Sam Levin in the Guardian’s San Francisco bureau here, taking over our live coverage of family separations at the border. The Guardian has correspondents reporting on both sides of the border, in Guatemala and across the US who will continue sending dispatches.
Here’s a quick update from the United Nations human rights office, which has said that Trump’s decision to stop separating children from their parents doesn’t go far enough and may amount to torture. From the AP:
Human rights office spokeswoman Ravini Shamdasani said Friday that “children should never be detained for reasons related to their or their parents’ migration status”.
Shamdasani urged the US to overhaul its migration policy, such as by relying on “non-custodial and community-based alternatives” under the “logic of care” rather than that of law enforcement.
Also Friday, a group of nearly a dozen independent human rights experts commissioned by the UN said the new US policy “may lead to indefinite detention of entire families in violation of international human rights standards”.
The UN human rights office said the U.S. policy of putting immigrant children in detention centers harms their development and "may amount to torture."
11,786 children are in U.S. detention facilities. The Trump administration plans to place 20,000 more in shelters this year.