“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Those final lines of “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus are stamped into a bronze plaque displayed at the Statue of Liberty museum in New York Harbor. For more than a century they have stood as our nation’s invitation to those fleeing persecution, war, famine, genocide and other ills we as Americans have largely watched play out on distant shores.

On Tuesday, though, President Donald Trump sent an entirely different message to the most vulnerable population brought to the United States in search of a better life:

Sit down, kid.

Read more at The Fort Collins Coloradoan.