Lesley Beals from Reno, Nev., protests outside the Peppermill Resort-Casino in Reno, Nev., as Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks on immigration to NASRO, a School Safety Conference, Monday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Lesley Beals from Reno, Nev., protests outside the Peppermill Resort-Casino in Reno, Nev., as Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks on immigration to NASRO, a School Safety Conference, Monday, June 25, 2018. (AP Photo by Lance Iversen) (Associated Press) 
 
 EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the separation of immigrant children from their parents (all times local): 
 
 2:30 p.m. 
 
 White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insists the administration's reversal in referring parents crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution is only temporary because the government is running out of resources. 
 
 Sanders spoke to reporters at the White House after the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said he has stopped referring cases involving children for prosecution. 
 
 That's after President Trump's order that stopped the separation of children and their parents who cross the border illegally. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the "no tolerance" policy is still in place, but there will be no one to prosecute without referrals. 
 
 Sanders says stopping the referrals is a temporary solution. She says it will only last a short amount of time because: "we're going to run out of space, we're going to run out of resources to keep people together." 
 
 She called on Congress to change immigration laws. 
 
 ___ 
 
 1:50 p.m. 
 
 No arrests were made among protesters blocking a street outside a speech where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions cast children at the nation's southern border as victims of a broken immigration system. 
 
 Demonstrations outside the Peppermill hotel-casino were colorful, loud and peaceful. 
 
 An act of civil disobedience by more than 20 people who sat down in a crosswalk didn't draw a police response. 
 
 Reno police Officer Travis Warren, a department spokesman, says officers only wanted to maintain safety, not arrest people. 
 
 Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada leader Bob Fulkerson says protesters got their point across. 
 
 Fulkerson calls separating children from families at the nation's southern border an act of state-sponsored terror. 
 
 Sessions told a school safety conference it's a difficult and frustrating situation. 
 
 The attorney general declared that more than 80 percent of the children crossing U.S. borders are "by themselves, without parents or guardians —often sent with a paid smuggler." 
 
 _ 
 
 1:40 p.m. 
 
 The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says an inability to process all asylum seekers at border crossings is temporary. 
 
 Commissioner Kevin McAleenan says the facilities were not built for such large numbers. 
 
 He says that some asylum seekers had to wait a day at four crossings, were turned away and told to return. 
 
 There are longer waits at San Diego's San Ysidro crossing. He described it is an "outlier" with longer waits. 
 
 Asylum seekers who go to a specific border crossing are a different from the thousands of parents who were arrested crossing illegally with their children under a zero tolerance policy. 
 
 McAleenan says agents have temporarily stopped referring cases for criminal prosecution involving parents and children. 
 
 He says it's because of President Trump's order that called for children to stop being separated from their families. 
 
 ___ 
 
 1:35 p.m. Immigrant rights activists in Seattle are suing the Trump administration, saying it is unnecessarily prolonging the separation of asylum-seeking immigrants from their children. 
 
 The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle on behalf of three Central American migrants held in federal custody in Washington state, thousands of miles from where immigration officials have transferred their children. The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other immigrants separated from their children and detained in Washington state. 
 
 The organization says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has provided no information about whether or when the detainees' asylum cases will move forward or when they'll be reunited with their children. 
 
 Washington, California, New Jersey and at least eight other states have also announced plans to sue the administration over the separations this week. 
 
 ___ 
 
 1:25 p.m. 
 
 A federal judge in Portland ordered that immigration attorneys be given access to more than 120 asylum seekers being held at the federal prison in Oregon. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Michael Simon on Monday granted an emergency order sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Innovation Law Lab, a nonprofit whose attorneys have been denied access to immigrants being held at the prison in Sheridan. 
 
 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred the immigrants to Oregon because other holding facilities have been overloaded since the Trump administration enacted a "zero tolerance" policy involving people entering the U.S. illegally. 
 
 The detainees are from 16 countries, but more than half are from India and Nepal. 
 
 ___ 
 
 1:15 p.m. 
 
 Federal officials Monday ordered protesters to end their round-the-clock occupation of property outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland, Oregon. 
 
 Law enforcement officers began distributing notices to vacate late Monday morning. The several hundred protesters have so far ignored the demand. 
 
