Hemisphere Weekly: A new look behind the Trump adminisitration’s “zero tolerance” policy

On October 6th, the New York Times published a report that has revived public scrutiny of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy. The findings, a result of a two-year investigation led by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, reveal that the Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind a policy that led to the separation of thousands of families, many of them seeking asylum in the United States. The Inspector General’s draft report cites various exchanges between Justice Department officials in the development and implementation of the policy, which President Trump ultimately abandoned amid global outrage. The 86-page draft report provides the most comprehensive overview of discussions within the Department of Justice on the topic to-date.

The separation of undocumented families at the U.S.-Mexico border has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s systematic assault on immigration. Public outcry led to a policy reform that transitioned from separation to detaining families together, but new problems arose due to a 2015 court order, known as the Flores Settlement, which prohibited the detention of migrant children for longer than 20 days. President Trump has since requested that the federal courts eliminate the detention time limit. 

Since the policy changes, several leading officials initially associated with family separations have sought to distance themselves from the policy. Sessions, who the draft report notes told Department of Justice officials that “we need to take away children [in order to prosecute parents],” has publicly said that “we never really intended [child separation].” Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has largely avoided public scrutiny on this issue, went even further, telling prosecutors within the Department that the age of the child should not determine whether they are prosecuted. In recent years, the Department of Homeland Security has taken the brunt of the public criticism regarding the policy, but the draft report shows that the Department of Justice played a central role as well.