Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday defended the separation of children and adults at the U.S.-Mexico border, and said it happened under President Obama as well.
“The Obama administration, the Bush administration all separated families. They absolutely did. Their rate was less than ours but they absolutely did do this. This is not new,” Nielsen told reporters during an unexpected appearance at the White House briefing Monday evening.
The Justice Department’s decision this spring to prosecute all illegal immigrants meant parents of family units would face charges. She said current law prohibits child immigrants from being detained for very long while their parents are prosecuted.
Prior to Trump’s zero tolerance policy, the only family units that would be broken up were those when the parent-child relationship could not be confirmed or when a child was at risk in the company of the adult. However, now all adults who illegally entered the country between ports of entry rather than at a border checkpoint are being separated from their children in addition to those first two categories that the Obama administration had honored.
Nielsen also denied that “child abuse” was occurring in the care of CBP and Health and Human Services officers, after pictures were released today that showed fences used to divide warehouses where children stayed.
“I want to be clear on a couple of the things. The vast, vast majority of children who are in the care of HHS right now, 10,000 of the 12,000, were sent here alone by their parents. That’s when they were separated,” she said.
[Also read: Trump administration could be holding 30,000 border kids by August, officials say]
“So somehow we have conflated everything. There is two separate issues — 10,000 of those currently in custody were sent by their parents with strangers to undertake a completely dangerous and deadly travel alone. We now care for them. We have high standards. We give them meals. We give them education. We give them medical care. There’s videos. There’s TVs. I’ve visited the detention centers myself,” she added. “That would be my answer to that question.”
