Democrats, activists rally against
Trump's family separation policy
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[June 18, 2018]
By Joseph Ax
ELIZABETH, N.J. (Reuters) - Democratic
lawmakers joined protesters outside immigration detention facilities in
New Jersey and Texas on Sunday for Father's Day demonstrations against
the Trump administration's practice of separating children from their
parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"This must not be who we are as a nation," said Representative Jerrold
Nadler, one of seven members of Congress from New York and New Jersey
who met with five detainees inside a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
including three who said they had young relatives removed from their
care after seeking asylum at the border.
The events came as news stories highlighting the family separations
intensified political pressure on the White House, even from some of
President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans.
U.S. officials said on Friday that nearly 2,000 children were separated
from adults at the border between mid-April and the end of May.

In May, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a "zero tolerance"
policy in which all those apprehended entering the United States
illegally, including those seeking asylum, would be criminally charged,
which generally leads to children being separated from their parents.
Administration officials have defended the tactic as necessary to secure
the border and suggested it would act as a deterrent to illegal
immigration.
But the policy has drawn condemnation from medical professionals,
religious leaders and immigration activists, who warn that some children
could suffer lasting psychological trauma. The children are held in
government facilities, released to adult sponsors or placed in temporary
foster care.
In South Texas on Sunday, several Democratic lawmakers, including
Senator Jeff Merkley, visited a Border Patrol Processing Center in
McAllen to call attention to the policy, while Representative Beto
O'Rourke, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, led a protest
march to a temporary detention facility for immigrant children set up
near El Paso.
O'Rourke told the demonstrators they had to bear the burden of "what we
now know to be happening."
"I want that burden to be so uncomfortable for so many of us that it
forces us to act, it places the public pressure on those in positions of
public trust and power to do the right thing for our country," O'Rourke,
who is seeking to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz, said to applause.
Some moderate Republicans have also called on Trump to stop the
separations. Senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake wrote to White House
officials on Saturday seeking more information on the policy.
"It is inconsistent with our American values to separate these children
from their parents," Collins said on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
'STOP LYING'
Trump has sought to blame Democrats, saying their support for passage of
a broader immigration bill would end the separations.
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People participate in a protest against a recent U.S. immigration
policy of separating children from their families when they enter
the United States as undocumented immigrants, outside the Tornillo
Tranit Centre, in Tornillo, Texas, U.S. June 17, 2018.
REUTERS/Monica Lozano

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on NBC's "Meet the Press"
on Sunday: "As a mother, as a Catholic, as somebody who has got a
conscience. ... I will tell you that nobody likes this policy."
"You saw the president (say) on camera that he wants this to end,"
she added.
A spokeswoman for Melania Trump told CNN on Sunday that the first
lady "hates to see children separated from their families" and hopes
lawmakers from both parties can agree on immigration reform.
In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, former first lady Laura
Bush, wife of the previous Republican president, George W. Bush,
said she lives in a border state and appreciates the need to enforce
and protect the U.S. borders.
"But this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it
breaks my heart," Bush wrote, adding the images were "eerily
reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War
II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in
U.S. history."
Democrats have accused the president of effectively turning the
children into political hostages to secure stricter immigration
measures, such as funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
"Stop lying to the American people. This is your policy," Democratic
U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries said in New Jersey.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will introduce
legislation this week aimed at stopping separations, mirroring a
similar Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Dianne Feinstein. But
neither bill has much hope of securing enough support in the
Republican-controlled Congress, let alone surviving Trump's veto
pen.
Roy Garcia, 43, attended the New Jersey protest with his wife,
Linda, and their sons, 8-year-old Julian and 11-year-old Sebastian.
"It's hard for me to enjoy Father's Day knowing what's happening to
other children and families," he said. "It's heartbreaking."
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir
and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis and
Peter Cooney)
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