of the danger of this “zero tolerance” administration, people still come here to the United States of America to try to create better lives for their families. What do we do instead? Destroy their families.

Our columnist Sheila Leslie has a thought-provoking look at this issue in her column this week, on page 9. As always, we’re fortunate to have her voice in the paper.

I just want to add one thing: Y’all know that borders are imaginary, right? They only exist because some people, somewhere, sometime, agreed on them—probably after some bloodshed. But they’re not real. They don’t matter. You know what are real? Families.