 The group rallying under the moniker Occupy ICE PDX wants to abolish ICE and end the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy in which all unlawful border crossings are referred for prosecution. 
 
 Occupy ICE PDX last week called for similar occupations throughout the country, and demonstrators have responded in places such as New York, Los Angeles and Detroit. 
 
 Earlier Monday, federal law enforcement officers entered the Portland's ICE headquarters to secure government property ahead of the vacate notice. 
 
 he protesters did not try to thwart officers. 
 
 Portland's ICE headquarters has been the site of an occupation since June 17. 
 
 ___ 
 
 12:55 p.m. 
 
 The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says he has temporarily stopped referring for criminal prosecution adults who cross the border illegally with children. 
 
 Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters in Texas Monday he ordered referrals suspended within hours of President Trump's executive order last week that stopped the practice of separating families. 
 
 He says that the zero tolerance policy remains in effect, but cases cannot be prosecuted because parents cannot be separated from their children. 
 
 He says he is working to develop plan to resume illegally entry prosecutions of adults with children. 
 
 Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in Reno, Nevada that federal prosecutors would continue to criminally prosecute adults caught crossing the border. 
 
 But Border Patrol agents must refer cases for prosecution. 
 
 More than 2,300 children were separated from their families before the order last week that is causing chaos at the border on how to implement it. 
 
 ___ 
 
 12:05 p.m. 
 
 A temporary tent shelter set up in far west Texas for immigrant children is close to its 360-person capacity. 
 
 Reporters were allowed Monday to briefly visit the shelter at the Tornillo border crossing, where more than 320 children ages 13 to 17 are being held. 
 
 About half are from Guatemala, and 23 of the children had been separated from adults who accompanied them across the U.S.-Mexico border. 
 
 The facility has a current capacity of 360. The tents are air conditioned, and a facility administrator told reporters that the main complaint he hears from children on site is that the tents get too cold sometimes. 
 
 According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, boys and girls are kept in separate tents and use separate bathrooms and showers. 
 
 Reporters weren't allowed to enter any tents holding children. Two girls who stopped briefly in front of reporters said that they were doing well. 
 
 ___ 
 
 12 p.m. 
 
 A Democratic lawmaker says an eastern Kansas nonprofit that has a contract with the federal government to care for unaccompanied minors is caring for 44 immigrant youth, nine of them under the age of 12. 
 
 House Minority Leader Jim Ward and former U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom are working to reunite the children with their parents. 
 
 Grissom has assembled a team of 10 lawyers to provide legal services to the children. 
 
 Grissom says they have been led to believe some of the children were separated from parents in a crackdown on illegal crossings of the U.S-Mexico border, but that is not confirmed. 
 
 Grissom, Ward, state officials and officials from The Villages, which operates five group homes home on a 400-acre (162-hectare) site outside Topeka, are set to meet on the issue Wednesday. 
 
 ___ 
 
 11:55 a.m. 
 
 A Democratic congresswoman says children as young as 4 and 5 are among a group of 22 unaccompanied migrant children being held in a Catholic Charities facility south of Miami. 
 
 U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz says conditions at the Monsignor Bryan Walsh Children's Village she visited on Monday are much better than at the Homestead Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, which she toured Saturday. 
 
 That center is holding about 1,000 migrants, including 70 who've been separated from their parents. 
 
 President Donald Trump signed an order last week ending the policy, but many children remain separated. 
 
 Wasserman Shultz told reporters on Monday that she considers the practice of separating children from their parents "sadistic," ''demonic," and "outrageous." 
 
 She noted that she saw two minor children who have newborns at the Children's Village. 
 
 ___ 
 
 11:50 a.m. 
 
 U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Trump administration immigration policies during a speech at a conference in Nevada while hundreds of protesters rallied outside. 
 
 Sessions told a convention sponsored by the National Association of School Resource Officers in Reno on Monday that the controversy over immigration is a "difficult and frustrating situation" that requires Congress to pass new legislation. 
 
 He says many children detained at the southern border were brought there by violent gang members, and that "children have indeed borne much of the burden of our broken immigration system." 
 
