US first ladies criticise child separation rule on border
President Donald Trump's policy of separating immigrant parents and their children on the US border has evoked sharp criticism from his own wife, First Lady Melania Trump as well as a former First Lady Laura Bush, who described the move to warehouse children in detention centres as "cruel" and "immoral."
President Trump's "zerotolerance" immigration policy, nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents and guardians and placed into holding facilities between April 19 and May 31 of this year, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The public outcry in the wake of images and stories of the children caught in the middle of Trump's controversial immigration policy has sparked fierce debate in the US. In a rare statement on a policy issue, Melania Trump weighed in through her spokeswoman on the immigration crisis, saying she "hates to see children separated from their families".
"She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart," the communications director of the first lady Stephanie Grisham, said. "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," she quoted the 48-year-old Melania, herself an immigrant, who was born in Slovenia, as saying.
Meanwhile, Laura Bush, wife of the former Republican President George W Bush, launched a rare attack on the policy of the current US President.
"This zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," the 71-yearold former first lady wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.