TRUMP BACKS DOWN ON CHILD MIGRANTS
After backlash – including from Melania – President admits separating children from parents made him look heartless
DONALD Trump caved in to worldwide outrage last night and signed an executive order to end the separation of migrant families.
The US President said he wanted to appear strong but admitted the ‘zero tolerance’ policy had made him look like he had ‘no heart’.
It was a rare U-turn from a president who almost never backs down. But he was left with little choice after his policy created a wall of opposition, including from his wife Melania, Democrats, Republicans, every living former first lady, Amnesty International and the United Nations.
After signing the order in the Oval Office, Mr Trump said his wife and daughter ‘felt very strongly’ about the policy.
He added: ‘Anybody with a heart would feel very strongly about it’.
‘We’re going to have strong – very strong – borders, but we’re going to keep the families together.’
The president said he did not like the ‘sight’ or ‘feeling’ of children separated from their parents.
More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since April when the Trump administration began its ‘ zero tolerance’ approach to migrants.
This involved prosecuting all adults who illegally entered the country and taking away any children they brought with them.
Anger flared across America over images of children being held in cages and audio recordings of toddlers crying for their parents after being detained.
Ex-CIA director Michael Hayden had likened the separation of families
‘Deeply disturbing’
at the US-Mexico border to the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp.
Mr Trump said his order would not end the ‘zero tolerance’ policy prosecuting all adults caught crossing the border illegally.
Its aim was to keep families together while they were in custody, he added. Cases would be expedited and the Department of Defence asked to help house families.
Earlier, at a meeting at the White House, Mr Trump said: ‘The Republicans want security and insist on security for our country, and we will have that.
‘At the same time, we have compassion and want to keep families together. It’s very important.’
He added that his actions would be ‘matched by legislation’, although Congress has failed to pass immigration reform for decades. The president said: ‘The dilemma is if you’re weak – and some people would like you to be – if you’re really, really pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun by millions of people.
‘If you’re strong, then you don’t have any heart. That’s a tough dilemma. Perhaps I’d rather be strong, but it’s a tough dilemma.’
His decision came hours after Theresa May described the policy as ‘deeply disturbing’.
Breaking her silence on the issue, she signalled that she would raise her disagreement with the president, who is visiting Britain next month.
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, she said the nature of the ‘special relationship’ with America meant that ‘when we disagree with
what they are doing, we say so’.
During the exchange, the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford asked Mrs May if she was still intending to ‘roll out the red carpet’ for Mr Trump when he arrives in three weeks’ time.
She replied: ‘The pictures of children being held in what appear to be cages are deeply disturbing. This is wrong, this is not something that we agree with.
‘This is not the United Kingdom’s approach. Indeed, when I was home secretary, I ended the routine detention of families with children.’
She added the UK had a ‘special and long- standing relationship with the US’ that allowed her to raise ‘issues about our shared interests’. Mr Blackford described her answer as ‘disappointing’ and said ‘we should all be unreservedly condemning the actions of Donald Trump’.
The Prime Minister replied: ‘I clearly and wholly, unequivocally said that that was wrong.’
It emerged yesterday that toddlers and babies separated from their parents were being sent to at least three ‘tender age’ shelters in south Texas.
Lawyers and medics who have visited the sites described disturbing scenes of play rooms of crying preschool-age children.
Among the other horrific stories emerging from the US was that of a Mexican girl aged ten with Down’s syndrome who was reportedly separated from her mother. Mr Trump and his inner circle had mounted a strong defence of his policy in recent days, blaming it on the Democrats.
After critics compared the policy to the Nazis, attorney general Jeff Sessions said it was different because the Nazis were trying to keep the Jews in Germany and he wanted to kick immigrants out.
It also emerged yesterday that Mr Trump’s hopes of a Nobel Peace Prize for his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared lost after a key member of the board that grants the award criticised him.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the Council of Europe’s secretary general, said Mr Trump was ‘no longer the moral leader of his country or the world’.