As Americans continue to react with horror to stories of families being torn apart at the U.S.-Mexico border, the White House has struggled to assemble a defense for their new “zero tolerance” immigration policies which have created the problem.

On Monday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security attempted to hand-wave the scandal with a “Myth vs. Fact” press release, arguing that rumors of family separations had been greatly exaggerated. Many Republicans, already suspicious that the media was once again making immigration mountains out of molehills, latched onto the soothing claims. Unfortunately, it turns out that the report is misleading.

To begin, DHS maintains that the “zero tolerance” policy changes were made to combat “a staggering increase in the number of illegal aliens using children to pose as family units to gain entry into the United States.”

“From October 2017 to February 2018, there was a 315 percent increase in the number of cases of adults with minors fraudulently posing as ‘family units’ to gain entry,” the release states.

The White House has repeatedly used this data point to portray the increase in family fraud as an epidemic in urgent need of redress. This 315 percent figure is accurate. But without knowing the scale of the problem, it doesn't tell you much. According to DHS’s own data the increase represents an uptick from 46 cases of fraud in fiscal year 2017 to 191 so far in fiscal year 2018. Even now, at the height of that “staggering increase,” only one half of one percent of immigrant groups claiming family status have been accused of fraud.

If misleading claims by such a tiny sliver of illegal immigrants seems like a poor rationale for tearing all immigrant children away from their parents, well, it is. But it's also an entirely post-facto explanation. As the New York Times reported last week, the Trump administration had been considering implementing the new zero-tolerance policy for over a year—long before the 315 percent increase showed up in the statistics.

The Department of Homeland Security’s mischaracterizations get worse. Consider this claim from the DHS press "Myth vs. Fact" press release: “DHS does not have a blanket policy of separating families at the border.”

Is that true? It depends on what the definition of "has" is: The steps the Trump administration has taken which have led to the blanket separation of migrant families have not stemmed from policy changes at DHS alone. Rather, separations have resulted from the intersection of DHS policies with new policies from the Justice Department.

Here's how it works: DHS says that they will separate adults and minors only under certain circumstances. "These circumstances include . . . when the parent or legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution." But Attorney General Jeff Sessions' newly announced "zero tolerance" policy over at DoJ means that all illegal immigrants apprehended by law enforcement are now being referred for criminal prosecution. See? It's not a DHS policy at all!

Of course that distinction probably means very little to the parents and kids in question. If your family is being torn apart, do you really care which faceless government bureaucracy is responsible?

For some reason, the widespread public backlash against mass family separations at the southern border seems to have caught the Trump administration completely by surprise. So perhaps we shouldn't be shocked to see this kind of dishonesty and bad faith in their fumbling, shifting justifications. Unfortunately, this is a case where the facts are as shocking as they look. Conservatives should resist the temptation to be appeased by such charades.