On April 16, eleven year-old Jaheem Herrera hanged himself in his closet and was found dead by his mother and young sisters. Jaheem made A’s and B’s in school. He was by any standard a cute kid (CNN photo, left). He had a best friend who sympathized with him over the bullying. He told his mother about it, and she had complained to Dunaire Elementary School administrators many times.

But Jaheem was repetitively called ugly, gay, snitch, and ”virgin” (latched on to by the bullies due to the happenstance that his family was from the Virgin Islands). The verbal abuse was predictably escalated to physical abuse — Jaheem’s 10 year-old sister said that he was choked in the bathroom. The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s extensive reporting on the incident notes:

In the wake of Jaheem’s suicide, other students’ parents have come forward to describe other alleged acts of violence at Dunaire. Some parents said their children were the victims of beatings with buckles and chokings. 

Yet the school was reportedly a model with regard to anti-bullying policy (from the CNN piece):

Allegations of such severe bullying surprises experts familiar with the school district. It’s anti-bullying program was considered exemplary and includes programs to raise awareness and a specially trained liaison. Students are even asked to sign a no-bullying pledge.

Obviously, these policy trappings are not enough. Or badly executed. Or ignored down in the trenches. Conscientious vigilance and monitoring are what is required of the adult administrators and teachers on the scene. It shouldn’t be that difficult to spot and root out this viciousness if adult personnel are not turning a blind eye, taking a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude.

Jaheem Herrera’s case mirrors that of a Massachusetts boy, Carl Walker-Hoover, also eleven, who hanged himself to death after incessant taunting and bullying at school just a week prior to Herrera’s suicide. Walker-Hoover was also repeatedly called “gay,” among other pejoratives.

One expert said that, “Anti-gay language is really the ultimate weapon for a bully who wants to degrade his or her peers.” Needless to say, neither of these pre-pubescent children was actually a homosexual.

My thought on this is that it’s pervasive in our society. According to a study quoted by CNN, 65 percent of teens report they are bullied each year, and most believe adults can’t help them. Now I understand that only extremely rarely does this lead to suicide. But no child should have to endure a hellish environment of incessant verbal abuse (and the ever present threat of physical abuse) at school. An elevated level of motivated vigilance by school personnel – and significant discipline, including removal, of discovered bullies — can go a long way to solve this problem, in addition to standard anti-bullying campaigns.

If you have school-age children, please be sensitive to this issue and be prepared to act. If this sort of abuse can occur right under the nose of the administration at a “model” school, imagine what it’s like in schools that are “just average.”

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A child born on United States soil is automatically a United States citizen per our Constitution’s 14th Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And don’t just note the bolded portion. The clauses on the privileges and immunities of citizens, the right to life, liberty and property (echoing the Declaration’s “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”), to due process and equal protection of the laws, are among the most relevant and oft-cited provisions in modern constitutional jurisprudence.  

According to the CNN piece, about 3 million children who are United States citizens have at least one parent who is an “illegal immigrant.” As our immigration laws are currently enforced, the parent or parents of child citizens can be deported (sent back to their country of origin – often Mexico) — leaving the child in the nightmare scenario of being ripped from their beloved protectors and providers or following them to a country where they don’t even speak the language of their new schoolmates.

Seems to me, the wrongness of this outcome cannot be overstated — and reversing this torturous, dark corner of our immigration policy is something that the vast majority of Americans could agree on regardless of one’s position on illegal immigration generally. Regardless of any other considerations, the child’s U.S. citizenship should prevail if the parent has not committed a felony, and the child should not face de facto deportation — a fate in no way compatible with the fact of citizenship.

I am not suggesting that children should be completely immunized from the acts of their parents in general. I recognize that every day innocent citizen children suffer when their felon parents (also U.S. citizens) are incarcerated. But seeking a better life in the United States is not the moral equivalent of a criminal offense, is it? While it may or may not make sense to deport individuals who are detained after having immigrated illegally (that is the overarching debate), once the privileges and immunities of a U.S. citizen become involved by virtue of a child’s presence, I feel morally and constitutionally justified in saying that “the statute of limitations” has expired on our government’s (legal and moral) justification to deport the child’s parents.

If the above result increased the motivation of illegal immigrants to have children on U.S. soil, or even to cross the border when pregnant, then so be it. It is a small price to pay for the assurance that citizen children will be protected and not treated as second class citizens. As a policy matter, immigrants with children will be even more likely to be productive workers and stay clear of trouble, right? Motivated to provide for their child, surely the answer is yes. Without looking, it seems obvious that court cases have already gone against citizen children trying to shield their parents from deportation, and I may delve into this in a future post. But regardless, how can it be compatible with our national principles and ideals for our Constitution, through some technicality, to permit this? We can and must do better.

Who can possibly be against the protection of citizen children in this situation? As I think of every possible political persuasion from left to right on the spectrum, I cannot think of one group who could oppose the protection of citizen children without rendering themselves hypocrites vis-à-vis their other positions. Thinking of my own children, I can only imagine how unbearable facing such a situation would be. Stopping the infliction of trauma on the defenseless should be something we can all agree on, the heart of a much needed bi-partisan compromise on illegal immigration.

Until we right this wrong, fantastic organizations like Organization to Help Citizen Children (OtHCC) are making heroic efforts to lessen the harm done to displaced citizen children. OtHCC’s chief focus is to:

Solicit churches along both sides of the border to “adopt” deported families and provide assistance to them.

This strategy identifies families on either side of the border that would provide support for the “adopted children.” On the U. S. side, a family would be asked to take in a U. S. -born child into their home and provide care for them during the school week. This would enable the children to pursue their education through the public schools of a particular state.

On the Mexican side, a family would be asked to provide temporary shelter and assist the undocumented members of the “adopted” family in obtaining employment and locating a permanent place to live.

Truly a noble pursuit that puts the faith and human spirit of those involved to work righting a terrible wrong. Simultaneously, OtHCC strives to raise public awareness of the plight of citizen children, press for priority status for these families in future federal legislation and call for a moratorium on the deportation of parents of U.S.-born children, and pursue legal remedies on behalf of these children. OtHCC accepts donations here. If you feel like I do, tell your friends.

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