Let’s try this with a bit of a different context.

A Jewish family in Germany in the 1930s flees their home country to get away from Nazi thugs and the growing violence against them. They’ve heard horror stories of Jews being taken away and put in work camps. Their shops and homes are being vandalized and jackbooted paramilitary men are beating them in the streets.

They scrape together what they can and board a ship to America because Germany will undoubtedly attack England, so England is too close. They know if they stay they will die, even though their family has lived there for generations.

When they get to America, the authorities take the children away, and when the parents ask for asylum to escape the violence in Germany, the authorities lock them up in a detention center, saying it will be months or even years before their case is heard.

They don’t know where their children are. Their young children don’t know where they are.

Finally, a government official announces that the only way they’ll see their kids again is if they give up their claim to asylum and agree to be sent back immediately to Germany, where they face certain death.

Explain to me how this would not be a brutal thing for a country to do.
It will take a long time to wash this stain, and even if we do, it won’t ever completely go away. It’s a stain on the soul. The best we can do is re-think who we want to be: decent human beings, or brutal thugs.

It’s our choice.

If we choose brutality, they are not the “animals.” We are.

(And let’s not forget we did turn away Jews trying to seek asylum in America, and so did a few other countries. They wound up going back. And they died.)