Seeing through the eyes of a child brings perspective, as the people of the Copper Country were reminded in a sorrowful lesson last week, when news came of 12-year-old Thatcher Markham’s death resulting from the flash flood.

Since the June 17 flood, we have seen Copper Country residents, and many others from outside the region and beyond the state, come together to respond to the disaster — offering supplies, support and sweat in a common goal to restore things to normal.

Yet things will never be as before. The Copper Country lost a child.

In grieving the death of one of our own children, it offers a fresh perspective in seeing and hearing the children being taken from their parents and put behind bars as a result of this country’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, which also occurred last week.

As we are realizing in coming back from this natural disaster, things are replaceable. Roads are being repaired. Debris is being removed. Donations to replace many things are flowing in.

But life is irreplaceable. The loss of Thatcher will remain. This is what makes human life so precious and something that must be preserved and protected from harm whatever the cost.

Damaged things can be repaired. But the emotional and psychological damage inflicted on children in being forcibly separated from both mom and dad at the same time, even temporarily, is effectively permanent, according to experts.

Strip away the political rhetoric playing on some people’s fears, exaggerations and heartless rationalizations, consider the only reason these children are in those places is because they love their moms and dads and needed to be with them. They were honoring their fathers and mothers.

That cannot be a crime punishable by incarceration. Perhaps there is a crime being committed here. But the offenders are not the children.