Evil, illegal, a national disgrace. Trump's latest immigration policy of punishing parents who ask for asylum at the border by taking and detaining their children has been called all these things. But politicians and experts seem to ignore this fact: Trump's all-out attack on immigrants harm women the worst.

Immigration agents are taking children as young as 12 months from their mothers. They are ambushing courthouses to abduct, then deport, immigrant women who are looking for protection from abusive spouses. They have effectively scared immigrant women all over the country from reporting rape and domestic violence to local police. And as of yesterday, courts are now under orders to deny asylum to women who survived and are fleeing domestic abuse and gang violence.

This is a national crisis--and we need both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to act. Right now, all eyes are on Trump's immigration enforcement--from the United Nations, which is demanding an "immediate halt" to Trump's latest policy if taking children from parents at the border, to newspaper headlines nationwide. 

There are many ways members of Congress can step in to stop these human rights abuses: They can publicly condemn these inhumane practices to increase pressure on both the administration and their colleagues in Congress to act; they can keep putting Trump's human rights atrocities in the public eye by visiting detention facilities, as Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Pramila Jayapal just did, or by joining in civil disobedience protests, as Representative John Lewis and others just did; they can even commit to cutting funding for Trump's immigration force in September's federal budget appropriations to ensure these agencies won't be able to carry out Trump's orders.

If we all speak up right now, Congress will be forced to use its platform to oppose Trump's ever-worsening immigration enforcement.