Geneva — On Tuesday, the UN called on the US to stop detaining irregular migrant families and separating children on its frontier with Mexico, saying this broke the law. Several hundred children crossing the southern US border have been held in custody since October 2017 following an executive order issued by US President Donald Trump when he took office in January 2016, it said. "The US should immediately halt this practice of separating families and stop criminalising what should at most be an administrative offence — that of irregular entry or stay in the US," UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a briefing in Geneva. "Entering a country without the relevant papers should not be a criminal offence … so these people should not be detained," she said, adding that some children were very young, including a one-year-old infant. Poverty, as well as deepening violence from criminal gangs and drug traffickers has driven hundreds of thousands of Central Americans to try to...
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