BROWNSVILLE: An audio recording that appears to capture the heartbreaking voices of small Spanish-speaking children crying out for their parents at a US immigration facility took centre stage in the growing uproar over the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents.

“Papa! Papa!” one child is heard weeping in the audio file that was first reported on Monday by the nonprofit ProPublica and later provided to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Human rights attorney Jennifer Harbury said she received the tape from a whistleblower and told ProPublica it was recorded in the last week. She did not provide details about where exactly it was recorded.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said she had not heard the audio but said children taken into custody by the government are being treated humanely. She said the government has high standards for detention centres and the children are well cared for and stressed that Congress needs to plug loopholes in the law so families can stay together.

The audio surfaced as politicians and advocates flocked to the US-Mexico border to visit US immigration detention centres and turn up the pressure on the Trump administration.

And the backlash over the policy widened. The Mormon church said it is “deeply troubled” by the separation of families at the border and urged national leaders to find compassionate solutions. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, reversed a decision to send a National Guard helicopter from his state to the Mexican border to assist in a deployment, citing the administration’s “cruel and inhumane” policy.

Children in cages

Several groups of lawmakers toured a nearby facility in Brownsville, Texas, that houses hundreds of immigrant children.

Democratic Representative Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico said the location was a former hospital converted into living quarters for children, with rooms divided by age group. Another group of lawmakers on Sunday visited an old warehouse in McAllen, Texas, where hundreds of children are being held in cages created by metal fencing. One cage held 20 youngsters. More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility, which is div­ided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children.

Trump defends policy

President Donald Trump on Tue­sday defended the “zero tolerance” policy leading to thousands of migrant families being split on the US border as the only effective way to fight illegal immigration.

“I don’t want children taken away from parents,” he told a gathering of small business owners, before adding: “When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children aw­ay.” “We don’t have to prosecute them, but then we are not prosecuting them for coming in illegally. That’s not good.”

US officials say more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents or guardians since early May, when the administration annou­nced its push to arrest and charge anyone illegally crossing the US-Mexico border, regardless of whether they were seeking asylum. Since children cannot be sent to the facilities where their parents are held, they are separated from them.

But a defiant Trump has vowed America will not become a “migrant camp.” “We don’t want people pouring into our country,” he told Tuesday’s gathering. “We want ultimately a merit-based system where people come in based on merit.” Hammering home the need to combat smugglers who he said “game the system,” Trump accused the media of helping human traffickers.

Trump was headed later to Congress to huddle with Republican lawmakers, many of whom are deeply uncomfortable with the separation policy.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2018