Trump ends policy of migrant family separations at border

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order that reversed his decision to separate migrant families crossing the border from Mexico.

The issue has plagued his administration after it was revealed that at least 2,000 children had been torn from their parents under a new "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

Trump said yesterday that the zero tolerance policy would continue, but that he "didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated."

According to the president, the executive order was "about keeping families together, while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border."

"I think the word ‘compassion’ comes into it, but it’s still equally as tough, if not tougher," The Independent cited Trump as saying. The day before, he had accused immigrants of "infesting" the country, and declared the US would not be a "refugee holding facility."

Family separations have escalated under Trump’s new zero tolerance policy, which requires all adults caught crossing the border illegally to be referred for prosecution. Adult immigrants facing charges are housed separately from their children, resulting in the separation of parents from children reportedly as young as eight-months-old.

Still, immigrants' rights activists criticised the order, saying it did not address the larger issues concerning the zero tolerance policy. The executive order, they pointed out, only solved the problem of family separations by requiring parents and children to be detained together for an indefinite amount of time.