 Sessions says the compassionate thing to do is protect children from violence and drugs, put criminals in jail and secure borders. He calls the alternative, open borders, "both radical and dangerous." 
 
 No arrests were immediately reported outside, where demonstrators with signs, drums and a mariachi band waged a peaceful protest. 
 
 Some sat in a busy roadway for while police diverted traffic around the casino-hotel where Sessions was speaking. 
 
 ___ 
 
 11:25 a.m. 
 
 U.S. defense officials say the Trump administration has chosen two military bases in Texas to house detained migrants. 
 
 The officials identified the bases as Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about a pending announcement. 
 
 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had said on Sunday that two bases had been selected but he would not identify them. 
 
 One official said unaccompanied children detained after crossing the U.S. border would be sheltered at one of the bases and the other base would house families of migrant detainees. 
 
 Under the arrangement, the Defense Department would provide the land but the operations would be run by other agencies. 
 
 — Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns. 
 
 ____ 
 
 11:05 a.m. 
 
 A Republican congressman says unaccompanied migrant children housed at a Catholic Charities facility in South Florida are being treated "exceptionally well" and are "happy." 
 
 U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo toured Catholic Charities Boystown south of Miami Monday morning. 
 
 He says some children were in classrooms and others were on a field trip to an aquarium. 
 
 Curbelo says the "children were smiling, they were happy." 
 
 Curbelo says he opposed President Donald Trump's policy of separating migrant children from family members detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. But he says the facility is doing a good job caring for 22 children. 
 
 Trump signed an executive order last week ending the policy, but many children remain separated. 
 
 Curbelo says he will work to find a permanent workable immigration policy. 
 
 ___ 
 
 11 a.m. 
 
 More than a dozen protesters are blocking a busy road in downtown Reno, Nevada, near where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is appearing to speak at a school safety conference. 
 
 The Monday morning demonstration includes several people holding a banner saying "No Human is Illegal" to call attention to Trump administration immigration policy and the separation of children and families at the U.S. border. 
 
 Reno police on bicycles have blocked traffic around the protesters near a downtown casino-hotel. Some demonstrators have promised to engage in peaceful civil disobedience and invite arrest. 
 
 Nearly two dozen Nevada groups in a progressive alliance tried last week to persuade the national school law enforcement group hosting the conference to withdraw Sessions' invitation. 
 
 Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, says that as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Sessions has important information to share. 
 
 ___ 
 
 10:45 a.m. 
 
 A team of federal law enforcement officers entered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Oregon, to secure government property as protesters continued a demonstration against Trump administration immigration policies. 
 
 Federal Protective Service spokesman Rob Sperling says officers entered the building during the early hours Monday. Protesters did not try to stop them. 
 
 Sperling says it's a precautionary move, and there's no indication that activists camped outside the facility have entered it. 
 
 Portland's ICE headquarters has been the site of a round-the-clock protest since June 17. The occupation grew in size early last week and the building has been closed since Wednesday. 
 
 Sperling says there's no time frame for when employees will return. 
 
 ___ 
 
 8:40 a.m. 
 
 A coalition of civil rights, religious and union activists opposed to President Donald Trump's immigration policies are gearing up for a protest in Nevada outside a school safety conference where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the keynote speaker. 
 
 Several of the protesters gathering for Monday's rally outside a hotel-casino in Reno say they will engage in civil disobedience to bring attention to the separation of children and families at the U.S. border. 
 
 At least one, Bob Fulkerson, told The Associated Press he expects to be arrested. 
 
 Nearly two dozen Nevada groups in a progressive alliance tried unsuccessfully last week to persuade the national school law enforcement group hosting the conference to withdraw its invitation to Sessions. 
 
 Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, said Sessions has important information to share with school resource officers as the nation's top law enforcement officer. 
 
 ___ 
 
 8:25 a.m. 
 
 A U.S. congressman says he was turned away from trying to meet with detainees from the southern border crisis because of a chicken pox outbreak at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. 
 
 The Tacoma News Tribune reports that U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Democrat, went to the prison Saturday after hearing that a number of migrants who were separated from their children after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were transferred there from another federal prison in SeaTac. 
 
 Kilmer said he had official tours set up at both facilities but that it was canceled due to protest-related safety concerns. 
 
