As the daughter of one of America’s most divisive presidents, Ivanka Trump is no stranger to controversy. But on Sunday, she sparked a backlash by sharing a photo of herself holding her two-year-old son, Theodore. Some Twitter users labelled the image “offensive”, amid reports that hundreds of migrant children have been removed from their parents by US border agents.
The storm surrounding family separations by immigration authorities has been brewing for several months. Ms Trump, who serves as an adviser to her father Donald Trump, has so far not responded to the criticism of the photo or the US government’s stance on immigration. She has previously said she would not “undermine” the current administration by publicly voicing her disagreement with the administration’s policies.
Even before Ivanka Trump posted the image of her son, anger had been growing about the plight of children arriving in the US, with the hashtag #Wherearethechildren used over 800,000 times on Twitter. Some social media users appear to have conflated the figures of unaccompanied minors and those who had been separated from their parents, but the outcry remains significant.
