Trump’s predecessors could end up defining a major domestic policy issue of his term. But the kind of pictures so feared by Mr. He has falsely claimed that Democrats are responsible for the practice. Even evangelical supporters like Franklin Graham said its policy was “disgraceful.”Īmong those who have professed objections to the policy is the president himself, who despite his tough rhetoric on immigration and his clear directive to show no mercy in enforcing the law, has searched publicly for someone else to blame for dividing families.
With thousands of children detained in makeshift shelters, his spokesmen this past week had to deny accusations that the administration was acting like Nazis. Trump ordered a new effort to criminally prosecute anyone who crossed the border unlawfully - with few exceptions for parents traveling with their minor children.Īnd now Mr. Last month, facing a sharp uptick in illegal border crossings, Mr. Trump’s senior policy adviser, never gave up on the idea. Kelly’s comments touched off a swift backlash.īut advocates inside the administration, most prominently Stephen Miller, Mr.
Trump, though he had made an immigration crackdown one of the central issues of his campaign, succumbed to the same reality, publicly dropping the idea after Mr. Bush and Barack Obama, the idea of crying children torn from their parents’ arms was simply too inhumane - and too politically perilous - to embrace as policy, and Mr. Kelly, then the homeland security secretary, said in March 2017, “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network.”įor more than a decade, even as illegal immigration levels fell over all, seasonal spikes in unauthorized border crossings had bedeviled American presidents in both political parties, prompting them to cast about for increasingly aggressive ways to discourage migrants from making the trek. WASHINGTON - Almost immediately after President Trump took office, his administration began weighing what for years had been regarded as the nuclear option in the effort to discourage immigrants from unlawfully entering the United States.Ĭhildren would be separated from their parents if the families had been apprehended entering the country illegally, John F.
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