US Democratic lawmakers on Sunday vowed to end the “evil” separation of migrant children from their parents at the US border as US first lady Melania Trump made a rare political plea to end the deeply controversial practice.
The “zero tolerance” border security policy implemented by US President Donald Trump’s administration has sparked outrage on both sides of the political aisle and took on particular resonance as the US celebrated Father’s Day.
“They call it ‘zero tolerance,’ but a better name for it is zero humanity, and there’s zero logic to this policy,” US Senator Jeff Merkley said after leading a group of Democratic lawmakers to the Mexican border.
“It’s completely unacceptable under any moral code or under any religious tradition to injure children, inflict trauma on them in order to send some political message to adults somewhere overseas,” he said.
After touring a converted Walmart Inc supermarket that is now housing about 1,500 immigrant children, Merkley said: “Hurting kids to get legislative leverage is unacceptable. It is evil.”
The government has said that during one recent six-week period nearly 2,000 minors were separated from their parents or adult guardians — a figure that only stoked the firestorm.
The Republican-led US House of Representatives might in the coming days vote on two immigration measures — a hardline bill and a compromise measure that would limit legal immigration while also ending family separations.
US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee accused the president of lying by claiming that he was simply following existing law to the letter.
“The president is not telling the truth. There is no law, there is no policy that has allowed him to snatch children away from their families,” she said. “I can assure you we’ll be fighting to the end to stop this ugly, vile program that is harming children and creating massive child abuse.”
Earlier, Representative David Cicilline said that the policy was “undermining the founding values of this country.”
“We saw the fear in the eyes of these children who are wondering when they will see their parent ever again. It’s a disgrace, it’s shameful and it’s un-American,” he added.
Melania Trump, who seldom wades into the political arena, opted to call for bipartisan immigration reform to fix the issue, rather than denounce the policy.
“Mrs Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform,” her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said. “She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”
Donald Trump later tweeted: “The Democrats should get together with their Republican counterparts and work something out on Border Security & Safety. Don’t wait until after the election because you are going to lose!”
The number of separations has jumped since early May, when US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that all migrants illegally crossing the US border with Mexico would be arrested, regardless of whether the adults were seeking asylum.
Since children cannot be sent to the facilities where their parents are held, they are separated, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has warned could cause “irreparable harm” to the children.
Some of Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans have said the policy must end.
“What the administration has decided to do is to separate children from their parents to try to send a message that if you cross the border with children, your children are going to be ripped away from you,” US Senator Susan Collins told CBS TV’s Face the Nation.
“That’s traumatizing to the children who are innocent victims and it is contrary to our values in this country,” Collins said.
Former US first lady Laura Bush was unflinching in her rejection of the policy.
“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,” Bush, who lives in Texas, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece.
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