US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen must resign in light of devastating findings in an inspector general report showing the agency was unprepared to implement the Trump administration's family separation immigration policy, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate Dick Durbin said in a press release on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd October, 2018) US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen must resign in light of devastating findings in an inspector general report showing the agency was unprepared to implement the Trump administration's family separation immigration policy, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate Dick Durbin said in a press release on Tuesday.
"This devastating report confirms that the Department of Homeland Security was completely unprepared to implement the Trump Administration's disastrous zero-tolerance policy," Durbin said. "Nielsen signed off on this family separation policy, falsely claimed that the policy did not exist, and then callously failed to address the policy's tragic and inevitable fallout. In light of this devastating report, Nielsen should resign."
The DHS Inspector General's report of the administration's immigration policy, released on Monday, disclosed that some 860 migrant children were detained in temporary holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit permitted by US courts.
One migrant minor was detained in a holding cell for 12 days while another was in a holding cell for 25 days, the DHS report said. The holding cells, which were mostly chain-linked cells, lacked beds and showers, the report said.
The inspector general's office also found a poorly-coordinated interagency process that provided little or no information to migrant parents about the location of their children, the report said.
Durbin in July called on Nielsen to resign for failing to reunify immigrant families and causing a humanitarian crisis on the border.
The separations of migrant minors from parents apprehended when crossing the US border illegally resulted from the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, which ended June 20. As a result of the policy, about 2,600 immigrant children were separated from their parents this spring.
