Your use of the word "criminal" to refer to someone crossing a border without permission is striking, and highlights the separation of decency and law in my eyes.
Perhaps if you could imagine yourself in their situation, you might find yourself doing the same thing seeking a better life for your children - there many far worse ways to get branded a 'criminal'. Perhaps it's fair enough that you might seek to exclude such people purely for your own benefit and your country's benefit, and make them suffer in all manner of arbitrary ways as a deterrent. However, I'd be cautious about elevating yourself above them morally - I can't pretend to do that.
There are 7.6 billion people in the world? How many of those 7.6 billion people would love to come to the USA? The numbers are staggering and one needs to control the influx or the USA becomes the place those folks are fleeing. Yes criminal may be a harsh word, but it also a correct word. We are a nation of laws and it is against our laws to enter the country illegally.
Where do you draw the line ... who of those 7.6 million folks can come in and who can't. It is our right to decide, not there's.
I'm pretty sure I covered all that:
Perhaps it's fair enough that you might seek to exclude such people purely for your own benefit and your country's benefit, and make them suffer in all manner of arbitrary ways as a deterrent.
I think you know this sentence was the main point of my comment:
However, I'd be cautious about elevating yourself above them morally - I can't pretend to do that.
Taking criminals who illegally crossed the border and are awaiting a court date away is not abducting a child. Every day in the good old USA, as in the vast majority of the worlds countries, the children of criminals are taken from their parents when their parents break the law. Those children aren't placed in day care facilities with full services. If you're outraged by this, then you must be especially outraged when a rapist's child no longer has his daddy at home.