With close to 1.5 million likes, rapper Nicki Minaj, born Onika Tanya Maraj in Saint James, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, shares an emotional post on Instagram about the children being held in detention camps as part of the Trump Administration’s ‘Zero Tolerance Policy.’
Minaj was an illegal immigrant, she says. She came with her family to the U.S. as a pre-school age child 30 years ago. The family settled in Queens, New York.
“I came to this country as an illegal immigrant @ 5 years old. I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place & having my parents stripped away from me at the age of 5. This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now? Not knowing if their parents are dead or alive, if they’ll ever see them again… ??”
Minaj, 35, whose net worth is $75 million, has sold tens of millions of records, was nominated for 10 Grammy awards and has won dozens of other music industry awards, some multiple times, including American Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and BET awards among other.
She recently posted this image of her and her mother from when she was a teen.
It was reported that US Attorney General Jeff Session said in early May, “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”
Sessions said people crossing illegally would charged adults, detained then sent to federal court. Children would be turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Atthe Tornillo-GuadalupeÊPort of EntryÊon June 21, 2018 in Fabens, Texas. Mayors from the U.S. Conference of Mayors visited the site to call for the immediate reunification of separated immigrant families from the tent facility that is housing immigrant children separated from their parents after they were caught entering the U.S. under the administration’s zero tolerance policy.
From October of 2017 until late April, it was reported 700 children were taken from their parents. Since Sessions remarks in early May, it’s reported more than 2,300 children including babies, have been separated from their parents and held in camps or shelters.
Pres. Donald Trump had for several days blamed Democrats and existing law but it was his administration’s enactment of the Zero Tolerance policy measure that triggered the mass detention of minor children in warehouses, tents and centers some of which filmed in recent days showed children living in cages.
After largely universal outrage, save for Trump and his administration including the DOJ and Homeland Security and Customs & Border Patrol and many in the Republican party including his base of supporters, Trump said, because his daughter Ivanka Trump was opposed to separating families, and his wife First Lady Melania Trump also opposed taking children from their mothers and fathers, Wednesday Trump signed an executive order saying that children would no longer be separated from their parents and families.
GettyFirst Lady Melania Trump, wearing a jacket that reads, ‘i really don’t care do u,? steps out of her motorcade before boarding an Air Force plane and traveling to Texas to visit facilities that house and care for children taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
But the fate of those thousands already in federal custody remains unclear and Wednesday night, children were being flown into New York City on private air carriers who have contracts with the U.S. government.