Donald Trump has told Republicans he is “1,000%” behind their immigration reform effort, but did not offer a clear path forward as his administration faced bipartisan condemnation over separating children and their parents at the border.
Meanwhile, it emerged that Trump administration officials have been sending babies and young children forcibly taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in south Texas.
Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande valley shelters described playrooms full of crying preschool children.
Kay Bellor, the vice-president for programs at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said: “The thought that they are going to be putting such little kids in an institutional setting? I mean, it is hard for me to even wrap my mind around it. Toddlers are being detained.”
Steven Wagner, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services, said: “We have specialised facilities that are devoted to providing care to children with special needs, and tender age children, as we define as under 13, would fall into that category.
“They’re not government facilities per se, and they have very well-trained clinicians, and those facilities meet state licensing standards for child welfare agencies, and they’re staffed by people who know how to deal with the needs particularly of the younger children.”
At a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill, members said Trump expressed concern for the families being separated by the “zero-tolerance” policy, but he did not take responsibility for the practice. Instead, the president urged the Republicans in the room to pass legislation that keeps families together.
After the meeting, the Florida Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo said: “The president does want this to end.”
Curbelo, who has led the charge for immigration reform, said Trump told members that Ivanka Trump had appealed to him to stop separating families. However, the president gave no indication that he was willing to reverse the policy and did not acknowledge that he could stop the separations without legislation, he added. Instead, Trump insisted Congress deliver a legislative solution.
Unbowed by mounting public anger, Trump and leading administration officials have fiercely defended the policy, which has led to the separation of more than 2,300 children from their parents in five weeks.
Before the meeting on Tuesday evening, as the president walked through the Capitol, a protester yelled: “Mr President, fuck you.”
As Trump left the session, he faced a rare demonstration by members of Congress. House Democrats shouted at the president to abandon his immigration policy while waving signs that read: “Families belong together.”
The California congressman Juan Vargas shouted: “Mr President, don’t you have kids? Don’t you have kids, Mr President? How would you like it if they separated your kids?”
Speaking to reporters, Trump said: “We had a great meeting. These are laws that have been broken for many years, decades. But we had a great meeting.”
House Republicans, barrelling towards a vote on a pair of immigration bills, were hoping the president would rally skeptical members of the caucus around a proposal that sought common ground between moderates and conservatives on an issue that has fiercely divided the party.
Instead, Trump said he would sign either proposal that came to his desk, members said.
The Kansas Republican congressman Kevin Yoder said: “He said we need to pass one of the two bills.” He added that the president was “agnostic” about which of the two measures they should pass.
The Florida Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart said: “Here’s what I’m absolutely – 1,000% – sure of. “Without his [Trump’s] support, without his approvals, there’s no shot of it passing the House, there’s no shot of it going anywhere.”
During his remarks, which were expected to focus on immigration, Trump spoke about his recent visit to North Korea and his trade policy, members said. He also openly mocked the Republican congressman Mark Sanford, a conservative critic of the president who lost a primary this month after Trump endorsed his opponent, they said.
The meeting came at a delicate moment for Republicans, as several lawmakers in both chambers rushed to defuse the spiralling political crisis caused by the immigration crackdown.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said “all of the members of the Republican conference support a plan that keeps families together” and endorsed a narrow plan that would allow law enforcement to detain parents and children together while their immigration case is adjudicated in court. McConnell said he hoped to pass a bill as early as this week.
‘These children are not animals’: US house decries separation policy – video
Any such legislation would require some support from Democrats, who immediately rebuffed the plan, arguing that Trump could unilaterally end the practice.
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said: “There is no need for legislation. There’s no need for anything else. You [Trump] started it, you can stop it – plain and simple.”
Under the policy, all adults are arrested for crossing the border illegally. As children cannot be kept in an adult prison, they are held separately.
In the House, Republicans have included a provision to end family separations in their compromise immigration proposal, which would also provide $25bn (£19bn) for Trump’s border wall and his other hardline security demands. The bill would offer a pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers. A rival bill, supported by a conservative bloc of Republicans, would not guarantee them a path to citizenship.
Trump did not discuss whether he would back a standalone measure should support for the immigration proposals flounder. The president has called on Democrats to negotiate an end to the separations, inviting criticism that he is leveraging the crisis at the border to win support for his hardline immigration framework.
The House is expected to vote on the immigration measures this week and their fates are far from certain.
