This image has become a powerful representation of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration: a 2-year old girl sobbing, as U.S. border patrol agents searched her mother. “If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you. And that child may be separated from you as required by law.” The Trump White House’s tactic of systematically separating migrant families is a dramatic shift. There have been cases of families being separated under the previous two administrations. But it’s always been the exception, not the rule. That said, Trump’s crackdowns are happening against the backdrop of more than a decade of stepped-up enforcement at the Southern border. In 2005, President George W. Bush launched “Operation Streamline” along the Texas border. He was responding to a spike in apprehensions there. The program called for criminally prosecuting all migrants. “We’re going to get control of our borders. We’re making this country safer for all our citizens.” The idea of zero tolerance took root under Bush, and it’s what Trump has used to model his policy after. The Bush-era program meant that migrants who were caught in certain border states were put through the criminal system, not civil immigration courts. It made exceptions for adults traveling with children, but others were ushered through mass trials aimed at deporting them quickly. It’s a practice that’s still around today. “One of the things we committed to do was end ‘catch and release’ by the end of fiscal year 2006.” Under this policy, migrants were held until their deportation hearing. And that meant an increase in beds at private detention centers. In 2014, President Barack Obama declared a crisis at the Southwest border after a surge of unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America. “We now have an actual humanitarian crisis on the border that only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our immigration system once and for all.” During that child migrant crisis, the Obama administration also focused on deporting people quickly and put some through criminal proceedings. But it chose to hold families together in administrative, not criminal detention. The Obama administration also set up makeshift overflow facilities. And we saw similar images back then, of adults and children behind chain-link fences draped in thermal blankets. Now, Trump is reportedly taking it a step further and considering makeshift tent cities to detain minors caught at the border. The Trump administration says it’s now merely enforcing the letter of the law. But images of children in detention have made it hard to sell it in political terms, and humanitarian ones, too.