 And when the congressman tried to visit three detainees during the regularly scheduled visiting hours on Saturday, he was told that they were all quarantined due to chicken pox exposure. 
 
 ___ 
 
 10 p.m. 
 
 A Texas charitable organization says about 30 immigrant parents separated from their children after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have been freed into its care, but they don't know where their kids are or when they might see them again despite government assurances that family reunification would be well organized. 
 
 The released parents arrived Sunday at Annunciation House in El Paso. 
 
 The release is believed to be the first, large one of its kind since President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that preserved a "zero-tolerance" policy for entering the country illegally but ended the practice of separating immigrant parents and children. 
 
 Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia says the parents were brought by bus after federal authorities withdrew criminal charges. 
 
 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offered no immediate comment. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201806/2747/1155968404_5799880576001_5799877076001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true immigration Trump signs executive order halting family separations The furor over forcibly removing children from their parents prompted the administration to move without waiting for Congress. 
 
 President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that ends the administration’s policy of separating migrant families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, abandoning the president’s previous stance that only Congress can fix the problem. 
 
 “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office, flanked by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Vice President Mike Pence. “I think anybody with a heart would feel strongly about it. We don’t like to see families separated.” 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Yet Trump said that he wanted to continue enforcing a strong policy at the border, an issue he campaigned on: “We are keeping a very powerful border and it continues to be a zero tolerance. We have zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally.” 
 
 And the president continued to say that the underlying issue remains one for Congress to fix, titling the document an “executive order affording Congress an opportunity to address family separation.” 
 
 Administration officials also said that children who have already been separated from their parents won’t immediately be reunited, even if the parents remain in federal custody. 
 
 Breaking News Alerts Get breaking news when it happens — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 “For the minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, the sponsorship process will proceed as usual,” Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families, told POLITICO on Wednesday evening. 
 
 Another spokesman later said Wolfe had misspoken. 
 
 “It is still very early and we are awaiting guidance,” Brian Marriott, the HHS division’s senior director of communications, said in a statement. “Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors ... and reunifying minors with a relative or appropriate sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program. 
 
 “Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of UACs“ — unaccompanied alien children — “and the administration is working towards that for those UACs currently in HHS custody." 
 
 The executive order came after Trump and his team faced harsh criticism from lawmakers, activists, religious leaders and former first ladies over the separation of children from their parents in custody, which was panned almost universally as cruel and damaging to the kids’ well-being. 
 
 It was a remarkable shift from a president who is typically reluctant to bow to outside pressure. He often doubles down on his existing stance when confronted with criticism. 
 
 With cable news flashing images of migrant children held in cages and lawmakers’ offices facing a flood of angry phone calls, the president was under increased pressure to come up with a speedy solution. White House aides came to the conclusion on Wednesday that Congress was unlikely to act quickly to resolve the crisis, even though they sent signals that Trump would be willing to sign a narrow, stand-alone fix without other immigration-related provisions. 
 
 The decision to end the separation policy via executive action appeared to have happened quickly, and some in the White House were left in the dark. Key members of the White House legislative affairs team, which had been working with Hill lawmakers in a bid to find a legislative fix, were left out of the loop and hadn't seen text of the executive action as of early Wednesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the issue. 
 
 Nielsen and Justice Department officials went to the White House Wednesday morning to work with administration lawyers to draft the order. The action will direct the Department of Homeland Security to keep families together and will instruct the Department of Defense to help house the families because many of the detention centers are at capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. 
 
 Attorney General Jeff Sessions was slated to go to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to brief lawmakers on the administration’s plans. 
 
 Trump and his top aides, led by Nielsen, have been saying that the law requires them to separate children from parents who were being prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. 
 
 Nielsen and Trump repeatedly tried to blame Democrats for the situation at the border, saying that nothing could be done without a legislative resolution. But the separations were the direct result of a DOJ decision in April to prosecute border-crossers as criminals — a change Sessions described as “zero-tolerance.” The separation policy has been applied to most families detained at the border, with children handed over to federal welfare agencies after their parents are taken into custody by U.S. marshals. 
 
