Laura Bush condemns Trump family separation policy as 'cruel' and 'immoral'

Former First Lady Laura Bush has launched an attack on a controversial Trump administration policy that splits up families who illegally enter the US at the Mexican border.

Ms Bush, who is married to George Bush, branded the zero-tolerance immigration “cruel” and “immoral” – saying “it breaks my heart”.

The 71-year-old compared it to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II which she branded “one of the most shameful episodes in US history.”

Penning a scathing guest column in the Washington Post, Ms Bush said: "I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”

"Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso," she continued. "These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II.”

Ms Bush, who has rarely spoken out about politics since her husband left the White House, added: “We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned."

“In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can,” she concluded the article by saying.

Her comments come after mounting controversy over Donald Trump's “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.

Earlier Melania Trump said she “hates to see children separated from their families” in what was a rare political intervention from the current First Lady amid an immigration crackdown launched by the Trump administration.

“Mrs Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform,” her communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN.

She added: “She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”

This is the first time Ms Trump, who has made helping children the core of her official “Be Best” platform as First Lady, has weighed in on the issue which has dominated headlines for days.

Since May, the Trump administration has charged every adult caught crossing the border illegally with federal crimes, instead of referring those with children mainly to immigration courts in the way that former administrations did.

On Sunday, Democratic legislators joined hundreds of protesters in New Jersey and Texas to demonstrate outside immigration detention facilities for young people.

Top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has also criticised the family separation policy.

“Nobody likes” breaking up families and “seeing babies ripped from their mothers’ arms,” she told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Nearly 2,000 children were separated from their families over a six-week period in April and May after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new “zero-tolerance” policy that refers all cases of illegal entry for criminal prosecution.