US mayors go to Mexican border to denounce immigration policy

The delegation from the US Conference of Mayors (USCM) on Thursday strongly condemned the government's "zero tolerance" policy, which seeks to prosecute every adult entering the country illegally and has led to the separation of 2,300 minors from their parents, Efe news reported.

On Wednesday, after receiving harsh criticisms both within and without the US, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end the policy of separating immigrant children from their parents and he later said that he would order immigration authorities to reunite the families that had been separated since April.

The mayors visited the tent city for immigrant children in Tornillo, near El Paso, where the USCM chair Steve Benjamin, who is the mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, demanded that families be reunited as soon as possible.

The mayor of West Sacramento, California, Christopher Cabaldon, said that the group of mayors is willing to work together to "rescue the minors" and asked his fellow citizens to "rescue" the country's humanitarian values.

Alan Webber, mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico, said that local communities, whether conservative or liberal, had a responsibility to protect immigrants.

"Children don't belong in cages," Austin Mayor Steve Adler said.