WASHINGTON – Melania Trump is heading back toward the southern border of the United States.
The first lady was expected to visit immigration centres Thursday housing migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman declined to immediately release details about her planned stops.
The visit comes a week after Mrs. Trump travelled to the border town of McAllen, Texas, to meet with officials there dealing with families detained at the border. She also met with children at one of the facilities.
But that trip was overshadowed by a jacket the first lady wore to and from Texas that said on the back: “I really don’t care, do u?” The first lady’s spokeswoman said it was just a jacket, with no hidden message, but interest in her baffling fashion choice was a distraction from Mrs. Trump’s trip.
This time, Mrs. Trump travels amid upheaval over her husband’s hard-line approach to immigration and evidence of increasing urgency over how that’s playing out.
More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents at the border in recent weeks and some were placed in government-contracted shelters hundreds of miles away from their parents.
The president last week signed an executive order to halt the separation of families at the border, at least for a few weeks, but the order did not address the reunification of families already separated.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered that thousands of migrant children and parents be reunited within 30 days – and sooner if the youngster is under 5. The order poses logistical problems for the administration, and it was unclear how it would meet the deadline.