Timeline: Trump's family separation policies

Brut America

More than 500 migrant children in U.S custody remain separated from their missing parents.  Here's a timeline of the events that brought us here.

Transcript

00:00If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child may be separated

00:07from you.

00:08Don't you have any empathy?

00:09Jill, go ahead.

00:10Come on, Sarah.

00:11You're a parent.

00:12Don't you have any empathy for what these people are going through?

00:14Within two years after a federal judge ordered families to be reunited, hundreds of children

00:19and parents are unaccounted for.

00:22What happened?

00:24Parents were ripped, their kids were ripped from their arms and separated.

00:28Now they cannot find over 500 of such of those parents, and those kids are alone.

00:34We're going to build a wall.

00:38Mexico is going to pay for the wall.

00:58In order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, I am considering

01:08exactly that.

01:13There's been reports that you are considering separating children from their mothers at

01:18the border, and I want to know, yes or no, whether that's true.

01:22Only if the situation at that point in time requires it.

01:30If the mother is sick or addicted to drugs or whatever.

01:34In the same way we would do it here in the United States.

01:38So if you thought the child was endangered, that's the only circumstance to which you

01:43would separate.

01:44Can't imagine doing it otherwise.

01:53This pilot program that happened in El Paso, the Trump administration should have figured

02:11out from there that they were not able to track individuals very well who were separated.

02:18So the fact that they did not do that, and then when it launched this family separation

02:22policy nationwide, was not just immoral and unjust.

02:27It was just simply mass incompetence.

02:30And the folks involved in that should just be ashamed of themselves.

02:33I have put in place a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry on our southwest border.

02:57If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you.

03:02It's that simple.

03:03If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you.

03:10If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you.

03:15And that child may be separated from you as required by law.

03:29People don't want to be separated from their children.

03:32They should not bring them with them.

03:34We've got to get this message out.

03:37You're not given immunity.

03:43It's a shame and a disgrace that our government has taken young children, even babies, from

04:05their mothers.

04:06It's not right.

04:07It's not fair.

04:08It's not just.

04:11And history will not be kind to us as a nation and as a people.

04:23I hate the children being taken away.

04:25The Democrats have to change their law.

04:27That's their law.

04:28They were forced.

04:29Quiet.

04:30Quiet.

04:31That's the Democrats law.

04:34We can change it tonight.

04:36We can change it right now.

04:37I will leave here.

04:38No, no.

05:12This administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border.

05:22We have a statutory responsibility that we take seriously to protect alien children from

05:27human smuggling, trafficking, and other criminal actions while enforcing our immigration laws.

05:34We have a long existing policy multiple administrations have followed that outline when we may take

05:40action to protect children.

06:10So we're keeping families together and this will solve that problem.

06:32At the same time, we are keeping a very powerful border and it continues to be a zero tolerance.

06:40We have zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally.

07:10President Obama had child separation.

07:26Take a look.

07:27The press knows it.

07:29You know it.

07:30We all know it.

07:31I didn't have.

07:32I'm the one that stopped it.

07:34President Obama had child separation.

07:36Now I'll tell you something.

07:38Once you don't have it, that's why you see many more people coming.

07:41They're coming like it's a picnic because let's go to Disneyland.

07:45President Obama separated children.

07:47They had child separation.

07:49I was the one that changed it, okay?

08:20Do you think it's wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants from

08:26coming to the United States?

08:27Well, Senator Booker, that's been a matter of policy debate and, you know, obviously

08:33that's a matter of hot political debate in which I can't express a view or be drawn into

08:42as a judge.

09:00Many many of them are under five years old and an enormous percentage are under 10 years

09:05old.

09:06So some of the children may have spent half their lives at this point separated from their

09:11parents.

09:12Do you have a plan to reunite the kids?

09:21Yes, we're working on it very, we're trying very hard, but a lot of these kids come out

09:25without the parents.

09:26They come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.

09:29These 500 plus kids came with parents.

09:34They separated them at the border to make it a disincentive to come to begin with.

09:41We're real tough.

09:42We're really strong.

09:43And guess what?

09:44They cannot, it's not coyotes didn't bring them over, their parents were with them.

09:48They got separated from their parents and it makes us a laughing stock and violates

09:53every notion of who we are as a nation.

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