Trump says US not ‘migrant camp’ amid family separation crisis

President Donald Trump vowed Monday that the United States would not become a “migrant camp,” as he faced soaring pressure to end the separation of immigrant families on America’s southern border.

While top administration officials stood by Trump’s policy of “zero tolerance” towards unauthorized border crossers, and insisted children were being held in humane conditions, criticism swelled from rights groups and within the president’s own Republican Party.

With the US border crisis shaping up as a critical challenge of his presidency, Trump stood defiant even as Democratic lawmakers accused authorities of keeping children in “cages” separate from their incarcerated parents and Amnesty International likened the practice to “torture.”

“The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said at the White House.

“You look at what’s happening in Europe, you look at what’s happening in other places, we can’t allow that to happen to the United States,” he said. “Not on my watch.”

Earlier, Trump barged into an immigration row rocking Europe, where countries have clashed on the issue, saying the continent made a “big mistake” by allowing in migrants.

The US leader has repeatedly stoked fears of migrant-driven crime to advance his anti-immigration agenda.

On the home front, Trump has said he wants family separations to end, but has refused to take responsibility — instead blaming Democrats, the minority party in Congress, for blocking legislation on the broader issue of illegal immigration.

“CHANGE THE LAWS!” Trump bellowed on Twitter.

New Department of Homeland Security data shows that 2,342 children have been separated from their parents or guardians since early May, when the administration said it would arrest and charge all migrants illegally crossing the Mexican border, regardless of whether they were seeking asylum.

Since children cannot be sent to the facilities where their parents are held, they are separated from them.

In heartbreaking audio released by transparency group ProPublica, several Central American children separated from their parents are heard desperately sobbing and wailing, some so hard they almost cannot breathe.

“Mommy! I want to go with dad,” a young girl is heard crying out.

The United Nations slammed the practice as unconscionable, while rights group Amnesty International blasted a “spectacularly cruel” policy which has resulted in frightened children pried from their parent’s arms and taken to overflowing detention centers.

“This is nothing short of torture,” said Amnesty’s Americas director Erika Guevara-Rosas.

US public opinion appears divided along partisan lines on the family separations, with two-thirds of all American voters opposed, but 55 percent of Republicans supporting the policy, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll.

This article has been posted by a News Hour Correspondent. For queries, please contact through [email protected]
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