Back in February, President Donald Trump tried to use the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA—the Obama-era policy that provided legal protections to people brought to America illegally as children—to strong-arm his immigration agenda through a reluctant Congress. He failed: Congress couldn’t agree on a deal, DACA quietly expired, and Trump’s immigration priorities stayed off the books.
The president appears to have taken a lesson from this: If he couldn’t make Congress act by threatening to end DACA, he’d just need to find a bigger stick. Enter the administration’s new “zero tolerance” immigration policy, with its attendant horrors of ripping apart families at the border, tossing parents in jail and punting their children into overcrowded “shelters.”
On Friday morning, President Trump characterized the new policy as something that had been forced upon him by horrible laws passed by Democrats.
“I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law,” he told reporters outside the White House. “The Democrats gave us the laws. Now, I want the laws to be beautiful, humane, but strong. I don’t want bad people coming in. We can solve that problem in one meeting. Tell the Democrats and your friends to call me.”
But this description simply isn’t true. The separation of children from their parents at the border is entirely the result of a change of executive enforcement policy announced last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, under which illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who are picked up by (or turn themselves over to) law enforcement are imprisoned rather than released with their families, pending their date in immigration court. That policy change, in turn, was the product of an executive order President Trump signed in early April, instructing federal agencies to “expeditiously end” the practice of so-called “catch and release.”
In fact, just hours before Trump demanded Democrats “change the law,” he doubled down on that crucial measure during an interview on Fox and Friends, saying he was unlikely to sign a compromise bill House Republicans have been cooking up.
“I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one,” Trump said. “I need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security. I have to have that. We have to get rid of catch-and-release.”
It’s unclear whether Trump comprehends the contradiction he’s espousing. But as a matter of policy, the alternatives are clear: If he’s unwilling to sign a bill (or an executive order) that reinstates catch-and-release, then the government can either (a) separate children from their parents; or (b) throw the kids in prison alongside them. Trump has found some success putting this kind of pressure on Democrats before. But it’s unlikely many of them will see jailing kids along with their parents as a much more palatable solution to this problem.
