‘Nobody likes’ breaking up families
Trump adviser: Kids not being used as leverage for border wall
WASHINGTON — A top White House adviser on Sunday distanced the Trump administration from responsibility for separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Nobody likes” breaking up families and “seeing babies ripped from their mothers’ arms,” said Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president.
Nearly 2,000 children were separated from their families over a six-week period in April and May after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero-tolerance” policy that refers all cases of illegal entry for criminal prosecution. U.S. protocol prohibits detaining children with their parents because the children are not charged with a crime and the parents are.
Trump plans to meet with House Republicans on Tuesday to discuss pending immigration legislation amid an electionseason debate over an issue that helped vault him into the Oval Office in 2016. The House is expected to vote this week on a bill pushed by conservatives that may not have enough support to pass, and a compromise measure that the White House has endorsed.
Conway rejected the idea Trump was using the kids as leverage to force Democrats to negotiate on immigration and his long-promised border wall, even after Trump tweeted Saturday: “Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!”
She, too, put the onus on Democrats, saying if they are serious about overhauling the system, “they’ll come together again and try to close these loopholes and get real immigration reform.”
Asked whether the president was willing to end the policy, she said: “The president is ready to get meaningful immigration reform across the board.”
To Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the administration is “using the grief, the tears, the pain of these kids as mortar to build our wall. And it’s an effort to extort a bill to their liking in the Congress.”
Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., said Trump “could pick up the phone and stop it today.”
The House proposals face broad opposition from Democrats, and even if a bill does pass, the closely divided Senate seems unlikely to go along.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who helped write the conservative version with Rep. Bob Goodlatte, said he spoke to Trump on Saturday and that the president “is fully committed to both of these bills. He’s put the full weight of his office behind it.”
Trump’s former chief strategist said Republicans would face steep consequences for pushing the compromise bill because it provides a path to citizenship for “Dreamer” immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.