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SPLC statement on DHS policy that would separate immigrant children from their parents

The Trump administration’s decision to separate children from their parents at the border is heartless, cruel, and will traumatize young people.

It promotes an anti-immigrant agenda at the expense of families and common decency.

The administration’s policy to prosecute every undocumented person who crosses the border will not only splinter families, but will also punish vulnerable people who are seeking asylum and force them into federal prisons.  

Many families seeking safety in the United States are fleeing from violence and persecution. They make the dangerous trek to the southern border because they feel they have no other choice, not because they want to do so. Criminally charging them for seeking refuge in our country is a needless and heartless expansion of our nation’s mass incarceration problem, not a solution to the conditions that force people to flee.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ comments about a “massive influx of illegal aliens” and his “zero-tolerance” policy are not surprising given his longstanding and extensive ties to both anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim extremist groups.

The parents and children Sessions demonizes have already been torn from their homes, and now the Trump administration wants to rip their families apart, too.