President Trump on Tuesday accused the news media of helping criminal traffickers by criticizing his zero tolerance policy at the border, which has led to the separation of illegal immigrant families, and alleged that the press has failed to tell the whole truth.
“Those who apply for asylum legally at points of entry are not prosecuted. The fake news media back there doesn’t talk about that,” Trump said at a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business. “They are fake. They are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe.”
Trump accuses the “fake news media” of helping “these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe.” pic.twitter.com/I1iAkeRF29
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 19, 2018
The media has been pressuring the Trump administration this week to explain its tough border policy, which they say is leading to the separation of families. But the Trump administration has said family separation only happens with families when they fail to arrive at an official checkpoint, and has said the law requires officials to hold children separately from the illegal immigrant adults they seek to prosecute.
Although not necessarily prosecuted, some asylum seekers who arrive at official points of entry have reportedly been separated from their children under a pre-existing policy in cases where adequate proof of a family relationship is not presented. It’s unclear whether the Trump administration has tightened its enforcement of that provision, but there have been some reported instances of family separation after birth certificates and parent IDs were presented.
Trump administration officials have countered that many sets of adults and children that claim to be a family have showed up at the border, but were actually criminals who were trying to smuggle in unrelated children.
In cases of alleged illegal immigration, administration officials say a 2016 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit forces a choice between non-enforcement of the law and family separation.
Trump said Tuesday his only choice under the law is not to enforce border laws at all, or prosecute the adults as they come in. But he said he favors a change to the law so prosecutions can happen without family separation.
“I don’t want children taken away from parents, and when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away,” Trump said Tuesday.
At the daily White House press briefing on Monday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that about 10,000 or 12,000 migrant children held by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is where DHS refers them, were detained after being sent to the U.S. without their parents.
Still, HHS has been taking about 250 children a day, and estimates that the agency may be holding 30,000 immigration children by the end of August.
