OAS calls on Trump to end child separations at border
Resolution not a rebuke, official says, but calls for reunification, inspection
WASHINGTON — The Organization of American States overwhelmingly approved a resolution Friday calling for the U.S. to abandon child separation policies at the border that critics say violate internationally recognized human rights.
The resolution, brought by a group of Latin American countries led by Mexico, could lead to an OAS inspection commission going to Texas and other border states that have seen a wave of child and family immigrants crossing the frontier illegally.
“This is an inhumane and cruel policy, and it violates the human rights of the most vulnerable people,” said Jorge Lomonaco, Mexico’s representative to the OAS. “Adopting the resolution, therefore, is what is just and what is correct both legally and morally.”
Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, did not oppose the resolution, which was approved by consensus among the organization’s 34 voting nations.
Trujillo noted President Donald Trump’s June 20 order ending the family separations and maintained that the Department
of Health and Human Services is working to reunify immigrant families with their children.
While saying the U.S. “will continue to exercise its own sovereign authority over its immigration policy,” Trujillo said U.S. immigration officials are open to OAS border inspections, as they have been in the past.
International reactions
The OAS resolution is one of several petitions that have been filed with international bodies in response to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all adults who cross the border illegally, which has resulted in the forced separation of more than 2,000 children.
Similar petitions have been made to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council and its High Commission on Refugees.
The OAS resolution was brought by Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the countries that account for the bulk of the immigrants found crossing the southwest border illegally, many of them in Texas. A draft presented to the permanent council of the OAS was based on the reports of monitors from those and other Latin American countries that have raised alarms over the separation of immigrant families making the trek to the U.S. border.
Lomonaco emphasized that the resolution was not intended as a rebuke to the U.S.
“This resolution does not seek to condemn any country, much less a country that has a democratic society that is so diverse and pluralistic and has experienced serious disagreements internally,” he said.
The OAS action comes as the Trump administration, responding to a public outcry and internafamilies tional condemnation, has backed off the practice of separating families at the border. But many of the children detained in the past month remain in federal custody, and the administration and Congress are still looking for legislative and judicial remedies to hold together in detention.
The OAS proposal urges the U.S. to formally end the practice of family separations at the border and begin immediate reunification of the families. It also asks that the OAS’s quasi-judicial Inter-American Commission on Human Rights send observers to the border to document the “consequences” of the U.S. enforcement measures on the border for a possible injunction.
Protecting human rights
“This is part of their mandate,” Lomonaco said, “to protect human rights in this region. We are dealing with an issue that has caused a lot of concern around the world.”
Though IACHR injunctions are nonbinding, they are intended to create international diplomatic pressure.
The commission has received similar request from the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Women’s Refugee Commission, the University of Texas Law School’s Immigration Clinic and the Garcia & Garcia law firm in McAllen.
That complaint was filed May 31 on behalf of five immigrant parents who had not been able to find their children after they had been taken into U.S. custody.