Trump defends controversial immigration policy
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.
Hundreds of children are being held at a converted former Walmart store in Texas. Speaking at the White House on Monday, the U.S. president said, “The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility. You look at what’s happening in Europe, and in other places, we cannot allow that to happen. Not on my watch.” He said criminals were using children like a “Trojan horse” to get into America, that “a country without borders is not a country at all,” and that people coming in were bringing “death and destruction.” He added: “They are thieves and murderers and so much else.” Criticizing the more open immigration policies of his European NATO allies, Trump wrote on Twitter: “Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” He specifically mentioned Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, claiming “crime in Germany is way up” and immigration was why “the people of Germany are turning against their leadership.” Trump went on to attack Democrats in Congress, blaming them for the separation of families at the border because they had created “horrible laws” and had been “weak and ineffective”. There is no law requiring children to be taken from parents apprehended after unlawfully crossing the border. In April, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, introduced a “zero-tolerance” policy that meant all adults caught crossing the border illegally were to be detained and prosecuted — as opposed to being released while they await proceedings. Their children are then removed and held in separate facilities. Trump has been very critical of what he called the “catch and release” policy. Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, speaking at the National Sheriffs’ Association, said releasing parents with their children would be a “get out of jail free card.” She said the administration wouldn’t apologize for splitting apart families at the border. Nielsen suggested that some immigrants illegally entering the U.S. with children were not in fact families, and that those seeking asylum should go to official ports of entry instead of crossing the border unlawfully.
“We do not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this country as a family unit are in fact a family. We have to do our job; we will not apologize for doing our job.” Sessions, speaking at the same meeting in New Orleans, said if a border wall was built then “we won’t face these terrible choices.” But Laura Bush, the former first lady, said the separation of families was “cruel, immoral and breaks my heart.” She compared it to the “shameful” internment of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War. A senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services said up to 30,000 illegal immigrant children could be held by the end of August, and it was “running out of space.”