Donald Trump has issued a new executive order reversing his policy of taking children from illegal immigrants and holding them in detention centres.
The executive order promises to “keep families together” after days of international outrage over the treatment of undocumented children arriving in the US.
It was “a dramatic turnaround for Trump, who has been lying in saying that his administration had no choice but to separate families apprehended at the border because of federal law and a court decision”, says Fairfax Media.
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He reportedly made the decision after he was shown photographs of some of the detained children.
“It’s about keeping families together while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border, and border security will be equal if not greater than previously,” Trump said. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
However, the order does not appear to address the fate of the reported 2,342 children separated from their families between 5 May and 9 June.
Babies and other young children are being housed in three “tender age” shelters, where lawyers and medics who have visited the facilities saw “playrooms full of crying preschool children”, The Guardian reports.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in April that the Trump administration would be enacting a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigrants, under which they would be jailed and prosecuted.
“As children cannot legally be jailed with their parents, they are kept in separate facilities,” says the BBC.
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