Recently, a photo has gone viral on social media.
It is actually the migrant children separated from their parents, living in some sort of detention cage with large sheets of foil as blankets.
This image has raised various protests on the issue, both political and otherwise, putting pressure on the US President Donald Trump.
President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday and signed an executive order meant to end the separation of families at the border by detaining parents and children together for an indefinite period.
“We’re going to have strong — very strong — borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
But ending the practice of separating families still faces legal and practical obstacles. A federal judge could refuse to give the Trump administration the authority it wants to hold families in custody for more than 20 days, which is the current limit because of a 1997 court order.
And the president’s order does nothing to address the plight of the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the president’s “zero tolerance” policy. Federal officials initially said those children would not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings.
“There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” said Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Wolfe said the decision about the children was made by the White House.
But later Wednesday evening, Brian Marriott, the senior director of communications for the agency, said that Wolfe had “misspoke” and insisted that “it is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter.” Marriott said that “reunification is always the goal” and that the agency “is working toward that” for the children separated from their families because of Trump’s policy.
His statement left open the possibility, though, that the children could be connected with other family members or “appropriate” sponsors living in the United States, not necessarily the parent they were separated from at the border.
The president signed the executive order days after he said that the only way to end the division of families was through congressional action because “you can’t do it through an executive order.” But he changed his mind after a barrage of criticism from Democrats, activists, members of his own party and even his wife and eldest daughter, who privately told him the policy was wrong.
Stories of children being taken from their parents, audio of wailing toddlers and images of teenagers in cagelike detention facilities had exploded into a full-blown political crisis for Trump and congressional Republicans, who were desperate for a response to those who have called the practice “inhumane,” “cruel” and “evil.”
The president’s four-page order says that officials will continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, but will seek to find or build facilities that can hold families — parents and children together — instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts.
But the action raised new questions that White House officials did not immediately answer. The order does not say where the families would be detained. And it does not say whether children will continue to be separated from their parents while the facilities to hold them are located or built.
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