In the past few days, U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy of forcibly separating children from parents seeking asylum, has developed into a political crisis; heartbreaking images and recordings of crying migrant children separated from their parents and swept away into shelters are ricocheting across the world in an uproar of disbelief and dismay.
The children’s shelters have dominated the US news for days, creating heated political debates from Capitol Hill to the White House to US media outlets.
Although on Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order scrapping his administration’s practice of separating migrant parents and children at the border, there was no relief for the 2300 children who have already been removed under the administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ border enforcement policy.
According to child care agencies, the children placed in children’s shelters since President Trump announced his policy of separating children from family members, have no known date for when they will be reunited with their parents.
Parents interviewed by the US media said they still did not know how to track down their children, and struggled to find any information through a toll free hotline set up by the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Others who had managed to locate their children said they remain separated by thousands of miles and a bureaucratic maze they do not understand.
The ‘zero tolerance’ policy has created a political crisis for Trump which led to his wife Melania Trump visiting a children’s shelter in McAllen, Texas, for a publicly unannounced visit to get a first hand look at the crisis affecting migrating families at the US Border.
The first lady’s spokesperson Stephanie Grisham told the US media ‘she wanted to see what’s real.’
The crisis has created clashes among US government officials over how to carry out President Trump’s executive order on keeping together immigrant families at the Mexican border.
According to the US media outlet Washington Post, the disputes began Thursday when Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, asked White House officials how his agency was supposed to detain parents and children together when the law requires that children not be held indefinitely in jail.
The bureaucratic wrangling threatened to undermine Trump as his administration tries to counter the latest political crisis.
On Friday, the president remained defiant. “We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief,” Trump said on Twitter.
For several weeks, House Republican leaders worked to thread the needle on an immigration bill that might secure the support of their voter base.
However, on Friday, President Trump ended the debate with a single tweet.
“Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November,” Trump tweeted.
Indicating that Friday morning, Trump effectively halted the immigration debate in Congress until November.