With thousands of families, many of whom are seeking asylum, detained indefinitely in the United States, Amnesty International called on the Trump administration to end the detainment of migrant children on World Children’s Day. Tuesday marked the sixty-ninth year since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, followed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) just 30 years later, Common Dreams reported.
According to Amnesty International USA, with children making up more than half of the world’s refugees and displaced people, U.S.-based human rights group is ” calling on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release the hundreds of families in prolonged detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas,” Common Dreams reported.
“What the U.S. government is doing is abhorrent,” Margaret Huang, Amnesty International USA executive director said.
Huang wants the Trump administration to “release these families while they pursue their asylum claims.” Many of the asylum seeks are fleeing violence in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
“All children deserve to be safe and protected, to live with their parents and their families, and to have their voices heard,” Huang added. “Instead, this World Children’s Day, children are locked up behind bars in the United States with their families, indefinitely, in fear of what will happen to them next.”
Outrage at the Trump administration’s policy that separated thousands of children from their parents, which led to the reunification of families by a federal judge, the current administration is instead detaining families “despite warnings of the impact on kids,” Common Dreams reported.
“The United States has failed to protect children’s rights,” Huang said, “refusing to do what is best for children while it continues to pursue cruel policies of hate and demonization.”
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