Jeff Sessions and other top Justice Department officials told AGs along the Mexican border ‘to take away children, no matter how young they are’ to enforce Trump’s separation policy
- Justice Department’s inspector general Michael E. Horowitz’s draft report about Trump’s separation policy was released
- It detailed how Jeff Sessions and other top officials from the Justice Department told AGs to take children no matter how young they were
- According to Horowitz, Sessions and other top officials understood that ‘zero tolerance’ meant separation and could also possibly deter future immigrants
- ‘We need to take away children,’ Sessions told the group of AGs
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions told five of the U.S. attorneys along the Mexican border that they needed to ‘take away children’ from their parents if they were illegal immigrants, no matter how young they are.
The shocking revelation was made during a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into President Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ family separation policy.
‘We need to take away children,’ Sessions told the group, according to participants’ notes, the New York Times reports. Notes added that he continued: ‘If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.’
‘We need to take away children,’ Sessions told the group of AGs, according to a draft report from the Justice Department’s inspector general
According to Justice Department’s inspector general Michael E. Horowitz, Sessions and other top officials understood that ‘zero tolerance’ meant separation and could also possibly deter future immigrants
In a follow up call about a week later, Rod J Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, told the prosecutors that it didn’t matter how young the children were. He added that government lawyers should have prosecuted two cases, even though the children were barely more than infants.
‘Those two cases should not have been declined,’ John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, told staff soon after the call. He added that Rosenstein ‘instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.’
A draft of Michael E. Horowitz’s report about the policy has found that the Justice Department’s top officials were ‘a driving force’ behind the police that separated thousands of families.
A draft of Michael E. Horowitz’s report about the policy has found that the Justice Department’s top officials were ‘a driving force’ behind the police that separated thousands of families. Migrants walk through the Tomillo detention camp in Texas
Trump’s separation policy was at the forefront of his administration’s fight against immigration. The president would backpedal from the policy following international backlash.
Sessions attempted to distance himself from the policy, with most of the blame ultimately falling on Trump and Homeland Security Department officials.
But according to Horowitz, Sessions and other top officials understood that ‘zero tolerance’ meant separation and could also possibly deter future immigrants.
In a follow up call about a week later, Rod J Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, told the prosecutors that it didn’t matter how young the children were
‘The department’s single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations,’ the draft report said.
The revelation is part of an 86-page draft report that cited more than 45 interviews with officials, emails and other documents. They provide insight to the inner workings of the Justice Department as the police was being created and implemented.
Horowitz has been preparing to release the report since last summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Sessions refused to be interviewed for the report. Rosenstein, a private practice lawyer, defended himself when interviewed by investigators. His former officer submitted a 64-page response to the report.
‘If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,’ Rosenstein said. ‘I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.’