Chilling audio of kids surfaces
WASHINGTON : A heartrending audio recording has surfaced of immigrant children crying inconsolably for their parents at a detention centre.
They asked for their “papi” (Spanish for father), “mami” (mother) or a relative and some had telephone numbers that they pleaded with consular officials to call. ProPublica, an investigative news publication that obtained the recording, called one of the numbers.
“It was the hardest moment in my life,” the relative, an aunt, said. “Imagine getting a call from your six-year-old niece. She’s crying and begging me to go get her. She says, ‘I promise I’ll behave, but please get me out of here. I’m all alone’,” the aunt added.
The nearly eight-minute recording shook a nation already reeling from images and news reports about children, some as young as two, being ripped away from their parents and taken to detention centres, which are being described as “cages” or “dog kennels”.
A reporter played the recording at the White House news briefing room before the start of the daily briefing at which Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of homeland security, defended the policy and flatly denied what was happening to these children amounted to “child abuse”.
Her remarks came even as Rosalyn Carter, wife of former Democratic president Jimmy Carter, became the newest and last of living former First Ladies to make a rare policy intervention joining Laura Bush, wife of George W Bush, and Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama, to publicly oppose Trump’s policy.