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.
Here's a timeline of the events that brought us here.
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NewsTranscript
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.