This shameful American moment, painfully substantiated by the heartbreaking photos of shoeless Central Americans at our southern border, is simply the latest example of faulty American immigration policy.

In 1939, we turned away the St. Louis, a steamliner filled with more than 900 Jewish passengers, desperate to escape the Third Reich. Some went so far as to cable President Franklin Roosevelt asking for refuge, but instead received this State Department telegram in response: “Passengers must await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.”

In 1942, another of President Roosevelt’s executive orders led to the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, allowing the military to remove people from designated areas, all in the name of national security.

This year, from April 19 to May 31, thousands of children were separated from their families at the southern border in what the Trump administration called a “zero-tolerance policy.” They sought to prosecute as many border-crossing offenses as possible in an effort to deter undocumented immigrant families from seeking asylum. Parents were detained and sent to criminal courts while their kids were resettled in the United States, exactly as if they were unaccompanied minors. In June, after weeks of public outcry, Trump ended his policy of family separation. But, the resulting damage cannot be reversed any more than the caravan fleeing the violence in Central America.

No, Mr. Trump is not the first American leader to make egregious decisions in response to a humanitarian crisis ‚ he just seems to relish the resulting suffering more than most.

Lynn Smith