UN calls on Trump administration to find alternatives to child detention

"We have said that a child should never be detained in relation to their parents' migration status," UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said in a Geneva briefing.

In reversal, Donald Trump signs executive order to keep families together at border

President Donald Trump holds up the executive order he signed to end family separations, during an event in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 20, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) office in Geneva called on US President Donald Trump’s administration to “overhaul” its migration policies and directed the administration to find alternatives to detention of the children of immigrant parents.

“We have said that a child should never be detained in relation to their parents’ migration status,” UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said in a Geneva briefing.

While, Shamdasani acknowledged the overturning of the earlier law, which separated children from their immigrant parents and placed in different detention facilities, she said, “we understand that the practice now will be to detain a child with the parents.”

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The US military has been directed by Trump’s administration to get ready to house up to 20,000 immigrant children, officials said on Thursday.

Reversing the earlier “zero tolerance policy” on Wednesday, Trump signed on a new executive order on Wednesday which instead of separating children from their parents, detains all as a family unit.

The new order was slammed by Indian-American lawmakers as well, who were of the opinion that the new order fails to fix the immigration problem at all.

Videos and audio recordings of children and adolescents in detention cells did rounds in the online media and caught people’s attention. The immigration law and Trump faced criticism from Democrats as well as fellow Republicans, to which a new executive order was signed by Trump on Wednesday.

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