President Donald Trump revealed on Thursday that First Lady Melania Trump was at the Southern border, visiting facilities detaining children who entered the country illegally.
The president revealed the nature of her trip during a cabinet meeting at the White House.
“It really bothered her … as it bothered me, as it bothered everybody at this table,” Trump said. “We’re all bothered by it.”
The First Lady’s Communications Director Stephanie Grisham spoke about the trip during the flight to Texas with reporters.
“She wanted to see everything for herself. … She supports family reunification. She thinks that it’s important that children stay with their families,” she said.
The First Lady is scheduled to tour two law enforcement facilities in McAllen Texas — The Ursula Border Patrol Processing Center and a Customs and Border Patrol/DHS intake center.
She first appeared at the New Hope Children’s Shelter, an HHS grantee facility run by Lutheran Social Services to care for the children.
First lady Melania Trump visits the Upbring New Hope Children Center, run by the Lutheran Social Services of the South, in McAllen, Texas, Thursday, June 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
During the visit, the First Lady asked the managers of the facility if the children were well cared for, educated, and had access to communicate with their parents or adult family members.
“This was 100 percent her idea. She absolutely wanted to come,” Grisham said. “She wants to see what’s happening for herself and she wants to lend her support.”
Grisham added that the First Lady wanted a realistic view of what was actually happening at the border after seeing the images and audio broadcast in the media and had the full support of the president to travel.
“The images struck her, as a mother, as a human being,” she said.
Reporters, TV crews, and photographers secretly traveled with the First Lady and released photos of her visit after the president announced the news. Media also agreed to limit photographs during the visit of the facilities to protect the privacy of the detained children.
The First Lady first commented on the issue on Sunday.
“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
. “She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”
via Breitbart News
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