Washington (CNN) Pushing back against an explosive "60 Minutes" report about his immigration policies, President Donald Trump revived false claims that downplay his controversial practice of separating immigrant families at the southern border.

The episode of "60 Minutes" highlighted the saga of more than 2,600 children who were separated from their parents after illegally entering the US this year. The report revealed that the policy began earlier than acknowledged and detailed an internal probe at the Department of Homeland Security that found major problems with the plan's implementation, including that computer systems erased data meant to link children to their parents, complicating efforts to reunite families later on.

The centerpiece of Trump's pushback, which he tweeted Sunday night after the show, is that he "had the exact same policy as the Obama Administration," regarding family separation. He repeated this on Monday, telling reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, "Obama had a separation policy. We all had the same policy ... but people don't like to talk about that."

Trump also suggested former President George W. Bush followed similar practices.

Simply put, this isn't true at all. Trump and former President Barack Obama did not have "the exact same policy." In some ways, they had opposite policies. The family separation crisis was triggered last spring when Trump tweaked the status quo he inherited from Obama and ramped up strict enforcement of federal immigration laws that were already on the books.

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