Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to President Donald Trump, said immigration is a "complicated" issue but that she is "vehemently" against separated migrant children from their parents. Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI |
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Aug. 2 (UPI) -- One week after U.S. officials said they reunited the majority of children separated from their parents at the border, White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump described her father's separation policy as a "low point."
Speaking Thursday during an Axios Newsmakers event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., she said she didn't agree with President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" policy to prosecute all illegal border crossings and separate the children from those being prosecuted.
"That was a low point for me as well," Ivanka Trump said. "I felt very strongly about that and I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children so I would agree with that sentiment. Immigration is incredibly complex as a topic. Illegal immigration is incredibly complicated."
She has been largely quiet about the separation policy since it was announced in April. The Department of Homeland Security said it separated between 2,500 and 3,000 children from their parents between then and June 20, when the president signed an executive order ending the policy amid backlash.
The day before signing the order, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said President Trump met with his daughter on the issue.
"She offered the President her support and she said she would talk to any member of Congress to help find a legislative solution to the issue," Gidley told CNN.
"I am the daughter of an immigrant, my mother grew up in communist Czech Republic, but we are a country of laws," Ivanka Trump said Thursday. "She came to this country legally and we have to be very careful about incentivizing behavior that puts children at risk of being trafficked, at risk of entering this country with coyotes or making an incredibly dangerous journey alone.
"These are not easy issues, these are incredibly difficult issues and like the rest of the country, I experienced them actually in a very emotional way."
Ivanka Trump also broke with her father's opinion of the press, saying: "No, I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people."
She said she's been the subject of inaccurate reporting in the past so she understands why some people feel sensitive or targeted by the media. Ivanka Trump's husband, Jared Kushner, had an ownership stake in the New York Observer and was the newspaper's publisher until 2017, when he stepped down to take a White House role.
In February 2017, President Trump issued a tweet aimed at several large news organizations like NBC News, CNN and The New York Times, calling them "the enemy of the American people," a phrase he has used a number of times, including earlier this week.
Stoked by the president's anti-media -- and particularly anti-CNN -- rhetoric, his supporters took up the cause Tuesday, hurling insults at CNN reporter Jim Acosta during a rally in Tampa, Fla.
