Trump's 'zero tolerance' immigration policy sparks outrage in Central America

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy — which has separated more than 2,000 children from their parents as they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border — has sparked outrage in the Central American countries that most of the immigrants are fleeing.

In Honduras, La Prensa newspaper featured a political cartoon Thursday with the title "Nation of Immigrants" that showed the Statue of Liberty using her flame to burn an immigrant. A front page story earlier in the week proclaimed "Separation of Families is Cruel and Inhumane."

In El Salvador on Friday, the No. 1 most-viewed story in La Prensa Gráfica was about the Time magazine cover showing President Trump looking down on a crying 2-year-old Honduran girl, with the headline "Welcome to America."

In Guatemala, an editorial in La Hora newspaper denounced the "xenophobia" of the Trump administration.

"Trump has called our people rapists, criminals, drug dealers and gangsters, among other things," an editorial said.

And, in Mexico, the newspaper El Universal said: "The United States treats migrant children as Taliban" — a reference to the Afghan terrorist group.

The presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have all condemned the U.S. policy.

"When a policy...ends up in the separation of the family and in the pain of so many human beings, especially children, not only must it be revised, it must be corrected as soon as possible," Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said on his Facebook page this week.

Immigrants from the three Central American nations have been fleeing their homelands because of the high murder rates and widespread violence by gangs and drug cartels.

Central American leaders generally praised Trump's announcement Wednesday that U.S. officials would no longer separate children from their families, but wanted to know more details about what would happen to the more than 2,000 children already separated from their parents. It's not clear when or if all those children will be reunited with their mothers and fathers.

"El Salvador receives positively the signature of this executive order, but it is important to define the measures that will be applied to promote the reunification of the girls, boys and adolescents who were already separated from their families," the Salvadoran government said in a press release Thursday.

Trump's order to stop separating children from illegal immigrant parents at the southwest border was supposed to bring relief, but it has generated confusion about the fate of the children already separated from their parents.

The children were taken away from their parents after the adults were referred for prosecution on federal misdemeanor charges of entering the U.S. illegally. The separations resulted from a "zero tolerance" policy on illegal immigration that was announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April.

The leading candidate for president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez, said at a campaign rally this week that Trump's policy reversal on family separations was "wise."

"It's good to hear because it was a racist and inhumane measure," he said. "It's always wise to change your mind, especially on humanitarian issues."

WPXI