On Fox News Sunday, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said that under the Barack Obama administration, they did detain some children alone and some families together, two policies for which Donald Trump has been widely blamed.
Johnson told host Chris Wallace that they “thought it was necessary at the time,” and that it is still is.
But it’s the sheer matter of numbers, Chris. Right now, we have family detention capability for about 3,000 or 4,000 people, and you’ve got over a thousand migrants crossing the border a day in Central America. And so, even if you emptied it out completely today, it would fill back up in a matter of days.
In some cases, not a lot, but in some, you separated children from their parents in these pictures that we are putting up, from 2014, show pictures of unaccompanied minors in effect jail situations.
As you look back on that, did you handle it so well?
JOHNSON: Well, Chris, without a doubt the images and the reality from 2014 just like 2018 are not pretty. And so, we expanded family detention. We had then 34,000 beds for family detention, only 95 of 34,000 equipped to deal with families.
They separated kids when it was suspected they were being trafficked etc…its not the samething…the numbers just dont bear out. Also zero tolerance isnt working either…the issue is deeper than what people want to admit
Obama: separated children from their families when there was a reason to suspect that the child was being trafficked, or questions relating to the relationship.
Trump: separated every family that crossed the border.
Under Obama, families were separated under specific conditions, like the ones I mentioned. Under Trump, every single family that crosses the border were separated.
