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The former US First Lady Laura Bush has condemned a controversial policy that splits up families who illegally enter the country.

Writing in the Washington Post, she describes the separation of children from their parents as cruel, immoral and heart-breaking.

Her comments follow growing controversy over President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy.

Earlier Melania Trump made a rare statement expressing concern.

Mrs Trump "hates to see children separated from their families", her spokeswoman said.

She repeated her husband's call for "both sides" to work on immigration reform as a solution. However, fact-checkers point out that the policy was introduced by Mr Trump's attorney general and does not require congressional action to be stopped.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday blamed migrants in Europe for what he inaccurately described as a rise in crime in Germany and for violently changing the culture, adding that what was happening with immigration there presented a similar threats to the United States.

"The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!" Trump, said in a tweet.

Trump's administration is facing strong criticism from rights activists, Democrats and some in his own Republican Party for separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border, a policy aimed at deterring illegal immigration.

Crime has fallen off dramatically in Germany, with the country's internal ministry reporting last month that criminal offenses in Germany totaled 5.76 million in 2017, the lowest number since 1992, leading to the lowest crime rate for the country in more than 30 years.

Merkel's open-door migrant policy is widely blamed for the rise of the right-wing AfD, now the main opposition party in Germany's federal parliament. More than 1.6 million migrants, mostly Muslims fleeing wars in the Middle East, have arrived in Germany since 2014.

President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" policy that separates families at the US-Mexico border was the work of White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller.

The New York Times reported the origin of the controversial policy on Saturday. Miller, a 32-year-old policy specialist, followed the momentum of March's peak in illegal immigration numbers since Trump took office to push the policy.

It's since resulted in nearly 2,000 children separated from their families at the border over six weeks, according to the Associated Press. Photos and stories of infants and young children being ripped from their parents' arms has ignited a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Miller told The Times he supported the policy because it discouraged migrants from crossing the border illegally.

"No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement," he said. "It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law."

Miller has been a rising star on the far right for years, often making headlines because of his polarizing demeanor and statements.

The hard line Miller described echoes how the policy was announced last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a deterrence measure. "If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border," Sessions said.

Officials across the administration have aired their problems with the policy, including counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, who pointed to formal immigration policy reform in Congress as the necessary fix.

"I will tell you that nobody likes this policy," Conway told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd on Sunday. "You saw the president on camera that he wants this to end, but everybody has, Congress has to act."

Trump has also pointed to Democratic lawmakers as responsible for changing "forced family breakup at the Border" and falsely blamed Democrats on Twitter and in front of the press for his own administration's policy.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said earlier this week that executive, not legislative, action is key in ending the "barbaric" policy.

Current and former officials told the Times this discord over the policy is coursing through the administration, despite top officials like Sessions and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly taking hard stances.

Kelly, Trump's former head of Department of Homeland Security, told NPR last month the policy is one "no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long."

Sessions has since doubled down on the policy's groundings, quoting a Bible verse as defense in a speech last week.

If all the developed countries would let in just 3% more immigrants, the world’s poor would have $305 billion more to spend, according to a 2007 study by the World Bank. That’s the combined total of ALL development aid—times three.

Racial segregation limits the mobility of certain persons on the morally arbitrary basis of the color of their skin, and this is done regardless of whether people on the “other side” of the segregation are willing to interact peacefully. A closed border restricts mobility and voluntary, peaceful interaction on the morally arbitrary basis of which side of the border a person happened to be born on.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea.

A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

A Texas sheriff's deputy has been arrested for abusing a four-year-old girl and threatening her undocumented immigrant mother with deportation.

Jose Nunez, 47, had worked as a detention deputy with the Bexar County Sheriff's Department for 10 years.

He was arrested early on Sunday morning after the girl's mother sought help from a local fire department.

The Bexar sheriff called the case "heartbreaking, disturbing, disgusting and infuriating all at the same time".

Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a press conference on Sunday that Mr Nunez had been placed on paid administrative leave pending an internal investigation.

Mr Nunez has been charged with super aggravated sexual assault, a charge applied when the victim is under six years old.

Sheriff Salazar said the suspect is "not worthy to be part of this agency", adding that he took advantage of the mother's immigration status to threaten her to keep quiet about the assaults.

He vowed to immediately "cut [him] out like cancer" from the police force.

Martin Luther King Jr and Open Borders

no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday blamed migrants in Europe for what he inaccurately described as a rise in crime in Germany and for violently changing the culture, adding that what was happening with immigration there presented a similar threats to the United States.

I have always been for open borders. I argued for it on Abuzz even.

Edgar, look, a progressive cause we probably completely agree on!!

We’re a gajillion dollars in debt.

… AND LAURA BUSH in WaPo, “Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’”: “I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.

“These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. ... We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2018/06/18/immigration-separated-families-border-trump-gop-280364