Trump signs executive order to end family separations
Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to “keep families together” amid extraordinary public condemnation over his practice of separating children from their parents at the southern border, the Guardian reports.
“I consider it to be a very important executive order,” Trump said during the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence and the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. “It’s about keeping families together while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border, and border security will be equal if not greater than previously.”
He added: “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
However, the text of the executive order makes clear that a hardline approach to immigration enforcement will continue.
The order instructs government officials to continue its “zero-tolerance” enforcement policy of criminal prosecution for every immigrant who crosses the border illegally, but says that officials will seek to “maintain family unity” by detaining parents and children together instead of separating them while their legal cases wind through a severely backlogged immigration court system.
The language leaves room for exceptions, however, noting that “alien families” would be detained together “where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources”.
The president’s action also directs the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to go to court to ask for a modification to a 1997 court settlement, known as Flores, which currently prohibits the detention of migrant children for more than 20 days.
A successful legal battle could see parents held with their children in detention until proceedings have been completed.
If the court denies the request, the order will almost certainly face legal challenges from immigration activists who represent families that are detained in the facilities.
“They are substituting jailing children with their families for separating children from their parents and that is not any sort of solution to family separation,” said Kate Voigt, an associate director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The zero tolerance policy remains in effect and that is the root of the family separation crisis created by the Trump administration.”
The signing of the order marked a sudden reversal for Trump, who only hours earlier had insisted that the law demanded children be separated from their parents. He claimed that only Congress could resolve that.
On Monday, Nielsen told reporters: “Congress and the courts created this problem, and Congress alone can fix it. Until then, we will enforce every law we have on the books to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States.”
But as television news channels continued to show distressing images of children in detention and a chorus of Republicans called on the president to act, Trump abruptly changed course.
More than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the border since the beginning of May.
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