Children’s cries stoke rage over separation

An audio recording that appears to capture the heartbreaking voices of small Spanish-speaking children crying out for their parents at a US immigration facility took centre stage yesterday in the growing uproar over the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.

‘‘Papa! Papa!’’ one child is heard weeping in the audio file that was first reported by the nonprofit ProPublica and later provided to The Associated Press.

Human rights attorney Jennifer Harbury said she received the tape from a whistleblower and told ProPublica it was recorded in the last week. She did not provide details about where exactly it was recorded.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said she had not heard the audio but said children taken into custody by the government were being treated humanely.

She said the government has high standards for detention centres and the children are well cared for, stressing that Congress needs to plug loopholes in the law so families can stay together.

The audio surfaced as politicians and advocates flocked to the US-Mexico border to visit US immigration detention centres and turn up the pressure on the Trump administration.

And the backlash over the policy widened. The Mormon church said it is ‘‘deeply troubled’’ by the separation of families at the border and urged national leaders to find compassionate solutions. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, reversed a decision to send a National Guard helicopter from his state to the Mexican border to assist in a deployment, citing the administration’s ‘‘cruel and inhumane’’ policy.

At the border, an estimated 80 people pleaded guilty yesterday to immigration charges, including some who asked the judge questions such as ‘‘What’s going to happen to my daughter?’’ and ‘‘What will happen to my son?’’

Attorneys at the hearings said the immigrants had brought two dozen boys and girls with them to the US, and the judge replied that he didn’t know what would happen to their children.

Several groups of lawmakers toured a nearby facility in Brownsville, Texas, that houses hundreds of immigrant children.

Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, of New Mexico, said the location was a former hospital converted into living quarters for children, with rooms divided by age group. There was even a small room for infants, complete with two high chairs, where two baby boys wore matching rugby style shirts with orange and white stripes.

Another group of lawmakers on Monday visited an old warehouse in McAllen, Texas, where hundreds of children are being held in cages created by metal fencing. One cage held 20 youngsters.

More than 1100 people were inside the large, dark facility, which is divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children.

President Donald Trump emphatically defended his administration’s policy yesterday, again falsely blaming Democrats.

‘‘The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,’’ he declared. ‘‘Not on my watch.’’ – AP President Donald Trump launched an extraordinary attack on Angela Merkel yesterday, saying that Germans were rejecting her leadership over mass migration.

The intervention on Twitter laid bare his strained relationship with the German chancellor, who is fighting for her political life as a dispute over her opendoor migration policy threatens to collapse her coalition government. Trump wrote: ‘‘The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition . . . Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!’’

Western diplomats are concerned that a widening rift between Trump and his European allies will endanger the success of a Nato summit in Brussels next month. Government officials in London, Berlin and Paris have been dismayed by his calls for Russia to re-enter a reconstituted G8 and angered by his protectionist tariffs on EU steel. At home Trump is fighting a political firestorm over his administration’s decision to separate undocumented migrants from their children at the southern border. Images of children held in cages while their parents are sent to prison under a ‘‘zero tolerance’’ approach have provoked criticism from US church leaders, figures from across the political spectrum and Trump’s own wife, Melania, who said she ‘‘hates to see children separated from their families’’.

Yesterday, Merkel was given a two-week ultimatum by her Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union party, who said they would start rejecting asylumseekers at the border unless she sets tougher migration controls at EU level. The challenge is being led by Horst Seehofer, the interior minister. – The Times