US mayors demand migrant children be reunited with families

TORNILLO, United States: A bipartisan group of American mayors rallied outside a migrant children’s shelter in Texas Thursday to denounce a lack of transparency in the family separation crisis at the Mexican border — and demand that thousands of children be swiftly reunited with their parents.

New York’s Bill de Blasio and Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti were among several dozen mayors from across the United States who gathered at the border port of Tornillo, a day after President Donald Trump bowed to a growing firestorm and moved to stop splitting migrant families.

The fate of more 2,300 children already parted from their parents and guardians has been left hanging despite the executive order.

“The families are not reunified, we don’t know when they’ll be, we’re gonna fight for that,” said De Blasio — who a day earlier declared himself ‘shocked to learn’ that a single center in Harlem had received 239 separated children without the knowledge of city authorities.

“Think how broken that is that our government didn’t even tell us that was happening,” De Blasio told the gathering in Tornillo.

Steve Benjamin, the Democratic mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, doubled down.

“The nation’s mayors are here to call attention to a shameful condition and... to call on the administration to reunite as quickly as possible the thousands of children who have been separated from their parents.”

The mayors joined in accusing federal authorities of providing little to no information about children sent to their cities — or how and when they will be reunited with their families. — AFP