Melania Trump says she 'hates to see' families separated at border

US First Lady Melania Trump has censured her husband’s administration for separating Central American immigrant children from their parents at the border, saying she “hates to see children separated from their families.”

In a rare political intervention, Melania Trump on Sunday weighed in through her spokeswoman on the crackdown launched by the Trump administration against undocumented immigrants and their children entering the United States from the southern border.

"Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform," her communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN.

"She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart,” Grisham added.

Melania Trump, who has made helping children the crux of her official "Be Best" platform as first lady, has yet to discuss the state of families and immigration.

On Friday, President Donald Trump falsely defended his administration’s policy of separating undocumented families at the US-Mexico border by blaming Democratic Party lawmakers in Congress.

“I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law,” he said while speaking to a group of reporters outside the White House.

However, no US law mandates separating children from their parents who illegally enter the country. Reporters repeatedly noted to Trump that his statement about the policy was untrue.

“[Attorney General Jeff Sessions is] following laws, very simply, that were given to us and forced upon us by the Democrats,” Trump said.

Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from parents over a period of about six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The number is a dramatic uptick from the nearly 1,800 family separations from October 2016 through February 2018.

Currently, there are over 10,000 children being detained in the United States.

The Trump administration's current policy of separating families was announced April 6 and went into effect in May. Previously, people who entered the country illegally and had no criminal record were detained or referred for deportation, and mothers and children usually remained together.

Democrats have condemned the new process, calling it inhumane and cruel. “This is not a zero-tolerance policy — this is a zero-humanity policy,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, who recently visited detention centers in Texas to see where immigrant children were being held.

A US border patrol official told Reuters children are sometimes separated from the adults they are traveling with if officials suspect the relationship is fraudulent.

Once children are separated, they are treated as unaccompanied minors under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses them in government facilities, puts them in temporary foster care, or releases them to adult sponsors in the United States.

The moves by the government to separate families have been widely decried by the United Nations, medical professionals and a wide swath of US religious leaders.

Trump’s policy of separating children from parents as 'cruel' and 'immoral': Laura Bush

In an op-ed for The Washington Post published on Sunday night, the wife of former President George W. Bush describing President Donald Trump’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy “cruel” and “immoral.”

Laura Bush censured the Trump administration for its "zero tolerance" policy about undocumented immigrants in which numerous families have been separated after crossing the US-Mexico border.

“I live in a border state,” Bush wrote. “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.”

This comes as more disturbing images and accounts from inside the detention centers have emerged. According to some reports, children are being kept in “cages” at some detention faculties after being separated from their parents, who crossed the border with proper documents.

Bush wrote that the makeshift prisons holding kids were “eerily reminiscent” of Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

“Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation,” she wrote. “If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place."

PressTV-Trump defends policy of ripping kids from parents

Trump has defended his controversial policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the southern border.

Bush called for “good people at all levels of government” to resolve this issue.

“In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis?” she wrote. “I, for one, believe we can.”

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