Although U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 to keep migrant families together (following weeks of separating children from their parents at the border), Toronto NP Emmet O’Reilly and his wife Hilary Evans Cameron know more needs to be done. “Now that this particularly heinous policy…is stopped, we are trying to make the most of the attention and point out issues with immigrant application processes and detention both in the U.S. and here in Canada,” says O’Reilly. The couple joined a Toronto rally on World Refugee Day (also June 20) to protest against the increased enforcement of a policy that allows U.S. authorities to criminally prosecute anyone caught crossing the U.S. border illegally. They also organized a toy drive to build a towering “toy pile of shame” in front of the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, and wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star about the legal and ethical limits of separating refugees from their children. “People seeking to immigrate are seeking help. They are families and often desperate, abused and terrified ones. To treat them as criminals is wrong, to treat them without even the level of decency accorded criminal suspects is abhorrent,” says O’Reilly, suggesting this is not simply a U.S. issue, but an issue that affects everyone. (Toronto Star, June 17)