Evanston Mayor Steve Hagerty on Monday read aloud an official proclamation condemning President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and urging for the reunification of separated families on behalf of City Council.

After reports surfaced of hundreds of children being separated from their families at the border as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s new zero-tolerance immigration policy, Trump signed an executive order on June 20 preventing further forced separation.

In the proclamation, Hagerty and the city’s aldermen acknowledged that the executive order “provides for a broad stop to separating families at the border but does not change anything in terms of putting families back together that have already been separated and allows for the indefinite detention of children with their parents.”

The document urges Congress to act and ensure that Trump administration is prohibited “from this wholesale separation of children from their families” and from indefinitely detaining the families.

The proclamation, which was unanimously approved by aldermen, will be sent to Illinois representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen.

School social worker Natalia Moreno Polomarkakis expressed her support of the proclamation during public comment at Monday’s meeting.

“Children affected by this crisis will enter our schools and will come into our communities. They are with us all, every day, and I hope we can, as a city, support these families,” Polomarkakis said. “The impact of these policies will be felt across our country and for many, many years.”

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