US House to vote on Thursday on immigration bills

Donald Trump will sign an executive order later today to stop immigrant families being split up at the US-Mexico border.

The policy had led to a spike in family separations in recent weeks, with more than 2,300 minors were separated from their families at the border from May 5 through June 9, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Republican senators have urged US President Donald Trump to end his “zero tolerance” policy.

Even some of the president’s biggest Republican supporters said they disagree with his policy.

“Whether our families crossed the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we’re only here because this country welcomed them in…” he said.

Trump blamed the past administrations of George W Bush and Barack Obama for not doing more to resolve the problem on their watch.

As of mid-June, the three centres were almost full, meaning ICE would potentially need to place children in its much larger network of immigration jails for adults. “We do not want children taken away from their parents”, he said.

Attorneys and advocates say that some children whose parents seek asylum are in fact being separated at ports of entry and that they’re hard to track down.

Instead, the children could be detained with their parents for extended periods.

Meanwhile, Democrats spent Wednesday morning calling on Trump and congressional Republicans to end the policy in speeches on the House floor.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said Americans were “standing up for children, standing up for those who are in need”.

A Pentagon memo to members of Congress, obtained by The Associated Press, said it has been asked to have the facilities available as early as July, through the end of the year.

“We have specialized facilities that are devoted to providing care to children with special needs and tender age children as we define as under 13 would fall into that category”, he said.

Governors from at least eight US states – including two Republicans – have reversed their decision to send National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border.

Under previous presidents, families of immigrants crossing the border without official paperwork tended to be issued with summonses for court, rather than be detained and split up.

But he added that the policy “continues to be a zero tolerance …”

The Flores settlement, named for a teenage girl who brought the case in the 1980s, requires the government to release children from custody and to their parents, adult relatives or other caretakers, in order of preference.

The House is expected to vote Thursday on the pair of immigration proposals. The government says that only happens when immigrants can not prove family relationship or when there is evidence children have been abused. “We know this is a problem that was manufactured six weeks ago, and we’re seeing the bad results today”.

A growing chorus of critics – including some Republicans – have noted that the Trump administration implemented the policy unilaterally and could rescind it with the stroke of a pen.

House Republicans were reportedly working on a revised plan that would mean children would be detained for longer than is now allowed but kept with their parents, the Associated Press reports.

But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer signalled no such support would be coming, saying it was already in Mr Trump’s power to keep the families together.

“He didn’t really tell us what bill to vote for”, Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Washington Post reporters outside that meeting. Mexican families, although smaller in numbers, are usually immediately deported because their country is so close to the U.S.

Alicia Lieberman, who runs the Early Trauma Treatment Network at University of California, San Francisco, said decades of study show early separations can cause permanent emotional damage.

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