Trump has refused to accept responsibility for the family separation policy, which administration officials say is meant to deter undocumented immigrants from making the trek to the U.S. border with their children.
Melania Trump's spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said the first lady believes "we need to be a country that follows all laws", but also one "that governs with heart".
"Congress passed the law that it is a crime to enter this country illegally".
It's also a situation that has been brewing since the week U.S. President Donald Trump took office, when he issued his first order signalling a tougher approach to asylum-seekers.
The outcry over children being separated from their parents at the Mexican border may have caused a rift in another family: the Trumps.
A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US.
On Sunday, Democrats, with camera crews in tow, visited a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in New Jersey and a Customs and Border Protection facility on the border in Texas.
Separately, senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "nobody likes" the separation of migrant children from their parents, but repeated Trump's view that the burden for changing it is on Democrats.
Democrats are being forced to get creative in protesting the Trump Administration's new "zero tolerance" stance toward immigration, as they are outnumbered legislatively in the House.
The push toward immigration votes in the House is intensifying the divide among Republicans on one of the party's most animating issues and fueling concerns that a voter backlash could cost the GOP control of the House in November.
Some White House officials, such as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, reportedly oppose the policy, while White House chief of staff John Kelly is an adamant backer.
"Trump claims Democrats are to blame for families' being broken up", said one of the Democrats, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey. Because the law severely limits how long the feds can detain the children, immigration officials on the ground then have no choice but to break up the families.
"I want that burden to be so uncomfortable for so many of us that it forces us to act, it places the public pressure on those in positions of public trust and power to do the right thing for our country", O'Rourke, who is seeking to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz, said to applause.
Hurd told CNN on Saturday: "To me it makes it very clear that in the home of the free and the land of the courageous, we should not be using kids as a deterrent policy".
Mrs Trump didn't refer specifically to the Trump administration's "no tolerance" policy, which was leading to a spike in children being separated from their families.
"This is not a zero tolerance policy, this is a zero humanity policy, and we can't let it go on", Democratic Sen. That led former President Barack Obama's administration to release both parent and child. But neither bill has much hope of securing enough support in the Republican-controlled Congress, let alone surviving Trump's veto pen. "They are the ones who broke the law, they are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek".
His wife, who does not often wade into the political arena, did not denounce his administration´s policy, but instead called for bipartisan immigration reform to fix the issue.
"She did not know what was going on", said paralegal Georgina Guzman, recalling their conversation at a federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas.
But other members of the administration who have had a central role in immigration policy embraced the decision to separate families.
17 June 2018
13 June 2018
13 June 2018
17 June 2018
15 June 2018
11 June 2018
17 June 2018
13 June 2018
11 June 2018
15 June 2018
13 June 2018
13 June 2018