 Nielsen, who had expressed skepticism about moving forward with a zero-tolerance policy without action from Congress, has nonetheless become the public face of the crisis after defending the administration’s position during a tense briefing at the White House on Monday. On Tuesday night, protesters confronted her at a high-end Mexican restaurant in Washington. 
 
 Nielsen won’t abandon her demands for a legislative solution that would deal with family separations and accomplish Trump’s broader immigration agenda, according to a senior administration official. 
 
 “We’re still going to be pushing Congress to address this,” the official said. “That’s obvious and that’s not changing.” 
 
 The official said Nielsen was “a key player” in the talks at the White House on Wednesday morning, and had spent hours there. But the move appeared to take some Homeland Security Department officials by surprise. 
 
 The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement legal team wasn’t clued into the decision, according to a former DHS official with knowledge of the situation. “It sounds like they blindsided everybody,” this person said. “What changed in the last 12, 24 hours? … Either you believe that, operationally, this is what you need to be doing, or you don’t.” 
 
 ICE declined to comment, and several DHS component agencies did not immediately respond to related requests. 
 
 The executive action may not put an end to the question of how migrant children are handled at the border. The American Civil Liberties Union, which is already suing the administration on behalf of separated families, said prolonged detention of asylum seekers even as a unit would be unacceptable. “What we don’t want to see happen is we’ll keep the child and parent together but we’re going to detain them for a long time,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the nonprofit’s Immigrant Rights Project. “We don’t want to see a situation where they’re building more and more detention facilities. 
 
 Public outcry over the family separations reached new heights on Wednesday after The Associated Press reported that the administration is placing babies and toddlers in “tender age” shelters. The story capped a grim 24 hours that stood out as a low point even for a White House that long ago grew accustomed to operating in a perpetual state of crisis. 
 
 On Tuesday night, shortly before the AP story broke, Trump attended a $100,000-plus-per-person fundraiser at his hotel in Washington. Before that, he met with House Republicans at the Capitol, where he sounded off on everything from trade to fighter jets, while only briefly acknowledging the outcry over the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. 
 
 Yet on Wednesday, Trump announced he’d delay the annual congressional picnic at the White House, planned for Thursday. “I said, you know, it doesn't feel right to have a picnic for Congress when we're working on doing something very important,” he said in a meeting with lawmakers at the White House. “It didn’t feel exactly right to me.” 
 
 During the meeting, Trump said he hoped his action would be “matched by legislation.” 
 
 Behind the scenes, White House officials have grown increasingly concerned about the fallout from the policy. Trump, for his part, seemed to vacillate between doubling down on the policy and complaining that Democrats are using the issue to sabotage him politically, and signaling to aides that he wants the issue resolved. 
 
 “It’s the Democrats fault, they won’t give us the votes needed to pass good immigration legislation,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “They want open borders, which breeds horrible crime. Republicans want security. But I am working on something — it never ends!” The president also retweeted a tweet by Darrell Scott, a pastor and Trump supporter, that declared, “Once the mid terms are over, liberals won’t talk about detained or separated illegal immigrant children until 2020. #itsallpolitics.” 
 
 poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201806/3051/1155968404_5799817983001_5799805714001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" 
 
 Earlier Wednesday morning, Trump again defended his border security policies, while bashing the news media. The tweet came one day after the president revived the divisive anti-immigration rhetoric that defined his presidential campaign, warning Tuesday on Twitter that immigrants would “infest“ the United States. 
 
 “The Fake News is not mentioning the safety and security of our Country when talking about illegal immigration,” he wrote on Twitter. “Our immigration laws are the weakest and worst anywhere in the world, and the Dems will do anything not to change them & to obstruct-want open borders which means crime!” 
 
 The swirling controversy has sparked tensions inside the White House and among Trump’s allies, again laying bare the divide between the president’s hard-line advisers, including policy aide Stephen Miller, and more moderate influences. 
 
 Trump told lawmakers on Tuesday that his daughter and adviser Ivanka — who was widely criticized after posting a photograph of herself cuddling with her infant son amid the crisis — had about the separations. Ivanka Trump tweeted on Wednesday, after the executive order was signed: “Thank you @POTUS for taking critical action ending family separation at our border. Congress must now act + find a lasting solution that is consistent with our shared values;the same values that so many come here seeking as they endeavor to create a better life for their families.” 
 
