Ryan opposes ‘zero-tolerance’ policy of separating children from parents
WASHINGTON » House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he opposes the new Trump administration “zero-tolerance” policy of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents at the border.
Ryan said Congress should address the issue with legislation, and a draft of a compromise immigration bill that circulated on Capitol Hill late Thursday would end the practice of dividing families detained at the border.
But Ryan offered no guarantees that the House will pass a bill that ends a policy that has drawn widespread criticism from lawmakers, human rights groups and U.S. Catholic bishops.
“We don’twant kids to be separated from their parents,” Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters.
Under the policy rolled out in April by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, anyone who crosses into the United States illegallywill face criminal prosecution. In most cases, that means parents who arrive with children stay in federal jails while their children are sent to Department of Health andHuman Services shelters.
The administration’s crackdown on families crossing the border has led to a surge in the number of migrant children held in U. S. government custody without their parents.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., said that asamother of five children and grandmother of nine, the policy was horrendous.
“This is barbaric. This is not what America is. But this is the policy of the Trump administration,” she told reporters.