Trump keeps Immigrant Families Together by signing Executive Order
- On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump ordered an end to the separation of migrant children from their parents on the US border.
- Trump reverses a tough policy of harsh practice that drew scorn, saying ‘it’s about keeping families together’.
- Over 2,300 children were stripped from their parents and adult relatives after illegally crossing the border since May 5, and placed in tent camps.
- British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Council of Europe and Pope Francis all took issue with the “zero tolerance” policy.
- A pediatrician said, “We were outside, and you could hear voices of children that appeared to be playing or laughing. But when they opened the door, we saw around 20 to 30 10-year-old boys in one of these chain-link enclosures, and they were crying and screaming and asking for their mothers.”
- For weeks, Trump had insisted he was bound by the law to split the children from their parents and that only Congress could resolve the problem, later the scenario changed.
- The Department of Defence was ordered to allow any available facilities to be used for housing illegal immigrants, and, if necessary, to build new facilities for them.
- Trump says, “We still have to maintain toughness, or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don’t stand for and we don’t want.”
- The family units will be held by DHS for court trial, but Trump’s order also says that, “to the extent practicable”, cases involving families will be prioritized.
