Immigration: U.S. prisons are no great model

Re: “Separation is customary for anyone arrested,” (TNT letter, 6/21).

This letter writer seeks to normalize the separation of the immigrant children from parents because it is routine in our jails and prisons.

Mass incarceration is neither model nor justification for such separation. Instead, it offers a cautionary tale.

Prison sentences are family sentences. The trauma of separation is compounded by the stigma of having a parent behind bars.

Parents are often incarcerated far away, disrupting parental guidance. Poor families become poorer when deprived of a breadwinner. Racial inequities are deepened.

Mass incarceration erodes our collective future by derailing academic success. Children with incarcerated fathers have higher drop-out rates and lower high school graduation rates. These rates are worse for children of incarcerated mothers.

Female imprisonment has increased 700 percent between 1980 and 2014, according to the Sentencing Project. Only 1 to 2 percent of students with incarcerated mothers graduate from college, according to a 2013 report from the American Bar Association and the White House.

More than 5 million innocent children unfairly share their parent’s sentence, according to a Casey Foundation report.

Speedy reunification of families separated at our borders is a clear moral imperative.