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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Another North Goa nightclub sealed; Kejriwal says corruption led to fire tragedy
Panaji (PTI): As part of a crackdown against tourist establishments violating laws and safety norms in the aftermath of the Arpora fire tragedy, Goa authorities on Saturday sealed a renowned club at Vagator and revoked the fire department NOC of another club.
Cafe CO2 Goa, located on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea at Vagator beach in North Goa, was sealed. The move came two days after Goya Club, also in Vagator, was shut down for alleged violations of rules.
Elsewhere, campaigning for local body polls, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said the fire incident at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub at Arpora, which claimed 25 lives on December 6, happened because the BJP government in the state was corrupt.
An inspection of Cafe CO2 Goa by a state government-appointed team revealed that the establishment, with a seating capacity of 250, did not possess a no-objection certificate (NOC) of the Fire and Emergency Services Department. The club, which sits atop Ozrant Cliff, also did not have structural stability, the team found.
The Fire and Emergency Services on Saturday also revoked the NOC issued to Diaz Pool Club and Bar at Anjuna as the fire extinguishers installed in the establishment were found to be inadequate, said divisional fire officer Shripad Gawas.
A notice was issued to Nitin Wadhwa, the partner of the club, he said in the order.
Campaigning at Chimbel village near Panaji in support of his party's Zilla Panchayat election candidate, Aam Aadmi Party leader Kejriwal said the nightclub fire at Arpora happened because of the "corruption of the Pramod Sawant-led state government."
"Why this fire incident happened? I read in the newspapers that the nightclub had no occupancy certificate, no building licence, no excise licence, no construction licence or trade licence. The entire club was illegal but still it was going on," he said.
"How could it go on? Couldn't Pramod Sawant or anyone else see it? I was told that hafta (bribe) was being paid," the former Delhi chief minister said.
A person can not work without bribing officials in the coastal state, Kejriwal said, alleging that officers, MLAs and even ministers are accepting bribes.
