President Donald Trump has defended his administration's "no-tolerance" immigration policy that has led to the separation of immigrant families seeking shelter in the United States, saying that America "will not be a migrant camp" to house the world's immigrants.
"The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility," Mr Trump said Monday during a meeting with his space council in the White House.
The president's defiant comments come amid increased scrutiny of a recent policy change announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which instructs American immigration forces to prosecute undocumented immigrants arriving at the US border illegally to be slapped with criminal charges — even in instances where those arriving immigrants claim credible fear as a qualifier as they seek asylum from dangerous and violent circumstances in their own country.
The concerns around those policies have been heightened recently after it was reported that as many as 2,000 immigrant children were taken away from their parents by immigration officials, and put into shelters that in some cases have been described as cages for the detention of the children. In some cases, immigrants were misled by US officials and told their children were being taken for naps, baths, or a change of clothes before later realising that heir children had been taken without notice.
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