The Stanford prison experiment, which helped us understand the worst atrocities in history for decades, is called out as a 'sham' at a moment when America is separating 

Image: Getty

The Department of Homeland Security is currently committed to a "zero tolerance" immigration policy on the border with Mexico, which so far has separated 2,000 asylum-seeking Central American children from their parents.

If you are not fully familiar with the dehumanizing details of this process, I implore you to read this Texas Monthly interview with a volunteer at a charity who is trying to assist the parents and children who are caught in it.

Generally, a family will arrive at the US-Mexican border, and after being repeatedly denied entry via official crossings, will cross on their own. Once on the American side, many families voluntarily seek Border Patrol so they can officially ask for asylum. It is often at this moment, against established United Nations norms about how asylum seekers should be treated, that parents are prosecuted as criminals and their children are torn away from them.

Here is a section from the Texas Monthly interview that turned my stomach:

...the officers say, "I'm going to take your child to get bathed." That's one we see again and again. "Your child needs to come with me for a bath." The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, "Where is my five-year-old?" "Where's my seven-year-old?" "This is a long bath." And they say, "You won't be seeing your child again." Sometimes mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, "Don't take my child away," and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying hysterically, and she asked the officers, "Can I at least have five minutes to console her?" They said no. In another case, the father said, "Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?" The officer said, "You must let them go, and if you don't let them go, I will write you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that had the additional charges charged against you."