New York, NY – The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) condemns the recent executive order that maintains the cruel “zero tolerance” policy of criminally prosecuting all adults who cross the border. This executive order simply opens the door to replacing family separation with family detention. Indefinitely imprisoning children alongside their parents is not the answer. It also lacks a policy for reuniting the thousands of families that have already been separated. JCPA strongly urges the Administration to end this cruel practice and ensure that all separated children are reunited with their parents as soon as possible.

“The only solution to this manufactured crisis is to rescind the inhuman “zero tolerance” policy. Instead, the Administration is actually looking to overturn existing protections against indefinite detention of children so that authorities can jail whole families and expedite deportations, even for asylum seekers, which raises serious due process concerns,” said David Bernstein, President and CEO of JCPA. “There are proven alternatives to the incarceration of families fleeing violence that don’t permanently traumatize young children or make people suffer unnecessarily.”