WASHINGTON—Acting to silence a fierce domestic and international outcry over his separation of children and parents at the border, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an order Wednesday to detain families together — but indefinitely.

Trump’s push for the extended detention of children generated a fresh round of denunciation. The vague language of the order made it unclear how he would actually proceed. And an administration official told the New York Times that they would not make any effort to immediately reunite the 2,000-plus families that have already been separated.

Still, the decision was a significant reversal from a president who loathes to be seen backing down, especially on illegal immigration, and who had repeatedly lied that he was powerless to end the separations if Congress did not pass a new law.

“We’re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together. I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” Trump said upon signing the order.

Trump relented under pressure from not only Democrats but from Republicans, who were being inundated with outraged phone calls and had grown worried about potential harm to their midterm campaigns.

By Wednesday morning, the people criticizing the policy included the Pope, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called the policy “wrong” and “unacceptable.”

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The order was an implicit admission that the president and his top officials had been deceiving the public.

Until he signed the order, Trump, his spokespeople, Vice-President Mike Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had falsely insisted that he could not end the separations with such an order. Trump, professing to “hate” his own policy, had claimed he was merely abiding by a nonexistent law he said “Democrats gave us.”

His position became untenable as the furor ballooned, fuelled by disturbing photos of children caged in a warehouse-like facility in Texas and by audio of children wailing for their mothers and fathers. Trump said he had been moved by the images.

“I feel very strongly about it. I think anybody with a heart would feel very strongly about it,” he said.

His proposal for indefinite detention, however, prompted yet more accusations of heartlessness.

“This executive order would replace one crisis for another. Children don’t belong in jail at all, even with their parents, under any set of circumstances. If the president thinks placing families in jail indefinitely is what people have been asking for, he is grossly mistaken,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

Trudeau refused to directly condemn the separation policy on Monday, saying he would not “play politics” and that part of his job is to maintain good relations with the U.S. He delivered a condemnation on Wednesday, offering his first direct criticism of any of Trump’s domestic policies.

“What’s going on in the United States is wrong. I can’t imagine what the families living through this are enduring. Obviously this is not the way we do things in Canada,” he said as he entered a Liberal caucus meeting.

More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since Trump changed U.S. policy last month. The order did not include specific language about reunifying those families.

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The families being detained are accused of entering the country illegally. Some of them are planning to request legal asylum but crossed the border at locations other than legal crossings.

The controversy began when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in May that he would begin a “zero-tolerance” policy of criminally prosecuting anyone caught entering illegally, rather than charging them with civil offences as in the past. Sessions and other hardliners in the administration saw the separations as a deterrent to parents thinking about trying to come in illegally from Mexico.

Trump’s new order did not abandon the zero-tolerance policy. Instead, the order simply said the administration’s new plan is “to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.” It directed the military to create space to house immigrant families if necessary.

It was not immediately obvious how the U.S. government would interpret the “consistent with law and available resources” phrasing or what kind of shelter the military would provide. And to the dismay of immigration advocates, the order also sought to legalize the indefinite detention of children.

The order told Sessions to ask the courts to change a 20-year-old legal agreement that requires children to be released without “unnecessary delay,” which has been interpreted to mean within 20 days. Instead, Trump wants the children kept in detention until their legal cases are resolved — which can take months in the case of people seeking asylum.

It was not clear what Trump planned to do if the courts refused. Immigration activist Alida Garcia said on Twitter: “This is a trap.”

“Prosecuting parenthood and throwing kids in indefinite jails cannot be our answer,” Garcia said. “The fact that Trump feels the need to respond is a sign of our strength. The fact that Trump feels the answer is kids in jails indefinitely is a sign of how far we have to go.”

Trump’s hard line on immigration was central to his election victory in 2016, and he has made a determined effort to raise fears about crime by illegal immigrants in advance of this year’s congressional midterms.

“The dilemma is that if you’re weak — if you’re weak, which people would like you to be — if you’re really, really pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people,” he said Wednesday. “And if you’re strong, then you don’t have any heart. That’s a tough dilemma. Perhaps I’d rather be strong, but that’s a tough dilemma.”

The administration had struggled to get its story straight in defending the separation policy. Sessions and Trump adviser Stephen Miller took proud ownership of it while Trump pretended it was not his own.

The title of the order is “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation,” and Trump continued Wednesday to call on Congress to pass a legislative fix. The Republicans, who control both chambers, were drafting bills but had not agreed on any of them.

In a sign of the haste with which the order was issued, it was originally posted online with the word “separated” spelled “seperated.” The White House deleted it to correct the error.

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