US President Donald Trump took an U-turn and changed his own policy amid strong protest by American people. There are huge criticism and outcry in America over the way undocumented parents and children have been kept forcibly apart. He said he changed his mind by seeing images of children who have been taken from parents while they are jailed and prosecuted for illegal border-crossing.
But the order does not address families already separated by the policy. US immigration officials say 2,342 children were separated from 2,206 parents between 5 May and 9 June. He stated that he did not like the sight of families being separated but added the administration would continue its “zero tolerance policy” of criminally prosecuting anyone who crosses the border illegally.
Mr Trump’s order says that families could remain together in detention instead of separating children from parents illegally crossing into the country. But immigrant children are only allowed to be held for 20 days, according to a 21-year-old landmark court decision known as the Flores agreement. The order also calls for the Justice Department to request to modify the Flores Agreement to allow children to be held longer, but it is unclear what will happen if the law does not change.
The Trump administration is likely to become tangled in legal battles with immigration activists on behalf of detained children of migrants if it is unable to overturn the Flores Agreement before the 20-day deadline. The order also did not provide any date or timeline on when it would be implemented and does not address how the more than 2,000 children already stripped from their families would be reunited. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar has said his department will begin working to return detained immigrant children to their families, but did not give a timeline.
For quite sometime now US administration officials have insisted they were simply following the law as written and their “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings meant they “have to take the children away”, in the President’s words. Critics have countered that Mr Trump unilaterally created the situation that produced the heart-rending accounts of children separated from their parents, and he could unilaterally fix it.
We are happy that noble American people protested against their President for his brutal and heartless action of keeping the children confined in the country but sending their parents back to their country as illegal immigrants.
President Trump changed half-heartedly his new policy but he remains the President. It is proved that President Trump has not been able to assimilate with the great American people. He still remains an un-American immigrant. Do something about him before he destroys all the human values for which the USA is seen all over the world as great hope for the humanity.