 A White House official said on Wednesday that first lady Melania Trump had also been arguing behind the scenes, including in direct conversations with her husband, to end the family separation policy. 
 
 But others close to the president had encouraged him to double down on the policy, arguing that border security was one of the central pillars of his campaign and is deeply popular with his conservative base. 
 
 “It’s a mess,” one former White House official said. 
 
 One Republican former Department of Homeland Security official who has ties to the Trump administration and asked for anonymity to talk about the policy put it bluntly: “I’m ashamed of what they’re doing.” 
 
 The White House faced a wave of damaging stories about the family separations — from leaked audio of children crying to the revelations about the high cost of detaining children alone. The AP story, which detailed “play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis,” struck a particular chord, prompting MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to break down in tears on her Tuesday night television show. 
 
 Trump’s critics also pounced on an offensive comment by Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Fox News. When Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas referenced a report that a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome was among the children who had been separated from her family at the border, Lewandowski could be heard saying, “Womp, womp,” later adding that immigrants give up rights when they cross the border illegally. 
 
 Lewandowski is still firmly in Trump’s inner circle as an informal adviser and recently joined Vice President Mike Pence’s political action committee. 
 
 In response to criticism of his remarks, Lewandowski complained Wednesday on Twitter that there was “lots of Fake News today” and argued he simply “mocked a liberal who attempted to politicize children as opposed to discussing the real issue which is fixing a broken immigration system.” 
 
 While some in Trump’s inner circle have defended the policy, lawmakers in both parties have condemned it. Even the pope has weighed in, telling Reuters that he agreed with recent comments by U.S. Roman Catholic bishops who called the policy “immoral.” 
 
 During her dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Tuesday night, one protester asked Nielsen, “How can you enjoy a Mexican dinner as you’re deporting and imprisoning tens of thousands of people who come here seeking asylum in the United States?” 
 
 Nielsen left the restaurant and a DHS spokesman later said: “While having a work dinner tonight, the secretary and her staff heard from a small group of protesters who share her concern with our current immigration laws that have created a crisis on our southern border. The secretary encourages all — including this group — who want to see an immigration system that works, that contributes to our economy, that protects our security, and that reflects our values to reach out to members of Congress and seek their support to close the terrible immigration loopholes that have made our system a mess.” 
 
 Ted Hesson, Rachael Bade, Eliana Johnson, Josh Gerstein and Stephanie Murray contributed to this report. ||||| A tweet by the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, about her ejection from a Virginia restaurant on Friday broke federal ethics rules, a leading expert said. 
 
 'All I hear is my daughter, crying': a Salvadoran father's plight after separation at border Read more 
 
 On Saturday, Sanders posted: “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington [Virginia] to leave because I work for POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.” 
 
 Walter Shaub, federal ethics chief under Barack Obama and briefly Donald Trump and now a fierce critic of the administration, responded: “Sanders used her official govt account to condemn a private business for personal reasons … she can lob attacks on her own time but not using her official position.” 
 
 The controversy came at the end of a week of fierce debate over a Trump policy which mandated the separation of children from their parents when such families entered the US illegally. 
 
 Between April and early June, according to federal statistics, more than 2,300 children were taken. On Wednesday, amid international condemnation and with even Republican supporters in Congress beginning to waver, Trump signed an executive order nominally – but not conclusively – stopping the practice. 
 
 On Saturday, groups of Democrats visited federal facilities, seeking details about how the children will be reunited with their families. The Department of Homeland Security said it knew where all the children were and was working to reunite them. 
 
 On Sunday, Trump returned to the attack on Twitter, advocating the end of due process. “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our ountry,” the president wrote. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.” 
 
 Amid the controversy over immigration, and mixed messages from the president about congressional efforts at reform, there has been no White House press briefing since Monday. Then, Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, addressed reporters on the separations policy. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Red Hen restaurant in downtown Lexington, Virginia. Photograph: Daniel Lin/AP 
 
 Nielsen and the policy adviser Stephen Miller both found themselves confronted by protesters in Mexican restaurants in Washington. The Red Hen seats 26 and serves “inspired Shenandoah cuisine” a three-hour drive from DC. Its owner told the Washington Post Sanders was served with a selection of cheeses before she decided, following a consultation with staff members, to ask her to leave the premises. 
 
