While the media fulminate over the issue of illegal immigrant parental separation from children — and while they go nearly insane over the implication by certain members of the Trump administration that such policy amounts to an attempt to “deter” illegal immigration — it’s worth remembering that the Obama administration pursued nearly all the same activities as the Trump administration with regard to treatment of an influx of illegal immigration in 2014-2015.

In 2015, for example, The New York Times reported that a federal judge had found that the Obama administration had violated the Flores settlement in keeping families together in custody. According to the Times:

Judge Gee also found that migrant children had been held in “widespread deplorable conditions” in Border Patrol stations after they were first caught, and she said the authorities had “wholly failed” to provide the “safe and sanitary” conditions required for children even in temporary cells

Initially, Homeland Security officials said they were detaining the families to send a message to others in Central America to deter them from coming to the United States illegally. In February, a federal court in Washington, D.C., ruled that strategy unconstitutional. Officials stopped invoking deterrence as a factor in deciding whether to release mothers and children as they seek asylum in the United States.

But many women and children remained stalled behind bleak walls and fences month after month with no end in sight. Mothers became severely depressed or anxious, and their distress echoed in their children, who became worried and sickly. – READ MORE