Padma Lakshmi is a New York Times best-selling author and host/ executive producer of "Top Chef." The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) I was two years old when my mother left me in India with my grandparents to come to the United States. She was fleeing an abusive marriage, and needed to find a job and a safe place for us to land. I didn't understand.

Padma Lakshmi

Every day, I'd sit on a step outside our house waiting for my mom to come back from work in America. The anguish of separation may have even contributed to a skin condition I developed around that time -- terrible blisters all over my body in the summer heat, so bad my head had to be shaved.

Today, I am far removed from that lost little girl who desperately missed her mother. But as I watch the Trump administration forcibly separating children from parents as they make their way to the United States looking for refuge, my heart breaks.

According to government figures, more than 700 children were separated from their parents from October 2017 through April 2018, including more than 100 children under the age of 4. Many of them came from violent countries in Central America to seek asylum in the United States and presented themselves to immigration officials without breaking any rules.

That was before Donald Trump's administration officially instituted a new "zero tolerance" policy to criminally prosecute migrants who enter the United States without authorization, even those seeking asylum -- and remove their children. It's a policy that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has called a "tough deterrent," remarking nonchalantly that "the children will be taken care of -- put into foster care or whatever."

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