This week, through social media, I was exposed to an image of a Latino toddler who was crying behind what appear to be a cage. The image provided little other information and the multitudes of people who posted it, captioned the photo with outrage over the treatment of undocumented immigrants by the Trump administration.

After taking the time to look for the source of the image, I learned from https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/toddler-cage-photo/ that the photo had nothing to do with the Trump administration, nor was the child in a cage. For several weeks now I’ve seen many inaccurate attempts to accuse the Trump administration of holding immigrant children prison style conditions. And that’s where we are in America; people will not act until images and videos of horrific injustices are made visible to the country.

People are trying to shame the masses into outraged over the conditions immigrant children are being held captive in. For whatever reason, we need a literal visual of the terrible act before we can decide that an injustice has occurred. For years we knew that domestic violence was present in the NFL. It wasn’t until a video of Ray Rice striking his fiancée appeared that we took it seriously in our society.

Regardless of how horrific, or not horrific, the conditions these immigrant kids are living under, the conditions are not what is damaging these kids. The desperate angry arguments made by Samantha Bee and others are not depicting the real inequity that DHS and ICE are inflicting on these families.

The most horrific abuse these children are experiencing is simply that they have been separated from their parents. Even the degree of violence in which these kids are parted from their mothers is not as grave as the actual separation, and will not leave the same lasting impression. Every time one of us tries to shame others by using images of inhumane conditions, we demean and divert from the actual suffering these kids are living daily. We shouldn’t need breaking news or images to realize that Jeff Sessions’ actions have already gone far beyond cruel.

Because abuse and malice is not the worst thing a child can experience. The worst thing children can endure is separation and anxiety from being parted from their loving caretakers. My mother came to the United States one year before me. She left my brother and I with my father’s mother for an entire year so that she could prepare a home for us in what would become our new country. It broke her heart to see her 7 year-old son desperately cry for her as she left.

She chose to sacrifice a year away from her children so she could build a better life for us. What she didn’t know, and would not learn for several more decades is that she left her youngest son to endure a year of abuse and torture.

Over the next year my grandmother molested me dozens of times if not hundreds. My grandmother led me to believe that I needed to keep this secret so that no harm would come to my brother or my mother. Wess Stafford once said that children will endure an unlimited amount of pain to protect their loved ones. For my seven-year-old self, this statement was true. I endured what no child should have for a year with the promise that I would see my mother again one day.

On August of 1987, I was reunited with my mom as an 8 year-old boy. Despite the terrible things that I experienced, I only felt joy in being held in my mother’s arms again. I waited 27 years before I told her what had happened to me the year she left to help build our new life in America.

I waited because the abuse and malice I endured was trivial compared to the joy of having my mother back in life. The real suffering I endure was being separated from my mother for a year. And as a little boy I didn’t understand why we needed to be apart. I just needed my mother.

I am sickened by the idea that some, probably many, of these kids are enduring mistreatment from government officials or foster caretakers. But I know the anxiety from the separation of their parents is what is really causing damage and pain. These kids are not patsies for us to politicize our disdain for the current administration. They are children, who are currently enduring the worst thing a child can experience, the loss of their parents.

We shouldn’t need and image or a video of the conditions these kids are living in to know that what is happening is inhumane. I was raised to believe that Americans value family above any government, law, or policy. If we are not already outraged by what DHS and ICE are doing to these families, than no image should have the capacity to change our minds. We have already decided that these children and their parents are criminal and unworthy of compassion.

By allowing these families to be ripped apart, we’ve already lost the capacity to see them as humans or valuable. There is no point in trying to humanize their plight through images of poor conditions and inhumane treatment. By doing so we disregard the real pain they are suffering. If we are not already outspoken about what has happened to these kids, we have already demean the damage that they endure.