 From El Salvador to the US: handcuffed at the border, separated for months Read more 
 
 “I was babbling a little,” Stephanie Wilkinson said, “but I got my point across in a polite and direct fashion. I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty and compassion and cooperation. I said, �?I’d like to ask you to leave.’” 
 
 Sanders, Wilkinson said, replied: “That’s fine. I’ll go.” Others at her table followed. Wilkinson said: “They offered to pay. I said, �?No. It’s on the house.’” 
 
 
 
 The owner added: “I would have done the same thing again. We just felt there are moments in time when people need to live their convictions. This appeared to be one.” 
 
 The story set off a Twitter battle between Trump supporters and opponents, many on both sides comparing it to a recent supreme court ruling that said the owner of a Colorado cake shop was right to refuse service to a gay couple, based on his religious beliefs. 
 
 Sanders’ father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, waded in, writing: “Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the �?Hate Plate’. And appetizers are �?small plates for small minds’.” 
 
 Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker who many blame for US politics’ descent into vitriol and schism in the 1990s, wrote: “The increasing personal nastiness toward people who work for President Trump reflects the left’s understanding that they are losing. Nastiness reflects desperation, not strength. They can’t win the argument so they use nastiness. Sad and dangerous.” 
 
 Shaub launched a series of tweets of his own. 
 
 
 
 “Sarah,” he began. “I know you don’t care even a tiny little bit about the ethics rules, but using your official account for this is a clear violation … It’s the same as if [a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] agent pulled out his badge when a restaurant tried to throw him/her out. 
 
 Slaves knew 'the fearful anguish of broken hearts'. In Trump's America, migrants do too | Daina Ramey Berry Read more 
 
 “Sanders used her official gov[ernmen]t account to condemn a private business for personal reasons. Seeks to coerce business by using her office to get public to pressure it. Violates endorsements ban too.” 
 
 The Red Hen found itself at the centre of online efforts to boost or damage its customer reviews, hoax booking calls and differing opinions locally. Amid a media scrum, Tom Lomax, a local business owner, brought flowers as a show of support. 
 
 He called Wilkinson a “force of nature” and “one of the biggest drivers of the downtown” and told the Associated Press: “We support our own here, great little community we have.” 
 
 Stephen Russek, a former restaurant owner, said: “You have your political opinions, you don’t throw somebody out of your restaurant. They ought to be shut down.” 
 
 Shaub added: “There’s no ethics rule against Sarah Sanders fans being cartoonish hypocrites in defending merchants discriminating against gay people but howling when a merchant rejects a human rights violator based on her involvement in harming babies & children. Ridicule will have to suffice.”
– The head of US Customs and Border Protection told reporters Monday that he has temporarily stopped referring adults for criminal prosecution if they cross the border illegally with children. Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said the referrals were suspended after President Trump issued an executive order last week halting the practice of separating families that cross the border illegally. The Trump administration's zero tolerance policy, in which anyone who crosses the border illegally is prosecuted, is still in effect, but McAleenan said parents can't currently be prosecuted since they can no longer be separated from their children. He said he is working on a plan to resume referrals of parents. After his comments, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders quickly reiterated the halting of referrals for prosecution is only temporary, the AP reports. She also spoke at the press briefing about the executive order, noting that it "will only last a short amount of time because we'll run out of space, we're going to run out of resources in order to keep people together," CNN reports. She said the administration is calling on Congress to change immigration laws and has asked the Pentagon to provide space for families who cross the border without documentation. Meanwhile, Trump on Monday called for ending due process for those who cross the border illegally, Politico reports. He said the US should implement a "nice, simple system" in which anyone in the country illegally is sent back over the border without appearing before a judge; at the press briefing, Sanders defended that idea: "Virtually all Americans agree that it makes no sense that an illegal alien sets one foot on American soil and then they would go through a three- to five-year judicial process to be removed from the country. ... Just because you don't see a judge doesn't mean you aren't receiving due process."