The Trump administration chose to prosecute parents with children over adults without kids, according to a new analysis of immigration data, in another sign that the "zero tolerance" policy was manipulated to target families at the border.



When Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the "zero tolerance" policy, he said everyone who was caught crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted. Family separations, the administration said, were simply a consequence of prosecuting all immigrants who were caught trying to enter the US illegally.

But an analysis of prosecutions during the weeks after Sessions announced the policy found that during May, US border authorities chose to prosecute adults with kids over adults crossing the border by themselves. That same analysis — by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University — found that only 32% of all adult immigrants caught crossing the border were charged with entering the US illegally that month — an indication that it wasn’t a blanket policy but a targeted effort directed at parents with kids.

In May, weeks after the formal announcement of the policy, US border authorities apprehended 4,458 adults with children, the analysis found, while it arrested 24,465 adults without children. Yet only 9,216 adults were referred for prosecution, far fewer than the number of adults who in theory should have been referred under "zero tolerance."

Since fewer than one out of three adults detained at the southwest border in May were referred for prosecution, US Customs and Border Protection clearly was choosing to prosecute parents while electing not to prosecute adults without kids, the analysis concluded.



"The Administration has not explained its rationale for prosecuting parents with children when that left so many other adults without children who were not being referred for prosecution," the report said.



Susan B. Long, codirector of TRAC and an associate professor of managerial statistics at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, said researchers don't yet have data on how many adults with kids were prosecuted or how many single adults faced charges in May.

Still, she said, it's clear the administration made the decision to prosecute some parents over single adults.

"It wasn't like [the prosecutions] were automatic; this was a conscious choice," Long said. "We have yet to know the number of separations due to them being criminally prosecuted."

The data in another TRAC report showed that only one adult with children was referred for criminal prosecution in April, Long said. That surprised researchers because the "zero tolerance" policy that the administration said forced it to prosecute parents and separate them from their kids was announced April 6.

"We looked really hard for things to suggest data is unreliable or make you doubt it," Long told BuzzFeed News. "We were so shocked. The Border Patrol data indicated they referred only one parent, and there were lots of separations."

A separate TRAC report found that 1,060 out of 4,537 adults arrested by border authorities in April were deported. At the same time, only 851 children out of the 5,144 arrested as part of family units were deported — meaning hundreds of parents appear to have been deported without their kids, the report said.

Overall, criminal prosecutions of adults referred by CBP increased by 918 from April to May, from 8,298 to 9,216.

Nearly 3,000 immigrant children ended up being separated from their parents as a result of the administration's policy. More than a quarter of those kids remain separated from their parents, despite a court's order to the administration that they be reunited by last week.

In a statement, CBP said it "strongly" disagreed with the TRAC analysis because no one was exempt from being referred for prosecution for illegal entry, including adults with kids who cross the US border.

"The number of referrals and types of referrals made are based on a variety of issues, none of which includes the choice to refer solely based on the fact an adult has a child," the CBP statement said.

About 85% of people prosecuted for illegal entry between May 5 and June 20 were single adults, the CBP statement said.

But the "zero tolerance" policy was announced on April 6 and separations were occurring weeks before the May 5 date CBP pointed to. Even though the "zero tolerance" policy ramped up in May, there were still family separations occurring in April. The Department of Homeland Security originally told reporters that from April 19 to May 31 some 1,995 minors were separated from 1,940 adults.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in June suspending prosecution referrals of adults traveling with their children. Still, the "zero tolerance" policy remains in place, and there are other reasons why parents could be separated from kids at the border, such as criminal history, presenting a danger to the child, or fraudulent claims of guardianship.