Over the last week there have been multiple reports that President Trump wants to return to the family separation policy that he ended through an executive order last year, or a modified version of that policy. If there was a family separation policy: Kirstjen Nielsen, the soon-to-be-former Secretary of Homeland Security, repeatedly denied it, while Trump himself has affirmed it and defended it on the ground that President Obama had “the same policy.”


What happened is that the Trump administration adopted a “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting illegal border-crossers as criminals, a policy that is within its legal discretion but that previous administrations had rejected in part because it would, in combination with existing court orders, have the effect of separating large numbers of children from their parents. Some members of the Trump administration, including former chief of staff John Kelly and former attorney general Jeff Sessions, considered this effect a valuable deterrent. Others, such as Nielsen, presented it as an unfortunate side-effect of getting tough (and hence not an intentional policy).

Most Americans rightly recoiled from the policy, which even viewed in Nielsen’s terms creates a humanitarian disaster in order to achieve an uncertain increment of reduced illegal immigration. The political cost was high enough that Trump folded after several weeks of controversy.

CNN nonetheless reports:

According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers. The President wanted families separated even if they were apprehended within the US. He thinks the separations work to deter migrants from coming.

Update: President Trump has now said, on the record, that he’s “not looking to” bring back the policy, repeating that Obama had it and he ended it. That last bit is misleading, but he has, at least for now, made the right call in not resuming the policy.