A new report by the inspector general shows that former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, alongside former deputy Rod Rosenstein, pushed for the separation of children from parents who were crossing into the United States illegally. The “zero-tolerance” policy went on to separate nearly 3,000 children from their parents.
The policy was announced in April 2018 by Sessions. It said that every immigrant who illegally crossed the U.S. border would be prosecuted. In May of that year, five U.S. prosecutors asked Sessions and Rosenstein to enact an age minimum for the children, according to the draft report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The New York Times first reported the details of the draft. They revealed that Sessions told prosecutors, “We need to take away children.” One participant added in short that Sessions also said, “If you care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”
Just a week later, during a second call, Rosenstein told the same five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He even scolded government lawyers for declining to prosecute two cases due to the children being very young at the time.
Horowitz’s report called the Justice Department leadership the “driving force” behind the zero-tolerance policy. It said that Sessions and others only supported the policy in an effort to deter illegal immigration.
“The department’s single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations,” the draft report read.
The report also highlighted the fact that child separation was going on before the 2018 policy. In El Paso, a 2017 policy known as the “pilot program” also snatched children away from their families.
One government lawyer brought his concerns to his superiors to no avail.
“We have now heard of us taking breastfeeding defendant moms away from their infants,” he said before adding, “I did not believe this until I looked at the duty log.”
However, the Trump administration has maintained that separating children from their families was simply a consequence of prosecuting people entering the country illegitimately.
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