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The separations were roundly condemned — including by all four living former first ladies — as cruel, inhumane and un-American. Administration officials rejected former first lady Laura Bush’s comparison of the detention centers to Japanese internment camps uncategorized in World War II.
The White House said that people killed by illegal immigrants were the true victims because they were “permanently” separated from their family members, even listing crimes in a document that Trump aides shared with allies.
Though the administration has tried to present a public picture of steely resolve — vowing not to apologize for enforcing the law, as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday — senior officials have disagreed behind the scenes about the merits and morality of separating children from their parents.
“Parents who entered illegally are, by definition, criminals,” Nielsen told reporters during an unusually contentious White House press briefing. “By entering our country illegally, often in dangerous circumstances, illegal immigrants have put their children at risk.”
Nielsen maintained that her agency was merely enforcing existing law and said it was up to Congress to change the policy. “It is the beginning of the unraveling of democracy when the body who makes the laws, instead of changing them, tells the enforcement body not to enforce the law,” she said.
But many lawmakers disagreed with that assessment. https://www.toppersnotes.com/product-category/uncategorized/
“The White House can fix it if they want to,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that.”
