VENICE - Film legend Errol Morris said the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents by Donald Trump's US administration was "inhumane and cruel" as his new documentary about the policy premiered at the Venice Film Festival Thursday.
"Do we need borders? Do we need immigration law? We do," the Oscar-winning US director told AFP ahead of the screening of his film "Separated". "But the idea is laws should be fair and humane."
"And this particular policy struck me, still strikes me, as inhumane, as cruel as mean."
In 2017, during Donald Trump's first year as US president, his administration raised the idea of separating children from their parents as a way to deter illegal immigration -- a key plank of his campaign.
Officially launched in April 2018, the "zero-tolerance" policy allowed criminal proceedings to be brought against anyone who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally, resulting in parents being immediately taken into custody without their children.
According to the documentary, which cited official government figures, at least 4,227 children were taken from their parents -- and more than 1,000 are still separated.
"What horrifies me is that they didn't keep records. They separated families in such a way that it might be impossible ever to reunite them," said Morris, 76.
The veteran director won an Oscar in 2004 for "The Fog of War", an astonishingly frank account of the Vietnam War by one its architects, former US secretary of defence Robert McNamara.
- Divisive -
Morris's new film -- being shown out of competition in Venice -- is based on a book by US journalist Jacob Soboroff, who helped expose the desperate plight of the children.
"He had called me and asked me if I knew anybody who might be willing to turn his book into a movie... I volunteered myself," Morris said.
The documentary is largely based on statements by Jonathan White, who was deputy director of the US Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the time and who opposed the policy applied by his superior, Scott Lloyd, who is also interviewed.
Lawsuits and a public outcry, even among Trump's own Republican Party, forced the administration by mid-2018 to halt the separations.
In practice, however, the Trump administration continued to separate families under another regulation which allowed undocumented parents to be arrested and deported if they had committed a serious crime.
Immigration remains a hugely divisive issue for many Americans ahead of November's presidential election, in which Trump is running against Vice President Kamala Harris.
A recent official US report found the government may have lost track of up to 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children in the past four years.
By Jordi Zamora