Top US Justice officials pushed family separations: Watchdog

Top-ranking officials at the US Department of Justice, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, pursued a 2018 policy that called for prosecutions of all migrants who crossed the border illegally despite knowing that it would result in family separations, according to a government watchdog.

After spending over two years investigating the “zero tolerance” policy, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found the senior officials aggressively implemented the policy in spite of concerns from prosecutors and judges involved in a 2017 pilot program that separated 280 families in the El Paso, Texas, area.

The Trump administration’s policy required that government lawyers prosecute all unlawful border crossings, including people coming as families, which resulted in parents being separated from their children.

In 2016, Donald Trump promised to curb immigration by building a wall on the US border with Mexico, and launched a crackdown on both legal and illegal entries into the country soon after he assumed office.

In May 2018, Sessions announced the "zero tolerance" policy towards undocumented migrants and refugees, promising to prosecute those who crossed the southern border illegally.

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Part of that approach had been separating children from their families and putting them in custody while their parents are processed. 

In April of the same year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) adopted the criminal prosecution policy across the entire border, although there was evidence showing the government was having difficulty locating family members who were separated during the pilot program, the new report found.

Sessions “thought it was the right thing to do” in spite of the effect on families, said Gene Hamilton, a DOJ lawyer.

US attorneys who were supposed to conduct the prosecutions were “surprised” when Border Patrol agents started to send them family cases for prosecution and had not been notified by headquarters of the change, the OIG found.

The OIG said, that over 3,000 children - including some under 5 years old - were taken into government custody when a parent was referred for prosecution between May 5 and June 20, 2018.

Attorneys are still working to reunite families and have not been able to locate the parents of over 600 children, says a court filing in an ongoing court case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that strongly disagreed with the policy.

The OIG carried out 45 interviews for the report, and unlike Sessions who refused to participate, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein took part in one of the interviews.

When asked whether he knew the policy would result in the separation of families, Rosenstein said, “I think the answer is yes.”

On Thursday, Rosenstein issued a statement, saying, “zero tolerance” was a “failed policy that should never have been proposed or implemented ... I wish we all had done better.”

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A coalition of immigrant rights groups have rallied outside the White House to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

When publicized, heartbreaking images and audio of children separated from their parents and crying for their loved ones while being held in chain-link fence cages stocked outrage across the political spectrum in the United States and abroad. Officials reversed the policy just months after it was announced.

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