Melania Trump and Laura Bush Have Both Openly Criticized the U.S. Government's Family Separation Policy

In a rare comment on one of her husband's policies, Melania Trump has openly criticized her husband's administration's "zero tolerance" practice at the Mexican border, which has seen nearly 2,000 children separated from their parents since April 19. 

"Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform," her communications director Stephanie Grisham told CNN. "She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart."

On May 7, the administration announced a policy in which people caught trying to cross the border illegally are automatically charged with a federal crime. Before this, families with children who were caught at the border were typically referred to immigration court, but now, because parents are being charged in the legal system, they're separated from their children.

Donald Trump insists these families are being separated because of "bad legislation" passed by Democrats — but the fact is this policy is his, enacted in May, long after he had taken office.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said this policy is meant to deter people from crossing the border illegally. "If you're smuggling a child, we're going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law," Sessions said to Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, per CNN. "If you don't want your child to be separated, then don't bring them across the border illegally." (The Department of Homeland Security's Kirstjen Nielsen, meanwhile, has said there is "no policy" mandating such separations, in direct contradiction to this.)

Between April 19 and May 31, nearly 2,000 children were taken from their parents with no plan or resource for reunification except a hotline number.

These children are being detained in holding facilities, placed in fencing structures that many are calling cages. While not refuting the use of the word "cage," the Department of Homeland Security is "uncomfortable" with that characterization.

U.S. Border Patrol allowed certain media outlets into one facility in McAllen, Texas this weekend, and reporters described it as sterile looking, with floor-to-ceiling chainlink cages with netting at the top. Boys and young men were seen wrapped in foil blankets and there were thin mattresses strewn across the floor.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon also toured the facility, and he said there were far less children there than when he first toured two weeks ago, but he's afraid it wasn't an accurate depiction of what's happening. "I was told that buses full (of children) were taken away before I arrived,"Merkley told CNN. "That was one of my concerns, that essentially, when you have to give lengthy notice, you end up a little bit of a show rather than seeing what's really going on in these centers."

One Honduran woman being detained at McAllen that her baby daughter was taken from her while she was breastfeeding, and she was handcuffed when she tried to resist. Other parents have reported their children were taken by border patrol agents who said they were "going to give them a bath," except they were never returned. And on Monday afternoon, ProPublica published audio taken within a Texas detention facility — in the clip, children are "crying so hard, they can barely breathe." A border patrol official, meanwhile, is heard joking that, "we have an orchestra here."

Former First Lady Laura Bush wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post shortly after Melania Trump released her statement, and sharply criticized the administration for their policy. In the years since her husband has been out of office, she has rarely made statements about policy.

"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," she wrote. "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."

In 2015, Donald Trump told reporters that while he "hated the concept" of internment camps, he wasn't there during WWII, so he couldn't give a "proper answer" as to whether he opposed them or not.

While she was FLOTUS, Bush worked on child and family causes while, and she said what's going on right now at the border is contradictory to everything Americans pride themselves on.

"Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war,"she continued. "We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place."