Rights leader assails ‘abuse’

GENEVA — The United Nations’ top human rights official on Monday entered the mounting furor over the Trump administration’s policy of separating unauthorized immigrant children from their parents, calling for an immediate halt to a practice he condemned as abuse.

U.S. immigration authorities have detained almost 2,000 children in the past six weeks, which may cause them irreparable harm with lifelong consequences, said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

He cited an observation by the president of the American Association of Pediatrics that locking the children up separately from their parents constituted “government-sanctioned child abuse.”

“The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” al-Hussein said.

The high commissioner’s office already had condemned the practice of separating children from their parents, calling it a serious violation of children’s rights and international law. That drew an angry rebuke from Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who accused the agency of ignorance and hypocrisy.

Her response illustrated the administration’s deepening impatience with U.N. human rights mechanisms that Haley has accused of “chronic bias” against Israel and of overlooking the abuses of major human rights violators.

President Trump has shown his disdain for the multilateral organizations and agreements that have long been central to world affairs.