A Microsoft spokesperson told Buzzfeed, which first spotted the deletion, "An employee briefly deleted the blog after seeing commentary in social media.

"This was a mistake and as soon as it was noticed the blog was reverted to previous language."

The post referred to the use of Microsoft's Azure Government cloud service by ICE and the Department of Defence.

Microsoft @azure is "proud to support" the work of ICE. This quote is from a page that was created this year. To all the people lecturing me recently on having negative feelings about MS buying Github: y'all are ok with this? I'm not ok with this. pic.twitter.com/vm26BmWF81

— taotetek (@taotetek) June 17, 2018

"The agency is currently implementing transformative technologies for homeland security and public safety, and we're proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud."

Earlier, before the blog deletion was pointed out, Microsoft, like other technology companies, had tried to distance itself from the child separation issue.

The company had issued a statement, saying it was dismayed by the events taking place on the border.

Our response to questions that have come up regarding separating families at the US-Mexico border: pic.twitter.com/TUuiB2sJii

— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) 18 June 2018

In an email to Motherboard, the company said: "Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since the end of World War II.

"As a company Microsoft has worked for over 20 years to combine technology with the rule of law to ensure that children who are refugees and immigrants can remain with their parents.

“We need to continue to build on this noble tradition rather than change course now. We urge the administration to change its policy and Congress to pass legislation ensuring children are no longer separated from their families.”