UK PM calls US images of migrant children ‘deeply disturbing’

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LONDON, June 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – British Prime Minister Theresa May on
Wednesday said images from the United States of migrant children kept in
cages were “deeply disturbing” and that she would press President Donald
Trump on the issue.

“On what we have seen in the United States, pictures of children being
held in what appear to be cages are deeply disturbing… this is wrong,” she
told MPs.

May said she would raise the issue with Trump when the pair meet in
Britain next month.

“When we disagree with the United States we tell them so,” she told MPs.

“But we also have some key shared interests with the United States in the
security and defence field and on other areas as well.

“And it is right that we are able to sit down and discuss those with the
president.”

Trump told Republican lawmakers Tuesday he backed their efforts to craft
an immigration solution that ends the politically toxic practice of
separating families on the US-Mexico border.

May appeared to criticise the practice, saying that when she was interior
minister: “I ended the routine detention of families with children.”

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman said the US policy was
“immoral, a fundamental abuse of human rights.”

“We’re in favour of dialogue with international leaders… but the soft
pedalling on these abuses of human rights — and it’s not restricted to this
issue — by the Trump administration has achieved nothing.”

The prime minister has been a frequent critic and the relationship between
the two appears to have soured after May became the first world leader to
visit Trump’s White House last February.

She spoke out against his travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, his
decisions to leave the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal as well
as his imposition of trade tariffs.

Relations between the pair were further strained in November after Trump
re-tweeted anti-Muslim videos posted by a British far-right group.