Melania Trump’s former immigration lawyer compares border crisis to 'Nazi Germany' and 'slave trade'

The policy has sparked national outcry

Melania Trump’s former immigration lawyer decried the separation of immigrant families arriving at the border in an interview with her husband’s favourite network, Fox News.

Michael Wildes, a New York attorney who represented the first lady and her family throughout immigration proceedings to become US citizens, said Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border “goes against the very ethos of our founding documents and fathers”.

“When we’re dealing with this challenge, we should not be quarantining our children from parents. The inhumanity of what we see is reminiscent of detention centers of Nazi Germany, of the slave trade,” he said during a Fox and Friends panel. “We can do better when we try to figure out this problem.”

The US began systematically separating and detaining thousands of children, many of them toddlers and infants, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration’s new immigration policy in May.

Mr Trump has repeatedly blamed the Democratic Party for the burgeoning human rights crisis, along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, even though the controversy first arose under their watch — and reversing the policy is well within his executive powers.

“Let’s not forget this problem needs to be fixed because the greatest risk takers and the greatest entrepreneurs historically have been immigrants in this country,” Mr Wildes continued.

Mrs Trump also spoke out against her husband’s policy on Sunday, calling for more “heart” in the ongoing immigration reform debate. Her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham released a statement to CNN saying the first lady “hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform”.

“She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws,” the statement continued, adding Mrs Trump’s belief that the nation should also be “a country that governs with heart.”