Quite frankly, his decision doesn’t go far enough. The administration still plans to criminalize families– including children – by holding them in prison-like detention facilities. There are workable alternatives.

What’s more, separating families is not just an issue at the border. Right now, we’re representing parents who’ve been needlessly ripped apart from their children – many of them U.S. citizens – as a result of an indiscriminate enforcement regime that’s shattering communities across the country.

Trump needs to stop lying to Americans about his policies and trying to shift the blame. He needs to stop using people’s lives and futures as political bargaining chips to get funding for an expensive wall that won’t solve anything. He needs to stop using dehumanizing rhetoric that fuels fear and xenophobia. And he needs to fire the hardline extremists within his administration who are helping to shape his barbaric policies.

Photo credit: John Moore/Getty

The Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) is a project of the SPLC that enlists and trains volunteer lawyers to provide free legal representation to detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings in the Southeast.