Child camps not like the Nazis, insists Trump ally
‘They wanted to keep Jews in... we’re going to kick families out’
Marching toward tents in scorching 38c (100F) heat, these are the migrant children who have been separated from their families by Donald Trump and put in ‘nazi’ camps.
aerial pictures show girls and boys being led to tents in Tornillo, Texas, where they will be forced to live temporarily without their parents after Mr Trump introduced his ‘ zero tolerance’ approach towards illegal immigrants.
US attorney general Jeff Sessions yesterday said any comparison with the nazis dividing up families into concentration camps was a ‘real exaggeration’.
he insisted the nazis were ‘keeping Jews from leaving the country’ but Trump’s White house wanted to kick immigrants out.
Ex-cia Director Michael hayden had likened the separation of undocumented immigrant families at the US border to the auschwitz camp – where millions of Jews and other minorities were killed.
Mr Trump last night defended the policy and called illegal immigration a ‘monstrosity’.
he said: ‘i don’t want children
taken you prosecute away from the parents. parents When for coming in illegally – which should happen – you have to take the children away.’ he added: ‘We’ve got to stop separation of the families, but politically correct or not, we have a country that needs security, that needs safety, that has to be protected.’
On Twitter he said he would not let immigrants ‘infest and pour into america’.
Mr hayden had tweeted a picture of auschwitz with the message ‘Other governments have separated mothers and children.’
he later said the tweet was a warning of where the US could be heading, point out saying: we need ‘i be was careful trying not to to move in that direction.’
he stressed: ‘in 1933, what did we see in germany? a cult of personality, a cult of nationalism, a cult of grievance, a press operation that looked like and was the ministry of propaganda and then the punishing of marginalised groups.’ US immigration officials say 2,342 children have been separated from 2,206 parents from May 5 to June 9 after the Trump administration began prosecuting all people who illegally entered the country and taking away the children they brought with them. Mexico’s foreign minister Luis Videgaray caso, who has branded the policy ‘cruel and inhuman’, last night claimed US immigration agents had separated a Mexican mother and her ten- year- old daughter with Down’s Syndrome.
The tents have been put up because the US immigration services do not have enough beds to house them. Democrats, republicans, every surviving former First Lady and even Mr Trump’s wife, Melania have come out against the policy. The uproar escalated after the release of pictures of young children being held in cages in detention centres, one of which has been dubbed La Perrera, or ‘the dog kennel’ in Spanish.
The new images give further insight into the drastic measures the US is taking following a flood of children from Mexico and central american countries.
at a distance the Tornillo camp looks like an army base in the desert with beige tents arranged in neat rows – only instead of soldiers being marched into the camp the figures are teenagers and toddlers. They were being shown to the tents by workers in bright green T- shirts and once inside they are made to choose a bare mattress on one of the nine bunk beds. at other facilities children are given a mat and a thermal blanket to sleep on the floor in pens where the lights overhead are left on 24 hours a day.
as outrage at the policy grew a poll found that 67 per cent of americans found it unacceptable to separate children from families. ÷ The US has withdrawn from the United nations human rights council, claiming it ‘is not worthy of its name’. US ambassador to the Un nikki haley said it had been ‘a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias’.
‘You have to take children away’