Former CIA Director Michael Hayden on Saturday bashed the Trump administration for separating illegal immigrant children from their parents at the U.S. border by tweeting a picture of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp from World War II with the words: "Other governments have separated mothers and children."
Hayden, 73, who also served as NSA director, has worked in key intelligence posts under former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Birkenau was a concentration-extermination camp that was part of the Auschwitz complex in Nazi-occupied Poland. An estimated 1.3 million people were delivered to the camp by train between 1942 and 1944.
At least 1.1 million died in the camp's gas chambers, 90 percent of whom were Jews. Approximately one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at Birkenau.
He also is a retired four-star Air Force general.
The White House has come under fire for Attorney General Jeff Sessions' "zero tolerance" policy that refers all cases of illegal entry for criminal prosecution.
U.S. protocol prohibits detaining children with their parents because the children are not charged with a crime, though the parents are.
The Associated Press reported Friday that nearly 2,000 immigrant children have been separated from their families over the past six weeks during a crackdown on illegal entries, according to Homeland Security.
President Donald Trump on Saturday blamed the situation on Democrats, tweeting Saturday that party members "can fix their forced family breakup at the border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!"
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