President Donald Trump criticized CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday by falsely claiming that his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents originated with his predecessors.
‘60 Minutes did a phony story about child separation when they know we had the exact same policy as the Obama Administration,’ Trump falsely tweeted.
‘In fact a picture of children in jails was used by other Fake Media to show how bad (cruel) we are, but it was in 2014 during O years.
‘Obama separated children from parents, as did Bush etc., because that is the policy and law.
President Donald Trump criticized CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday by falsely claiming that his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents originated with his predecessors
‘60 Minutes did a phony story about child separation when they know we had the exact same policy as the Obama Administration,’ Trump falsely tweeted
‘In fact a picture of children in jails was used by other Fake Media to show how bad (cruel) we are, but it was in 2014 during O years’
Trump’s tweet came just hours after his administration shut the country’s busiest border crossing and fired tear gas into Mexico on Sunday to repel Central American migrants approaching the border
‘I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border.
‘So with Obama seperation [sic] is fine, but with Trump it’s not. Fake 60 Minutes!’
Trump’s tweet came just hours after his administration shut the country’s busiest border crossing and fired tear gas into Mexico on Sunday to repel Central American migrants approaching the border.
Trump has vowed that asylum-seekers from Central America would not easily enter the country.
The President reacted to a 60 Minutes segment which found that the family separation policy, in which migrant children were detained separately from their parents, was implemented earlier and in greater numbers than was originally acknowledged.
The segment told the story of Immers, a three-year-old Honduran boy who was taken from his father at the border this past spring.
The President reacted to a 60 Minutes segment which told the story of Immers, a three-year-old Honduran boy who was taken from his father at the border this past spring
Some 2,500 children were separated from their parents earlier this year after they crossed the border from Mexico.
Trump reversed the policy after public outrage over images of crying children being taken away from their parents.
Trump’s tweet is incorrect because it contradicts the President’s own statements last month.
The President said that separating migrant families at the border could deter illegal immigration and that he was considering several options to tighten border security.
‘If they feel there will be separation, they don’t come,’ he said of migrants during comments to reporters at the White House.
Trump also claimed, without providing evidence, that immigrants were ‘grabbing children and they’re using children to come in to our country in many cases.’
He stopped short, however, of committing to a new round of family separations.
‘We’re looking at a lot of different things having to do with illegal immigration,’ he said, again calling on Congress to pass immigration legislation.
‘We’re going to do whatever we can do to get it slowed down.’
His former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, released a statement to the media dated April 6, 2018, which touted a new ‘zero-tolerance policy.’
‘The situation at our Southwest Border is unacceptable,’ Sessions said in the news release.
‘Congress has failed to pass effective legislation that serves the national interest—that closes dangerous loopholes and fully funds a wall along our southern border.
Trump claims the family separation policy was not new, but his former Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced a ‘zero tolerance policy’ in April that he later acknowledged was meant to serve as a ‘deterrent’ to illegal immigration
‘As a result, a crisis has erupted at our Southwest Border that necessitates an escalated effort to prosecute those who choose to illegally cross our border.’
In June, Sessions doubled down on the policy, saying it was meant to be a deterrent.
Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security Secretary, contradicted Sessions’ statement when asked if the policy was a deterrent.
‘I find that offensive,’ Nielsen said.
During the Obama administration, migrant families were kept together while detained, according to Vox.
But the courts stepped in and determined that detaining entire families to deter illegal immigration violated previous rulings which placed limits on how long minors can be detained.
Only in extreme cases where the children were at risk from potential abuse from their guardians were they separated.
In 2014, the Obama administration was grappling with an influx in migrants fleeing violence in Central America.
‘In three years on my watch, we probably deported or returned or repatriated about a million people to enforce border security,’ Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, told NBC News.
‘One of the things I could not do is separate a child from his or her mother, or literally pull a mother from his or her arms.
‘I just couldn’t do it.’