Michelle and Barack Obama have shared a message of solidarity with former First Lady Laura Bush after she penned an op-ed condemning Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama shared Bush’s Washington Post opinion piece that critiqued the separation of migrant families saying: ‘Sometimes truth transcends party.’
Barack retweeted his wife’s sentiment on Monday, shedding light on the thousands of children ripped from their undocumented parents and detained in isolated centers at the US – Mexico border.
The Obamas are speaking out against Donald Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy where children are being separated from their parents at detention facilities
On Monday Michelle shared Former First Lady Laura Bush’s Washington Post op-ed piece where she bashed Trump’s zero tolerance policy as ‘cruel’ and ‘immoral’
Stronger together: She shared the piece saying: ‘Sometimes truth transcends party’ Monday
Bush’s op-ed called Trump’s zero tolerance policy ‘cruel’ and ‘immoral’ as she was shocked, along with millions of Americans, to see images of children torn away from their parents.
‘I live in a border state. 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,’ Bush wrote.
‘Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso,’ she added.
She then said the detention center and tent cities are eerily reminiscent of Japanese American internment camps, which she dubbed ‘one of the most shameful episodes in US history’.
She urged politicians to reunite these separated families.
‘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,’ she said.
Bush’s piece shed light on the thousands of children ripped from their undocumented parents crossing the border. Picture above is a two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker being separated from parents
US Border Patrol agents take into custody a father and son from Honduras near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12 near Mission, Texas
Hillary Clinton also weighed in on the policy. She said on Monday: ‘Every human being with a sense of compassion and decency should be outraged.’
Clinton told an awards luncheon for the Women’s Forum of New York, that the White House’s explanation is ‘an absolute lie.’
The news comes days after the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that 2,000 children have been separated from their parents after crossing the border illegally, according to CNN.
From April 19 to May 31 in 2018 a total of 1,995 minors travelling with 1,940 adults who claimed to be the children’s’ guardians were separated, according to Department of Homeland Security spokesman Jonathan Hoffman.
The Trump administration maintains that adults crossing the border illegally should be charged with federal crimes instead of referring migrants coming with children to immigration courts.
In her article, Bush described the conditions the detained children live in where workers have been instructed to not pick up or touch the children to comfort them.
‘Imagine not being able to pick up a child who is not yet out of diapers,’ she wrote.
Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen defended the administration in a series of tweets on Sunday, claiming that the administration does not have a policy of separating families
Trump has blamed the Democrats for failing to compromise politically for family separations
Heartbreaking photos released Sunday showed inside of a processing center in Texas where nearly a thousand undocumented immigrant boys are detained
Children were seen lying on green mats with foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. This heartbreaking photo shows the children at a Border Patrol processing facility in McAllen, Texas
She also invoked the name and memory of her mother-in-law, former first lady Barbara Bush, who died in April.
In one particularly memorable moment during her tenure almost three decades ago, Barbara Bush spent time with babies who had HIV/AIDS, picking them up and holding them.
‘My mother-in-law never viewed her embrace of that fragile child as courageous. She simply saw it as the right thing to do in a world that can be arbitrary, unkind and even cruel,’ Bush said.
‘She, who after the death of her 3-year-old daughter knew what it was to lose a child, believed that every child is deserving of human kindness, compassion and love,’ she added.
It’s a rare public admonishment of current administration policy from Bush, who has rarely weighed in on politics since her husband left office.