Separating families only way to end illegal migration, says Trump
Washington, June 20 : US President Donald Trump has defended his policy of splitting up families entering the US illegally, defying a growing chorus of condemnation.
Speaking at a business convention, Trump said children have to be taken away if their parents are jailed for illegally crossing the US border.
The President had earlier sparked outrage for tweeting that undocumented immigrants would "infest" the US.
Mexico's Foreign Minister has called the US policy "cruel and inhuman".
"I don't want children taken away from parents," Trump said on Tuesday during a speech at a National Federation of Independent Businesses event in Washington DC, reported BBC.
But he added: "When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally - which should happen - you have to take the children away."
He also claimed that separating families was "the only solution" to end illegal immigration, even as he noted that he does not support the practice.
Trump said he wanted to "end the border crisis" by giving border officials the resources to "detain and remove illegal immigrant families altogether".
US immigration officials say 2,342 children have been separated from 2,206 parents from May 5 to June 9.
Trump has blamed "Democrat-supported loopholes" in federal law for the family separations, but critics of the policy say the recent spike is due to the enforcement of US Attorney General Jeff Sessions' "zero tolerance" approach.
Sessions has rejected claims that US holding centres for child migrants separated from parents are like Nazi concentration camps.
America's top law official told Fox News the "zero tolerance" policy was about enforcing border security.
Trump is meeting Republican lawmakers later to discuss a bill that proposes to curb the policy.
Sessions was asked on Fox News about a tweet by former CIA Director Michael Hayden likening what happened at Auschwitz concentration camp, where millions of Jews and other minorities were killed, to the separation of undocumented immigrant families at the US border.
"Well, it's a real exaggeration, of course," the Department of Justice chief said in Monday night's interview. "In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country."
Sessions said: "Fundamentally, we are enforcing the law. Hopefully people will get the message and not break across the border unlawfully."
In a remark that provoked criticism, Fox News host Laura Ingraham said the detention centres were "essentially summer camps" for migrant children.
It is not the first historical analogy inspired by the policy - former US First Lady Laura Bush has compared it to the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
Trump tweeted on Tuesday that immigrants threatened "to pour into and infest our Country", triggering further outrage.
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Nitish likely to resign as Bihar CM after last meeting of cabinet on April 14
Patna (PTI): Bihar inched towards a political transition on Sunday with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar convening a meeting of his cabinet on April 14, following which the JD(U) president is likely to relinquish the post to make way for a BJP-led government.
According to a notification issued by the cabinet secretariat department, the meeting will take place at 11 am, after which the longest-serving CM of the state, who got elected to the Rajya Sabha last week, was expected to submit his resignation to Governor Syed Ata Hasnain.
Earlier, Kumar's close aide and JD(U) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha had told reporters that the process of formation of a new government was likely to "roll out after April 13".
Meanwhile, the BJP, which has been approaching the prospect of having its first- ever chief minister in the state with considerable restraint, got down to business and named Shivraj Singh Chouhan as a "central observer", who would oversee the change of guard.
A statement issued by the BJP headquarters in Delhi said the parliamentary board has appointed Chouhan, a Union minister and a multiple-term former CM of Madhya Pradesh, as “central observer for electing the leader of legislature party in Bihar”.
Senior JD(U) leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, had said here earlier in the day "the new chief minister will be elected by the NDA, upon the recommendation of the BJP, which has a big role to play".
Speculations are doing the rounds that Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, who holds the crucial Home portfolio in the outgoing government, is the frontrunner among contenders for the top job.
BJP leaders in the state, who have been making frantic visits to Delhi in the recent past, are keeping their cards close to the chest.
"Who will be the next CM is a decision to be taken by our central leadership," minister Dilip Jaiswal, who is a former state BJP president, had said a day ago, adding, "I am not at all in the race".
Other than Choudhary, who had joined the BJP less than a decade ago, those whose names are doing the rounds include Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai and state ministers Lakhendra Paswan and Shreyasi Singh.
According to BJP sources, all these leaders fit the bill in different ways. Choudhary is a ‘Koeri’, and his elevation could ensure that the ‘Luv Kush’ (Kurmi Koeri) equation nurtured by Kumar during his 20-year-rule remained intact in favour of the NDA, after the JD(U) supremo's departure.
Rai is a Yadav and brings the promise of support of the largest caste group in Bihar, which has been with Lalu Prasad's RJD, the BJP's principal rival in the state, for decades.
Paswan is a Dalit and his elevation could help the BJP transcend its "pro-upper caste" image, which brings its own disadvantages in the Hindi heartland, where the Mandal agitation of the 1990s has cast a long shadow, the sources said.
Singh, in her 30s, is an upper caste Rajput, but her elevation could be projected as the party giving preference to young blood.
Moreover, the party has also been trying to present itself as a champion of gender equality, by pushing through the ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’ that ensures 33 per cent reservation to women in both Houses of Parliament.
However, the BJP sources admitted that there was a strong possibility of the central leadership springing a "surprise", citing examples of many states ruled by the party, where less fancied leaders have landed the top job in the recent past.
Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, a Trinamool Congress MP who spent nearly three decades in the BJP, had said, while commenting on the political situation in Bihar that "we have plenty of deserving people here but we must be beware of a baba who may arrive with a parchi".
The allusion was to Rajasthan, where Bhajan Lal Sharma was named the chief minister two years ago at a legislature party meeting, where Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was seen on camera taking out a piece of paper with the name of the first-term MLA written on it.
