Hillary Clinton: Separating families at border a 'moral crisis'

"Every human being with a sense of compassion and decency should be outraged," Clinton said.

President Donald Trump has defended the harsh immigration policy, which has taken nearly 2,000 immigrant children away from their parents.

The separation policy has come under increasingly strong criticism, with accounts of children kept in cages and parents not knowing where their children are.

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, said she had warned during the campaign of this type of situation — that Trump's hard-line immigration stance would result in family separations.

"Now as we watch with broken hearts, that's exactly what's happening," she said.

The separations stem from a Trump administration policy that turns all cases of people trying to enter the country illegally over for criminal prosecution. Children are not detained with their parents when those parents are facing a criminal charge, as per U.S. protocol.

Trump has falsely blamed Democrats, and his administration has echoed his stance by claiming it was enforcing the law, with some using the Bible as religious justification.

Clinton pushed back on all of those points, saying the separations are required by no law and grounded in no religion.

"The test of any nation is how we treat the most vulnerable among us," she said. "We are a better country than one that tears families apart."