Father’s Day became an occasion for Democrats to stage drama-filled protests of an immigration policy separating children from parents being held for illegally crossing the U.S. border.

Democrats in Texas and New Jersey staged speeches and tours of ICE detention facilities in order to push their narrative on the family-border separation controversy.

A press conference in Texas railed against the Trump administration as Democrats blasted the Obama-era federal law, enacted by Republicans and Democrats, which holds children in shelters whose parents are detained for breaking the law by illegally crossing the U.S border.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee called on President Trump to “cease and desist” the policy which she characterized as a human rights violation.

“Let me just quickly say that when you have a mother tell you directly that she’s in fear that she will never see her child again and when the United Nations human rights commission indicates to the Trump administration you’re violating human rights, then you know that what we are saying today is President Trump, cease and desist because you are moving the arc of justice to the heap of despair and the trash heap of injustice,” Jackson Lee said, speaking with other lawmakers gathered in McAllen on Sunday.

Sen. Peter Welch followed her speech, which was met with cheers and applause, as he slammed the separations as “appalling” and “un-American.”

“It’s a pretty grim sight to see really good young healthy-looking kids with so much fear, so much anxiety, so much wonder of what is next,” the Vermont Democrat said. “They don’t know where their parents are. They don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. They don’t know if there’s a future.”

Welch opined about the migrants who make the dangerous journey to the U.S. and “knock on the door of freedom” only to “be put in handcuffs.”

“And after the parents are in handcuffs their kids are taken away to parts unknown,” he said.

In a strange scene in New Jersey, lawmakers from that state as well as New York demanded they be allowed access to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Elizabeth. Seven House members from New York and New Jersey led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler were seen in a video banging on the window to get a staff member to call a supervisor.

“You did wrong. You were doing fine up until now. Now you did wrong. What is…this is America. This isn’t Moscow!” one Democrat shouted as the employee taped paper to the window to obscure the camera’s view.

The lawmakers were eventually let in after police were called, and met with five male detainees from Central America, though no cameras were allowed, The New York Post reported.

“It was heart-wrenching in there. I came here when I was 11,” Rep. Albio Sires, who immigrated from Cuba as a child, said, according to the Post. “It is a different country than when I came here. What I saw in there was inhumane.”

“We are here in protest of the Trump administration for tearing children from the arms of their mothers and fathers. This is a disgraceful un-American policy,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, said.

Outside of the facility, about 250 people held signs reading “Stop Racism Now” and “Traumatizing kids isn’t a policy, it’s abuse,” as they protested the immigration policy.

The Father’s Day drama continued as New York’s Democratic governor blasted Trump’s “inhumane treatment of families” and demanded the acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security explain what “his office is doing about this assault on immigrant families within our borders.”

”Now Trump is using these families as a negotiating tool to advance his own political agenda. The ​president is playing politics with the moral soul of this nation, and it must end​,” Cuomo said in a statement, according to the Post.

Family separations occurred under former President Obama’s eight years in office but liberals have unleashed their fury over the policy at the Trump administration, fueled by disturbing photos of ‘migrant’ children locked in “cages” that were circulated and blamed on President Trump’s “zero tolerance” enforcement of the border policy. The fact that the photos were actually taken under former President Obama’s administration seemed to make no difference to liberals who are all about bashing Trump.

Rep. Tom Cole defended the law and said those who wish to cross the border illegally simply run the “risk” of having their children detained.

“I certainly think we shouldn’t be separating young children from their parents, but, frankly in this case, if you want asylum you can go to any embassy in any country and seek it, and we’ll adjudicate it there,” the Oklahoma Democrat said on  MSNBC’s “Kasie DC” on Sunday.

“You can come to a port of entry, and it’ll be dealt with there and, again, you wouldn’t be separated from your children. If you cross the border illegally, you run that risk,” he said.

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Frieda Powers

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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