Boston Mayor Marty Walsh escalated his prior condemnation of the forced separation of children from their parents at the border, calling President Donald Trump’s immigration policy the “most inhumane thing we have ever done as a country.”

The Democratic mayor — who has been an consistent, outspoken critic of the Trump administration on immigration — tweeted Wednesday night that separating children from their parents and detaining them is simply “wrong,” regardless of political affiliation.

“I will stand up for these kids for as long as I am alive on this earth because this is the most inhumane thing we have ever done as a country,” Walsh wrote, signing off the tweet with his initials.

I don't care what party you are, or who you are, ripping kids away from their parents & putting them in a detention center is wrong. I will stand up for these kids for as long as I am alive on this earth because this is the most inhumane thing we have ever done as a country – MJW — Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) June 21, 2018


The administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which resulted in the forced separation of families attempting to illegally enter the country, incited widespread outrage and international condemnation.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order that keeps families together while they’re in custody, expedites their cases, and asks the Defense Department to help house them. The order doesn’t change anything for the approximately 2,300 children who have already been separated and detained since the “zero tolerance” policy was implemented.

Trump’s order also did not end the “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults caught illegally crossing the border. The Washington Post reported Thursday afternoon that the U.S. Border Patrol will, however, stop referring migrant parents to federal courthouses to face criminal charges.

As the Associated Press recently noted, the United States has a long, regrettable history of forcibly separating children from their families — from slavery to 19th century Native American boarding schools to the mass deportation of Mexican Americans during the Great Depression to Japanese internment camps during World War II.

Child welfare and human rights advocates have said that history doesn’t mean the Trump administration’s policy is any less morally reprehensible.

Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Washington Post this week that studies show the effects of the stress inflicted on such young children can be psychologically “catastrophic” in the long term. Colleen Kraft, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an interview with CNN that involuntarily separating children from their parents “really is nothing less than government-sanctioned child abuse.” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, recently told The New York Times that the policy was “unconscionable.”


Walsh’s tweet Wednesday is a truncated version of what the mayor — who is furious about what is happening at the border, according to this office — said publicly earlier in the week.

“There’s no reason to separate the kids from their mothers and fathers,” he told reporters Tuesday. “If you want to run them through the process, keep them together, keep them intact. It’s the most inhumane thing I’ve ever seen in my life as far as something we’ve done as a country.”