Harris says White House guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ on border

WASHINGTON — Calif. Sen. Kamala Harris charged that the Trump administration had committed “crimes against humanity” after meeting at a U.S. detention center on Friday with immigrant mothers who had been separated from their children.

Harris became the latest prominent Democrat to travel to the southern border as controversy rages over President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policy. On Wednesday, Trump made a rare retreat, signing an order that he said instructed federal immigration authorities to stop separating children from parents charged with unlawfully crossing the border, a misdemeanor.

The president’s new directive hasn’t resolved the crisis, Harris said after talking to three immigrant mothers who told her their children were taken at the border. More than 2,300 children were in federal custody as of Monday after being taken from caregivers under what the Trump administration calls a “zero-tolerance” policy for border crossings.

“This is outrageous,” Harris told a crowd of several hundred protesters outside the Otay Mesa Detention Facility near San Diego. “This is clearly a crime against humanity that is being committed by the United States government and we have to stop it.”

A White House official said Friday that 500 youngsters had been reunited with their families, but gave no further information and it isn’t clear how many remain in detention centers or foster homes. White House representatives didn’t immediately offer a response to Harris’s criticism.

“They’ve given us no indication of how it’s going to work. That’s part of the problem,” Harris said in an interview after touring Otay Mesa, which is operated by private prison company CoreCivic Inc.

“We can’t let everyone kind of turn the page, like ‘Oh, OK, we’re now bored with this subject, let’s move on to the next,” she said. “It’s still very real for these families. A day in the life of a child who’s not with their parent is a very long day.”

Harris said that inside the detention center she spoke with the three women, from El Salvador and Honduras, who entered the U.S. seeking asylum and had been separated from their children at the border.