UN Tells The US to Stop Separating Migrant Children From Parents.
The United Nations (U.N) reacted to the fact that the US government is separating children from their parents since they are suspected of crossing the Southern border illegally. All these children are not allowed to stay with their parents and they can be as young as one year old. The separation of families on the U.S. border is done by the authorities as they arrest parents.
This was claimed as a violation of the rights of children by the U.N. spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani. She says, “The policy led to people caught entering the country irregularly being subjected to criminal prosecution and having their children – including extremely young children – taken away from them as a result.”
“The U.S. should immediately halt this practice. The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life and is a serious violation of the rights of the child. The use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles,” she added.
The U.S. introduced tighter border control with the new administration, to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S. The ”zero tolerance” policy is a process that is quickly put into action and it is meant for all those people who will try to illegally cross the U.S border who the U.S will criminally prosecute them.
These actions and rules led to detentions and arrests of families from the South of America, who were caught in the process of illegally crossing the U.S border. The U.S. claims that there are a lot of people who claim the children as their own just so they can cross the border. These instances exist everywhere, however, some people have genuine facilities.
These happen to families with children with them as it was reported that only in the past 5 weeks, there were close to 1,000 children taken away and separated from their families. The report comes from the Deputy Director of The American Civil Liberties Union, Lee Gelernt.
We can see different numbers in this recourse, as the New York Times wrote in April that in the past 6 months, the U.S. has taken close to 700 children from the people claiming to be their parents.
Either way, experts stated the fact that no law in the U.S. makes it a requirement to separate children from their families. The U.N. spokeswoman continued saying “Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation”. She called on Washington to “adopt non-custodial alternatives that allow children to remain with their families”.
Many of the families in question have gone to legal U.S. ports of entry seeking asylum, despite the administration’s characterization of these border crossings as illegal. This is a completely legal way and the U.S. allows people to go to its border and ask for asylum. Even though these families are not trying to cross the border illegally, the U.S. is still detaining them and treating them as criminals.
President Trump also made a statement regarding the news. His tweet did not address the practice, but he blamed it on his opposition stating that separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can’t get their act together.
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N, Nikki R. Haley, even though the U.N has given out a statement, Haley showed his disagreement with it, calling the U.N hypocritical. He said that the U.N. continues to violate human rights in its own member countries and that the U.S. leads the world with its actions, like providing more humanitarian assistance to global conflicts than any other nation.
He also added that neither the United Nations nor anyone else dictates how the United States upholds its borders.
The A.C.L.U has already filed a class-action lawsuit in San Diego federal court, despite all these statements and calls for the reunification of separated families.
The U.S. has been criticized for this measure as well as all other immigration restrictions. Some considerable changes to the immigration rules have been made by the new administration, starting with tightening H-1B visa rules, terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for many of the countries, and even planning an increase in the foreign student visa fees.
