Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said Sunday that children should not be kept in immigration detention centers and said the current situation highlights Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
"Separating families harms children," Gonzalez said. "To me, it's an affront to our American values."
U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions has defended Trump's decision to prosecute unlawful immigrants as criminals by arguing the separations deter illegal immigration.
The policy has drawn increased attention as the Trump administration has announced plans to house children in a tent city in West Texas and as stories have circulated of breastfeeding children being taken from their mothers, social workers being barred by policy from hugging or comforting distraught children, or of parents being deported back to their home countries without their children.
