The brutal policy of separating migrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border should be halted immediately, says Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio.

“The images of crying children and distraught parents seem so inhumane that it is hard to believe this is actually happening in the United States,” the bishop wrote in an op-ed published on the New York Daily News website June 19.

The piece ran under the headline: “An unholy separation policy: Stop pulling families apart now, says the bishop of Brooklyn.”

A longtime advocate for finding a just solution to immigration reform, the bishop wrote the piece upon returning from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ spring general assembly, where members condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border.

The bishop expressed his distress at reports of children being held in cages at government detention centers, having no idea when they will be back in their parents’ arms.

“It is horrifying to contemplate the psychological damage being perpetrated on these innocent children,” he wrote.

Quoting the Book of Leviticus, he points to the line that reads: “You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself.”

The bishop goes on to say that while the Trump administration claims the policy of separating families is lawful, there is “not a law that requires family separation.”

He further criticized the practice of using children as leverage to try to enact two bills now being considered in Congress that would “change our nation’s immigration system for the worse” by weakening families.

According to the bishop, the first bill would remove protections for unaccompanied minors. The second would use a points-based system to give green cards to so-called Dreamers, but many DACA-eligible youth might not be able to obtain one.

In an interview with Currents News, the bishop said that if he could speak to President Donald Trump today, he would tell him that this is a process that needs to be looked at reasonably and intelligently.

“This is just being pushed through and it is just the wrong way to make public policy and laws,” the bishop said.

Bishop DiMarzio concluded the op-ed calling on Congress to make a true bipartisan effort to reform the immigration system “in a just manner” that “reflects our history and values as a nation of immigrants.”

The New York Daily News story can be seen here:

An unholy separation policy: Stop pulling families apart now, says the bishop of Brooklyn