Mexico has objected to a potential plan under consideration by the US to separate undocumented immigrant minors from their parents in the event that they try to enter the country, according to an official, on Tuesday. At a news conference, Foreign Minister, Luis Videgaray said that families would suffer irreparable damage should such an idea be pursued by the US government.
Videgaray says that Mexico made their concerns immediately clear to the Department of Homeland Security in the event that such a policy came to pass. On Monday, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, John Kelly, said that an initiative to split minors from parents, if apprehended attempting to illegally enter the US, was being weighed by the department.
In a television interview with CNN, Kelly said that he would consider almost any method to deter Central American people from becoming part of the dangerous human smuggling network, which takes undocumented immigrants into the US via Mexico. He added that the Department of Homeland Security has much experience with undocumented minors and that they are handed to the department of Health and Human Services, which places them either with family members already in the US or in foster care.
Kelly is a fervent supporter of the anti-immigration policies favored by President Donald Trump, who swept to victory in last year’s US Presidential election on a platform arguing that job opportunities and wages for American workers were depressed by unskilled, undocumented immigrants.