Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to visit the Mexican border on Thursday, protesting President Trump’s immigration policy.
De Blasio will be in Texas as part of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Several will travel to Tornillo for the rally.
The trip comes a day after Mayor de Blasio visited the Cayuga Centers in East Harlem. He said 239 children separated from their parents are staying there.
“These children are across a whole range of ages, the youngest to come here they told us was nine months old. So we're talking about children in some cases who literally can't even communicate, have no idea what's happening to them, no ability to be in touch with their families,” de Blasio said.
Neighborhood residents said they've seen more children in the area recently.
"They shuffle them in and out. Maybe under the cover of darkness some nights and early in the morning," one man told WOR's Alice Stockton-Rossini.
The mayor said these children have been ripped away from their parents. De Blasio said in one case, a 9-year-old boy from Honduras was put on a bus to travel 2,000 miles to New York City.
“These children are coming here and the professionals we met with made clear, that this has been a traumatic process for a lot of these kids. The mental health issues alone, they made clear to us, are very real, very painful,” the mayor said.
De Blasio praised the Cayuga Centers, saing they were very forthcoming and immediately granted a request for a delegation from the city to meet with them. He said they answered all questions and the city offered to help where needed.
“Our job now, all of us, is to change this situation, to pound down every door, to protest, to do everything in our legal power, everything we can to break this policy, stop it, end it, and I think it is a moment of conscious that has very few parallels,” de Blasio said.
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