Trump blames Democrats for family separation

President Trump speaks before the National Federation of Independent Business, June 19, 2018 (Screen capture White House video)

Amid fierce criticism that his "zero-tolerance" enforcement of immigration laws and court rulings enacted under previous administrations amounts to "child abuse" as children are temporarily separated from parents who enter the country illegally, President Trump insisted Tuesday that Democrats are "the problem."

"We must always arrest people coming into our Country illegally. Of the 12,000 children, 10,000 are being sent by their parents on a very dangerous trip, and only 2000 are with their parents, many of whom have tried to enter our Country illegally on numerous occasions," he wrote on Twitter.

In another tweet, Trump charged "Democrats are the problem."

"They don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!"

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As critics circulated images and recordings of crying children being separated from their parents, Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, proposed narrow emergency legislation addressing the issue.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, "We need to fix it."

The Trump administration argues it hasn't changed the rules regarding separation of families. The law required illegal-alien adults in criminal proceedings to be separated from their children under the Obama and Bush administrations as well. But the previous administrations largely chose not to enforce the law against illegal-alien adults with children. Six weeks ago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a "zero tolerance" policy that refers all cases of illegal entry into the country to the Justice Department for prosecution, as the federal law requires.

DHS estimates 2,000 children have been separated from their parents as a result.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday rejected the Republican leaders' legislative proposal, insisting President Trump could quickly fix the problem with a pen.

"There are so many obstacles to legislation, and when the president can do it with his own pen, it makes no sense," Schumer told reporters. "Legislation is not the way to go here when it's so easy for the president to sign it."

A reporter asked Schumer if he would support Republican legislation to keep families together while they seek asylum.

The New York senator said Republicans will try to add "unacceptable additions" that "have bogged down every piece of legislation we've done," repeating that Trump must immediately sign an order.

I just introduced a bill that will allow families to stay together at the border, closing some of the loopholes in our asylum laws. Read more on the bill here -- https://t.co/BRGSO7qnBV pic.twitter.com/Z0YaCiSt9g

— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) June 19, 2018

Clinton: Children kept in cages

Spotlighting the asylum-seeking families, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dispatched a fundraising email Monday asking supporters to donate to her organization, which passes on the funds to groups such as the ACLU and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.

Viral photo of immigration protest in Dallas was falsely claimed to depict illegal alien in federal custody

"What's happening to families at the border right now is horrific: Nursing infants ripped away from their mothers. Parents told their toddlers are being taken to bathe or play, only to realize hours later that they aren’t coming back. Children incarcerated in warehouses and, according to more than one account, kept in cages," Clinton said.

A photo of a crying child in a cage that went viral on the internet, purporting to show an illegal immigrant in a government detention facility. But later it was found to have been taken at a June 10 protest against White House immigration policies at Dallas City Hall.

Clinton wrote in her email: "This is a moral and humanitarian crisis. Everyone of us who has ever held a child in their arms, and every human being with a sense of compassion and decency should be outraged."

She said that when she campaigned for president, she warned that Trump's immigration policies "would result in families being separated, parents being sent away from their children, people rounded up on trains and buses — I hoped it would never come to be.

"But now, as we watch with broken hearts, that’s exactly what’s happening."

'Children are being marched away to showers'

The heated rhetoric over the Trump immigration policy is also exemplified in a New Yorker magazine fact-checker's accusation that a photo of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement forensics analyst shows him with the Nazis' Iron Cross inked on his elbow.

However, ICE said in a statement that military veterans reported the tattoo "looked more like a Maltese cross, a symbol associated with firefighting." The ICE worker said, according to the New York Post, it's a "Titan 2" symbol for the platoon in which he served in Afghanistan.

The Media Research Center blog Newsbusters said "the pundit class have officially snapped over the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policy."

MRC found 22 instances since Friday in which cable news commentators compared the separation of parents and children illegally entering the country to World War II-era war crimes and human rights violations.

The Holocaust was invoked 12 times across CNN and MSNBC between June 15 and the 18, Newsbusters said, generally in the form of comparisons between DHS detention centers and Nazi concentration camps.

There were also six mentions of Japanese-American internment camps and four comparisons to slavery.

On Friday, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough opened "Morning Joe" with a Holocaust reference.

"Children are being marched away to showers," he said, "just like the Nazis said they were taking people to the showers, and then they never came back. You’d think they would use another trick."

'A very cowardly response'

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was hit with passionately delivered questions from reporters at the White House daily briefing Monday.

She was asked how she would respond to Democrat charges that the administration is using illegal immigrant children as "leverage" to force Congress to overhaul the immigration system and build a border wall.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen speaks to reporters at the White House June 18, 2018 (Screenshot White House video)

"I'd say that is a very cowardly response," she said. "It is within their power to make the laws and change the laws, and they should do so."

Another reporter asked Nielsen if she had seen the photos circulating of children in cages and audio clips of children "wailing," which were released Monday.

Nielsen said she hadn’t heard the recordings, and in a follow-up was asked if that is the “image of children that you want out there."

"The image I want of this country is of an immigration system secures that our borders and upholds our humanitarian ideals," she replied. "Congress needs to fix it."

She was asked again about the photos and recordings of crying children and asked if they were an intended or unintended consequence of administration policy.

“I think that they reflect the focus of those who post such pictures and narratives," Nielsen said. "The narratives we don’t see are the narratives of the crime, of the opiods, of the smugglers, of people who are killed by gang members. American children who are recruited and then when they lose the drugs they are tased and beaten.

“We don’t have a balanced view of what is happening,” she said.

The border is “being overrun by those who have no right to cross it.”

She urged people who are seeking asylum go to a port of entry, where they can go through the proper application process.

“You do not need to break the laws of the United States to seek asylum,” she said, while acknowledging some seeking asylum may have to wait to enter the U.S. because the government lacks the resources to handle everyone.

A reporter noted former first lady Laura Bush compared the separation of the illegal-alien families to the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, and current first lady Melania Trump also has expressed concern about the issue.

"Calling attention to this matter is very important," Nielsen said. "This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action. So, I would thank them both for their comments, I would thank them both for their concerns — I share their concerns — but Congress is the one that needs to fix this."

Another reporter asked, how is the family separation "not child abuse"?

"The vast, vast majority of children who are in the care of HHS (Health and Human Services) — 10,000 of the 12,000 now — were sent here alone by their parents. That’s when they were separated,” she said.

“So, somehow we’ve conflated everything. Those are two separate issues. Ten thousand of those currently in custody were sent by their parents, with strangers, to undertake a completely dangerous and deadly travel alone,” said Nielsen.

"We now care for them. We have high standards. We give them meals. We give them medication. We give them medical care. There are videos, there are TVs," she said, noting she has visited the centers herself.

One reporter claimed that the separations began only after the administration launched it’s zero-tolerance policy.

“That’s actually not true,” Nielsen said.

The Obama and Bush administrations separated families, she noted.

“They absolutely did.”

She acknowledged that the separations occurred at a lower rate during previous administrations, but insisted, “This is not new.”