Trump denies he's considering restarting family separations at US-Mexico border

Credit: Evan Vucci

Credit: Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump on Tuesday denied he was reconsidering his decision to end family separations at the southern border and repeated previously debunked claims that his predecessor began the practice.

"Just so you understand, President Obama separated the children,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. "I'm the one who stopped it. President Obama had child separation.”

The president's claim has been debunked several times by organizations including NPRSnopes and The Associated Press. There is no law that requires children be separated from parents at the border.

Officials began to separate immigrant children from their parents last year, after the Trump administration directed prosecutors to pursue cases against all people suspected of crossing the border illegally as part of a “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. Parents were separated from their children as they faced prosecution.

Trump ended the separations last June with an executive order.

Although the president said Tuesday that he was not thinking of restarting family separations, he said the policy was effective in slowing traffic at the border.

“I’ll tell you something, once you don’t have it, that’s why you have many more people coming,” Trump said. “They are coming like it’s a picnic, like, ‘Let’s go to Disney Land.’”

Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the border in the spring of 2018. Officials said last week in court documents that it could take two years to identify all the children, according to The New York Times.

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