US President Donald Trump’s decision to end amnesty for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the country as children will threaten the lives of thousands of vulnerable families, an analyst in Ohio says.
“It’s become an issue for Donald Trump to persecute children; vulnerable children; in this case hundreds of thousands of children,” said Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today.
“Families are going to be put at risk; these children face very uncertain lives,” Duff told Press TV on Monday.
“The most ignorant and hateful groups” have supported Trump’s decision to end DACA and “persecute children,” Duff added.
Trump said last week that his administration would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an American immigration policy established in June 2012 by the administration of then President Barack Obama.
The program allowed nearly 800,000 young immigrants, often called "Dreamers", to live, study and work in the US.
Trump had promised to get rid of the program during his presidential campaign, though he softened that rhetoric soon after being inaugurated.
The top UN human rights official voiced concern on Monday about Trump’s decision to end DACA, urging the US Congress to give them "durable legal status."
"I am concerned by the government's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said at the opening of the 36th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) in Geneva.
“I hope Congress will now act to provide former DACA beneficiaries with durable legal status. I am disturbed by the increase in detentions and deportations of well-established and law-abiding immigrants,” he said.
Zeid also said the number of detentions of migrants with no criminal convictions was 155 percent higher during the first five months of this year than during the same period of 2016.