Former first lady Michelle Obama spoke out Monday on the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on separating illegal immigrant parents with children at the border, echoing former first lady Laura Bush’s criticism of the policy.
“Sometimes truth transcends party,” Obama tweeted Monday afternoon in response to Bush’s Sunday op-ed in the Washington Post.
Obama’s comments come after the Washington Post published Bush’s op-ed, which called Trump’s immigration policy “cruel” and “immoral.”
“I live in a border state,” Bush wrote. “I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”
Later in the op-ed, Bush compared Trump’s border enforcement efforts to the Japanese-American internment camps instituted by the U.S. during World War II—even though the Japanese Americans held captive were American citizens.
“Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso,” Bush added. “These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.”