A child embraces a woman as people hold signs to protest June 7 against U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to detain children crossing the southern U.S. border and separating families outside of Los Angeles City Hall. (Reuters/Patrick T. Fallon)
Olivia Levesque and Son Ha Tran
President Donald Trump says he plans to sign an executive order intending to keep families together in response to the global outcry against the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The Republicans want security and insist on security for our country, and we will have that. At the same time we have compassion,” Trump said while addressing the media at the White House on Tuesday. “We want to keep families together. It’s very important. I’ll be signing something in a little while.”
Vice President Mike Pence added during the meeting the new legislation aimed to keep families together at the border isn’t intended to be a temporary fix to the “crisis of illegal immigration.”
“We are calling on these lawmakers not just to solve this problem in a way that affirms our commitment to law and order and compassion, but the President’s vision is ‘let’s solve the whole problem. lets build a law lets close the loop,'” Pence said.
This decision comes after weeks of international outcry, in response to the conditions in which migrant children are being detained at the border.
On-air tears and the criticism by the Pope have said it all.
MSNBC reporter Rachel Maddow broke down in tears on air Tuesday night while delivering updates on border-crossing infants and babies being ripped away from their parents and sent to “tender age” shelters.
Rachel Maddow crying on-air tonight, while reading the news about infants in Trump’s concentration camps, was one of the bravest things I’ve seen. Anyone who knocks her for it, to hell with them.
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) June 20, 2018
The Trump administration is reportedly operating three “tender age” detainment facilities, which have received thousands of babies and toddlers until now.
The awkward and emotional moment of Maddow has been backed up by many of her colleagues and people who oppose Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Rachel @Maddow is a brilliant journalist, but this news was too much for her. It’s too much for me too. https://t.co/EoZ4y5bIit
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 20, 2018
The entire nation is crying with Rachel Maddow. How can the United States of America have internment camps designed for babies? What ICE agent has the ability to rip a baby from a mom’s begging, outstretched arms? pic.twitter.com/sf3J3Mglzq
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) June 20, 2018
Pope Francis criticized the family-separating policy in an interview with Reuters, citing it was “populism” and not the solution for the U.S.’s immigration crisis.
An American organization called Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) expressed great concern over the Trump Administration’s policy of family separation. It believes the government is causing even more harm on the children who they are rendering “unaccompanied” by holding them for long periods of time in jail-like facilities administered by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service.
“The Administration is creating a completely unnecessary and damaging crisis as a result of its harsh new policy of taking children away from parents at the U.S. border,” said KIND President Wendy Young in a press release earlier this month.
“Donald Trump has put himself and the United States on trial in front of the whole world,” said Paul Caulford, co-founder and medical director of The Canadian Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Healthcare.
“He’s put the soul of his nation and their democracy on a world stage trial,” he said.
Caulford told Humber News the policy was a serious violation of human rights.
“Trump has chosen a very ghastly and evil way to deal with the situation,” he said. “He literally kidnapped these children, took them hostages.”
Caulford said Trump violated many human rights and neglects human decency.
“This is a form of national and international child abuse, it’s torture,” he said.
Caulford said children ripped away from their families and separated from their home countries are usually the targets of human trafficking and exploitation.
He said children in those detainment facilities are being mentally harmed and it’s extremely concerning.
“The mental harm that’s been done cannot be reversible and this can lead to future suicide,” he said. “It’s just unbearable to watch.”