U.S. President Donald Trump has faced intense criticism for the moves his administration has taken against minorities, low income people, and the like. One such critic is former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who condemned the Trump administration’s human rights record in comments offered at a recent event at The Carter Center.
‘We should be the champion of human rights. We’re a superpower, not based solely on military power; part of that definition should be a commitment to human rights. We have lost the long-term commitment to human rights.’
Examples of this loss include the recent high profile separation of immigrant families at the U.S./Mexico border. When a court ordered deadline for family reunification rolled around, hundreds of children remained separated. Stories of government driven atrocities continue to spread, as authorities lied to and manipulated immigrants in connection to their detentions and have kept them in subhuman conditions.
The move, like other anti-immigrant measures from the Trump administration, has been cast as necessary to protect the United States, but there remains no evidence for undocumented immigrants posing some kind of heightened criminal threat. It’s not like every time a white person commits a crime, the right rallies for white people to face heightened scrutiny.
Trump won’t be in office forever, and Carter believes that there is still an opportunity for the U.S. to regain its position defending human rights.
He said:
‘We still have a chance to restore that position, but if we retain our current position of indifference, we only encourage human rights violators. We have abandoned our position as a government.’
Part of the path forward, he noted, includes establishing “a clear picture of what will happen to [immigrants] when they come here.” It also includes voting Trump out of office come 2020.
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