‘UNCONSCIONABLE’

TRUMP DEFENDS U.S. BORDER PROTECTION POLICIES IN THE FACE OF RISING GLOBAL OUTRAGE

Donald Trump is refusing to back down over a controversial “zero-tolerance” immigration policy that has seen thousands of children forcibly separated from their parents at the Mexican border saying the U.S. would not become like a European “migrant camp”.

The policy has attracted international condemnation with Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN human rights chief, saying, “The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable.”

The U.S. president defended the policy amid an increasing uproar among Democrats and Republicans as images of children being held in wire mesh cages — and toddlers crying as they were separated from their mothers — emerged from the border.

One detention centre in Texas has been nicknamed “La Perrera” — “the dog kennel” in Spanish.

Democrat politicians who were allowed to tour it at the weekend saw one cage with 20 children inside. Children were sleeping on the floor on thin mattresses with foil sheets as blankets.

Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat senator, said, “I witnessed loads of kids massed together in large pens of chain-linked fence separated from their moms and dads. Shameful.”

He added, “This is something that transcends politics. This is about moms and dads imagining their children being taken from them.”

Michelle Brane, director of the Women’s Refugee Commission, said she found an unaccompanied four-year-old in a detention centre. She said, “The girl was so traumatized that she wasn’t talking. She was just curled up in a little ball.” Another young boy was silent in his cage, clutching a photocopy of his mother’s identity card. Amnesty International said the treatment of children “meets the definitions of torture under both U.S. and international law”.

It said: “This is a spectacularly cruel policy where frightened children are being ripped from their parents’ arms and taken to overflowing detention centres which are effectively cages.”

On Monday, investigative news site ProPublica released a recording of immigrant children crying out “Mami” and “Papa” adding to the controversy.

Over a six-week period at least 2,000 children have been separated from their parents.

AFP PHOTO/U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION Illegal border crossers sit at the U.S Border Patrol’s main processing centre in McAllen, Texas, late last month. One detention facility in Texas has been given the nickname “La Perrera,” which is Spanish for “the dog kennel.”