Eva Longoria Rallies to Keep Kids With Their Parents Shortly After Giving Birth

Actor Eva Longoria gave birth to her first child, Santiago Enrique Bastón, on Tuesday — and in between snuggle sessions, she’s using her platform to rally against the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy. 

"In light of my son’s birth I wanted to bring focus on the families that have been separated at the border," Longoria captioned her first publicly shared photo of herself and her baby. "Having my son next to me, I cannot imagine him being taken from my arms. Families belong together which is why we must do what we can to reunite them. That’s why I am supporting @raicestexas and @aclu_nationwide to help fund legal services for separated families." She ended her post with the popular hashtag, #KeepFamiliesTogether.

The Trump administration has separated thousands of asylum-seeking families since April, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the highly controversial zero-tolerance policy that punishes anyone who crosses the border into the United States through unofficial channels. As a result, the U.S. government has been tearing children — more than 2,300 of them since May — from their parents, placing them in what are essentially internment camps while their mothers and fathers are taken into custody for processing. 

After receiving backlash from even some of his most prominent conservative supporters, Trump reversed the policy earlier this week and announced that instead of separating families, the U.S. will now place them all in holding cells together. However, as of now, the administration doesn’t have a clear plan on how to reunite the kids that were already separated, some of them infants, with their parents. It also hasn’t addressed how it will deal with the major psychological impact family separation will have on these children in the future. 

Since the policy went into effect, dozens of celebrities, including Longoria, have donated their money to organizations that can provide these families with legal assistance as they fight to reunite with their loved ones. For Trump’s 72nd birthday, power couple Chrissy Teigen and John Legend donated $288,000 ($72,000 from each member of their family) to the ACLU. 

"Chrissy and I are outraged to see and hear the horror stories of immigrant families seeking asylum and refuge in America being ripped apart due to the inhumane policies of the Trump administration," Legend wrote in a statement posted on Instagram. "These actions are cruel, anti-family and go against everything we believe this country should represent." 

If you’d like to join celebrities like Teigen, Legend and Longoria in their fight to end family separations, here is a list of ways you can help families at the border. 

Source: Read Full Article