President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday afternoon to end the practice of separating children from parents accused of illegally crossing the border.
“I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he signed it.
Trump said previously that a 2016 court ruling required either family separation while illegal immigrant adults are prosecuted or non-enforcement of immigration law, and that Congress had to pass legislation to get around that decision. That ruling related to the 1997 Flores settlement, which said children cannot be detained, and the court ruling further specified that children must be released within 20 days.
The executive order says generally that the government will split up immigrant families, except when not separating them might put a child at risk. It also instructs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “promptly file a request” with a federal court in California to modify the Flores settlement “in a manner that would permit [officials] …. to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”
The order says it is administration policy “to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.”
Still, the Trump administration made it clear that it prefers a legislative fix to the problem.
“The laws need to be changed,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who stood beside Trump as he signed the order. “We ask Congress to do their part.”
“We’re going to have a lot of happy people,” Trump said, referring to intense political pressure amid reports of accused illegal immigrants being separated from their children.
Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy in April, meaning default prosecution of adults for illegal border crossings, resulting in an increase in family separations.
“Nobody has had the political courage to take care of it,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “The border is just as tough but we do want to keep families together.”
