It is so much easier to think of undocumented immigrants as less human, to lump them in with rapists, gang members, and other criminals as the president and his fans are wont to do.

Acknowledging their full humanity requires too much of us: compassion; confronting problems without easy solutions; sacrificing the casual bigotry that wins votes.

No. Better to think of the parents who bring their kids across the border as smugglers, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions does. Earlier this month, he announced that more children would now be taken from parents who cross the border illegally, and washed his soft, white hands of the consequences.

“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably,’’ Sessions said. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.’’

It’s already happening. The New York Times found that more than 700 children were taken from adults claiming to be their parents at the border between October and late April. More than 100 of those children were younger than 4.

It is way more difficult to extol the salutary effects of wrenching terrified children from their parents if you think of those immigrants as parents who love their kids. But love them they do. So much, that they’re willing to make gut-wrenching choices for them. Why else would a parent risk the treacherous journey from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador with their child, or even send a child on that journey alone?

They are not stupid, or ignorant. Long before they flee the poverty and violence of their countries, they know they or their children risk being killed, raped, or trafficked. They know that, even if they make it over the border, they’ll work jobs nobody else wants, be exploited, have the threat of deportation hanging over them.

“They are canceling their own lives to give their kids what they will never get,’’ says Javier Luengo-Garrido, who coordinates the Immigrant Protection Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in Western Massachusetts. “Even if they live in an apartment with eight other people, at least they can send their kids to school without the fear that a gang is going to recruit them, or kill them. That’s how much love we see every day.’’

Sessions’ announcement means many more separations. And, make no mistake, the children taken from their parents are being placed into the custody of a government that has already demonstrated it cannot be trusted to take care of them. Between October 2016 and December 2017, the federal government lost track of 1,500 minors who had crossed the border alone. A 2016 Senate report found that the federal government had failed to protect unaccompanied minors in its care from human traffickers and other abusers.

Now Sessions and the rest of this administration have made wanton cruelty official government policy. There will be many more stories of crying 18-month-olds taken from their mothers at the border. More parents will stand before immigration judges, begging to know where their children are. And federal officials will simply shrug their shoulders and say they don’t know. After months apart, more fathers and sons will be deported to Central America separately, with no system in place to help them find each other again.

All of this pain will be inflicted in the interests of deterring people from trying to cross the border. The government is deliberately harming children who made no choices, to keep out parents who could make no other choices.

It’s like taking hostages. And it is being done in our name. Worse, it’s not even going to work. Parents will simply factor the risk of separation into their calculations as they make the journey north. Many will endure the ordeal anyway.

The only way to make peace with their suffering is to deny their humanity. And if we do that, we greatly diminish our own.

Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeAbraham.