Thread by @ajplus

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen says she won’t apologize for enforcing the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border.

11,432 children are currently being held in U.S. custody.

Former First Lady Laura Bush called the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance" policy, which separates families when they cross the border illegally, "cruel" and "immoral."

Read: wapo.st/2MCKnMn

Up to 200 children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border are being held in cages in a warehouse in McAllen, Texas. They are using large sheets of foil as blankets.

Border Patrol separated 700+ children from their parents between October 2017 and April 2018, according to government data seen by @nytimes.

More then 100 of those children are under 4.

The Trump administration has repeatedly referred to a "law" that forces Border Patrol to separate children from their parents when families cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

There is no such law.

The head of the UN’s Human Rights Council condemned the Trump administration for separating hundreds of families at the U.S.-Mexico border:

"The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

The policy separating families at the border is "needless and cruel" and could cause long-lasting emotional trauma and developmental problems for the 11,000+ kids affected.

Read the American Psychological Association’s open letter to President Trump: bit.ly/2ylUgeo

"Government-sanctioned child abuse."

That’s what the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics told @CNN about her visit to an immigration detention facility, where toddlers are being kept from their parents.

The GOP governor of Massachusetts reversed a decision to deploy the state’s National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border, in protest of the family separation policy which he called “cruel and inhumane.”

Up to 200 children separated from their parents at the border are being held in a new "tent city" in Tornillo, Texas:

"We must speak the truth. There is no law that says the Administration has to rip children from their families."

— Senator Kamala Harris just asked Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen to resign.

"That is an outright lie."

Hillary Clinton called out the Trump administration’s claims that family separations at the border are mandated by law: "Every human being with a sense of compassion and decency should be outraged."

The governor of Colorado signed an executive order to block state resources from being used to separate families at the U.S.-Mexico border:

"Intentionally separating children from their families is cruel and un-American."

Listen: Children in a U.S. detention facility cry for their parents while Border Patrol agents joke: "We have an orchestra here."
(via @ProPublica)
propublica.org/article/childr…