The United Nations top official for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said Monday that the Trump administration's policy of separating illegal immigrant children from their parents should be halted.
“The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” Mr. al-Hussein said, the New York Times reported.
The Associated Press reports that nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents as the crackdown against immigrants and asylum seekers heats up. Some parents have been deported without their children with no information on how their families will be reunited.
The United Nations high commission on human rights, al-Hussein's voice is adding to a chorus of disapproval from a variety of people, including former first lady Laura Bush, who called the separations of migrant children from their parents "'cruel' and "immoral" in a letter printed in the Washington Post Sunday.
"I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," Bush wrote.
The policy change came on May 7 after the Department of Homeland Security announced that they would refer every person caught crossing the border illegally for federal prosecution, even if immigrants caught at the border have a legitimate claim to asylum.
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