Former Vice President Joe Biden issued a statement Wednesday afternoon ripping President Trump’s immigration policies as “unconscionable” and “abhorrent.”
“America is better than this,” Mr. Biden wrote in a statement posted to Facebook. “What we are seeing at our border right now — children only a few months old being pulled from their mothers’ arms, toddlers distraught and wailing for their parents, children being separated from their parents with no idea if they will ever see them again — is fundamentally at odds with everything this nation stands for and believes.
“A policy that separates young children from their parents isn’t a ’deterrent.’ It’s unconscionable,” he continued. “A policy that traumatizes children isn’t a bargaining chip. It’s abhorrent. And a President and an administration that continues this policy isn’t protecting our border and our people. It threatens to make us a pariah in the world.”
Voices both on the right and left have criticized President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy on the U.S. southern border — which has resulted in migrant children being taken from their parents — as cruel and akin to child abuse. Mr. Trump said Wednesday that he was preparing to sign an executive order that would temporarily halt the separating of families at the border. He has called on Congress to come up with a permanent fix.
Mr. Biden said the problem isn’t with the border but with the countries that the migrants are fleeing.
“Addressing the root causes of migration, as our administration did by pushing Central American governments to undertake ambitious political reforms and going after criminal groups responsible for the smuggling of drugs and people, is the only way to reduce the flows of migrants fleeing to the United States in search of a better life,” he wrote. “It is hard. It is not simple. There is no easy or quick fix. And unfortunately, the current administration has cut back on the very tools needed to get the job done.
“This President could end the practice of separating families right now if he wanted to — and he should,” Mr. Biden wrote. “It’s our duty to demand that he do so. Stand up. Show up. Speak out. No one, not even a President, can change who we are as America and what we stand for — if we the people stand united and unleash all that power that is in our hands. We must remind this Administration of the core values that beat in the heart of this country. We must send the clearest possible signal to the rest of the world that America still represents the best of humanity — not the worst.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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