US government says it will detain migrant children with parents

Rep. Maxine Waters delivered a strong speech in front of the large crowd of tens of thousands, calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment and responding to the death threats made against her. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) Migrant children taken from their parents will suffer lifelong trauma, Harris said.

Loudspeakers broadcast the cries of a child split from relatives, as a Brazilian mother told of being separated from her own son.

Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, welcomed interest in the immigration system and said only Congress has the power to change the law.

Carlos Espina, 19, wears a thermal blanket given to him by asylum seeker at a church where he volunteers, during a protest march in downtown El Paso, Texas, U.S. Photo by Reuters /Julio-César Chávez.

The issue of the child separations is different. Now, families who cross illegally are detained together.

Administration officials have offered different explanations for how the policy would be being implemented, and how and when all approximately 2,300 children would be reunited with parents.

Trump has backed away from family separations amid bipartisan and global uproar.

There, too, protesters gathered on his motorcade route, many of them with signs about immigration policy.

Two weeks ago, after already separating about 2,500 migrant children from their parents at the southern USA border, President Trump caved to public pressure and stopped the widely condemned practice, announcing that revised version of his administration’s “zero tolerance” policy would be to detain migrant families together instead.

“It’s important for this administration to know that these policies that rip apart families – that treat people as less than human, like they’re vermin- are not the way of God, they are not the law of love”, said the Rev. Julie Hoplamazian, an Episcopal priest marching in Brooklyn, whose own grandparents fled to the US during the Armenian genocide.

“The worrisome thing for me is, these children, they are going to grow up and they’re going to hate the USA for this”. In this process, officers would ask if the migrants were afraid for their lives should they be returned to their country of origin.

“Abolish ICE”, read another sign, reflecting growing calls by activists for disbanding the country’s frontline immigration enforcement agency.

How were things different at the border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy?

Starting in early May, in an attempt to staunch the flow of tens of thousands of migrants to the southern United States border every month, Trump ordered the arrest of adults crossing the boundary illegally, including those seeking asylum.

That case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego, challenged the recent government policy of separating families in order to detain parents for as long as necessary under President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

“Those children that they are incarcerating and separating, they are our future generations”. Their ages range anywhere between nine months and 17 years old. At the most generous accounting, a mere 12 percent used the line as intended.

“Honestly, I am blown away”. Some of them had already been returned to their families. However, it’s unclear how and when they’re going to do that. The children are being held all over the country, in refurbished warehouse stores and in foster homes, while their parents await court proceedings.

Protesters, outraged by videos of young children crying after being forcibly separated from their parents, continued arriving at the demonstration in a continuous stream throughout the course of the day.

Have any of these kids ended up in Minnesota?

“In the span of just six weeks, DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) separated almost 2,000 children from their parents”. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall.