Trump’s child- separation problem is self-inflicted crisis

WASHINGTON — Children split from their families at the U.S. southern border are being held in government-run facilities. A look at some of the issues: can’t send them back over the border unless they are Mexican citizens, and instead must refer their cases to an immigration judge.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed a law unanimously passed by Congress that called for “unaccompanied minors” to be released into the “least restrictive setting.” The law dealt only with unaccompanied minors, not families.

By 2014, President Barack Obama tried housing the families in special detention centers. But after a federal judge in California ruled the arrangement violated an agreement barring kids from jail-like settings, even with their parents, the government began releasing families into the U.S. pending notification of their next court date.

Fast forward to Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who derided longtime U.S. immigration practices as “catch and release.” Trump and Sessions insisted that people exploit the system, even traveling with children to ensure they aren’t jailed and slipping away before their court dates.

In addition, The Washington Post reported that the White House has interpreted a 1997 legal agreement and a 2008 bipartisan human-trafficking bill as requiring the separation of families — a posture not taken by the Bush or Obama administrations.

Yes. While Trump’s new immigration policy doesn’t call for families to be separated, as pointed out by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the policy makes separations inevitable.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly — now Trump’s White House chief of staff — floated the idea of separating families as a way to discourage illegal border crossings. By this April, Sessions announced a plan: The U.S. would have “zero tolerance” for illegal crossings. If a person doesn’t arrive at an appropriate port of entry to claim asylum, the crossing is deemed illegal and prosecuted even if the person does not have a criminal history. With the adult detained and facing prosecution, any minors accompanying them are taken away.

Nielsen has insisted that children will only be separated in narrow circumstances, including if the adult has broken the law. That falsely leaves the impression that only children traveling with gang members or other violent criminals will be separated.

Not much, except that they seem to be seizing on the issue to press Republicans to break from the president ahead of the midterm elections.

Trump has repeatedly said Democrats are to blame and cited a “horrible law” that separates families. But no law mandates that parents must be separated from their children at the border, and it’s not a policy Democrats have pushed or can change alone as the minority in Congress.