US President Donald Trump on Wednesday ended a scheme that had divided more than 2,000 children, including toddlers, from undocumented parents at the southern US border.
The order will not reverse his administration’s contentious decision to criminally prosecute all adults who illegally enter the US, but whereas children and their parents were previously split up, and held in separate facilities, families will now be detained together “to the extent permitted by law”.
Mr Trump said: “The border’s just as tough but we do want to keep families together.”
According to US government figures more than 2,300 children were separated from parents between 5 May and 9 June. A White House official told ABC News that the First Lady Melania Trump had been pressing her husband behind the scenes for some days to end the policy.
In an interview with Reuters this week Pope Francis said that the anti-immigrant policies of populist governments will not solve the world’s migrants crisis. He gave his full backing to a United States’ bishops’ statement condemning the separation of children from their parents.
“While protecting our borders is important, we can and must do better as a government, and as a society, to find other ways to ensure that safety,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a statement at the opening of the bishops’ spring meeting. “Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.”
Bishop Edward Weisenburger, the newly installed bishop of the border diocese of Tucson, Arizona, asked if it was time to contemplate “canonical penalties” for border control agents who participate in “immoral” activities. Newark’s Cardinal Joseph Tobin told the meeting that he saw the new policies as examples of America’s “hardening of heart” and suggested the bishops send a delegation of their own members to the border “as a sign of our pastoral response and protest against what is being done to children.”
In a 14 June address to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the practice of separating families is consistent with the teachings of the Bible because “persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order”.
The following day, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan said during CNN's “Cuomo Prime Time with Chris Cuomo” that while he appreciated Mr Sessions quoting the Bible, the quote he used was not the best. “For one, St Paul always says we should obey the law of the government if that law is in conformity with the Lord’s law, all right? No pun intended but God’s law trumps man’s law, all right?” he said.
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