Donald Trump changed his policy on detaining child migrants in cages away from their parents because Theresa May condemned it.
Well, according to Boris Johnson that is, who made the claim in the Commons on Tuesday.
The prime minister has come under pressure to cancel Trump’s visit to the UK, due to take place in July, over his administration’s detention of immigrant children, some of whom were held in special cages.
But Johnson defended the decision to welcome the president, despite widespread outrage at his immigration policies on Tuesday, telling MPs: “The prime minister condemned it and she speaks for the government, indeed for me.”
“No sooner had she spoken than the president of the United States repealed the policy.”
He added: “Thus demonstrating, I venture to suggest, the considerable and growing influence of the UK.”
May last week described Trump’s child detention policy as “deeply disturbing” and “wrong”.
In the wake of widespread outrage at home and abroad, Trump signed an executive order that requires his Department of Homeland Security to detain families together rather than separating children and parents at the border.
The British government rejected demands that the president’s visit to the UK be scrapped.
Emily Thornberry, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, said Trump should not be given “the honour” of meeting the Queen during his weekend visit, starting on the 12 July.
“When we have a president like Donald Trump, who bans Muslims and supports Nazis, who stokes conflict and fuels climate change, who abuses women and cages children, that is not a record to be admired, that is a record to be abhorred,” she said.
The SNP MP Peter Grant told Johnson in the Commons that Trump was a “serial child abuser” who was guilty of “putting children in concentration camps”.