US President Donald Trump denies there’s any plan to restart family separations
- He also claims he never said he was ‘cleaning house’ at Department of Justice despite multiple staffing shake-ups
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Caitlin Oprysko on politico.com on April 9, 2019.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that he's not looking to revive his controversial family separation policy and pushed back against the idea that he's purging the Department of Homeland Security's leadership.
“We are not looking to do that, no. We are not looking to do that,” he told reporters when asked about multiple reports that he's looking to restart the practice of separating migrant families at the border. But, he added, “it does – it brings a lot more people to the border. When you don't do it, it brings a lot more people to the border.”
Even while he denied that he was interested in reinstating the practice, which he brought to a halt last year after a bipartisan outcry, staffing shuffles at the Department of Homeland Security indicate Trump is moving toward a harsher approach to immigration. And on Tuesday, he asserted that the policy had been successful in deterring families from arriving at the southern border.
After first denying that family separation was taking place last year, the administration argued that it was simply enforcing the law by charging every adult who was caught entering the country illegally and therefore necessitating the separation. The so-called zero tolerance policy was aimed at deterring migrants from attempting to enter the US illegally.
