Trump's Child Separation Policy "Absolutely" Violated International Law Says UN Expert

The Trump administration violated international law when it separated migrant children from their families, a United Nations expert said Monday.

That’s not all, said Manfred Nowak, the independent expert leading a global study on children deprived of liberty. With over 100,000 children still in migration-related detention, the United States leads the world with the highest number of children in migration-related custody in the world.

Nowak made the remarks to press at the formal launch of the report, the U.N. Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, he said has the power to effect positive change.

Referencing the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Nowak said that “the detention of children shall only be a measure of last resort and only if absolutely necessary for the shortest appropriate period of time. That means, in principle, children should not be deprived of liberty.”

“Alternatives to detention are usually available,” said Nowak, “it’s simply a question of politics.”

A lack of political will to make that policy change was clear, Nowak suggested, when the Trump administration instituted its so-called zero tolerance policy in which officials separated children from their parents at Southern border.

“There’s a lot of evidence…that migration-related detention for children can never be considered as a measure of last resort and in the best interest of the child,” he said. “There are always alternatives available, and there a quite a number of states that have decided already that they will not put children any longer in migration-related detention.”

“Of course, separating children—as was done by the Trump administration—from their parents, even small children, at the Mexican-U.S. border is absolutely prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Nowak continued. “I would call it inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children. And there are still quite a number of children that are separated from their parents—and neither the children know where their parents are and the parents [don’t] know where the children are—so that is definitely something that definitely should not happen again.”

“We still have more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention” in the U.S., Nowak said, “so that’s far more than all the other countries where we have reliable figures.” Nowak added that the U.S. “did not respond to our questionnaire” requesting data for the report.

Nowak added the U.S. is detaining high numbers of children in the criminal justice sector as well.