President Trump wants to restart and expand his administration’s hardline policy of separating children from their families at the Mexican border, which he thinks is the most effective way to stop asylum seekers from entering the US, a new report said Monday.
The president has urged administration officials to get tougher on asylum-seeking families from Central America since January, NBC News reported, citing a trio of sources familiar with White House discussions on the matter.
Trump’s outgoing Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, resisted — putting her at odds with the president and apparently sealing her fate, as Trump forced her out following a tense weekend meeting.
Two of the sources told the network that Nielsen told Trump that federal court orders prohibited the DHS from reinstating the policy and that he would be reversing his own executive order from June that ended the much-maligned practice of ripping children away from their families.
Trump has pushed the tougher stance since the beginning of the year, when the numbers of asylum seekers crossing the border began rising.
In March, up to 100,000 undocumented immigrants were expected to be apprehended crossing the border, though Customs and Border Protection officials have not released the official count yet.
A senior administration official said that despite the torrent of criticism, Trump was convinced that family separation has been the most effective policy for deterring large numbers of asylum seekers.
Nielsen resigned amid Trump’s growing rage over the number of Central American families crossing the border.
Trump announced on Sunday in a tweet that CPB Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would take over as acting head of the department.
Nielsen had grown increasingly frustrated by what she saw as a lack of support from other departments and increased meddling by Trump aides on difficult immigration issues, sources said.
With AP