Under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush, immigration officials sometimes separated families when they had reason to question parentage or when there was evidence of child abuse. The Trump administration instituted a policy in which all families who crossed the border illegally were separated in order to allow the parents to be prosecuted under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. More than 2,700 children were separated from their parents at the border before Mr. Trump ended the policy in June 2018.
[Fact check: Family separation at the border]
The president’s comments come after he shook up the senior ranks of the Department of Homeland Security, forcing the resignation of the secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, and top immigration officials in a move that signaled a pending shift in immigration policies.
Also on Tuesday, the acting deputy secretary of homeland security, Claire Grady, who was next in line by law to become the acting secretary, submitted her resignation, according to a Twitter post by Ms. Nielsen. Ms. Grady’s resignation paves the way for Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, to take the role.
Customs and Border Protection officials this week underscored Mr. Trump’s concern about illegal immigration by announcing that more than 103,000 migrants crossed the southwestern border in March without authorization, an increase from the more than 76,000 migrants who crossed in February.
“Just last month, we saw record numbers of family units and unaccompanied juvenile apprehensions in February, and unfortunately, March apprehension numbers are again record-setting and cause dire concerns for us,” said Brian Hastings, the chief of law enforcement operations for the Border Patrol.
Most of the migrants — 92,000 of the 103,000 — were apprehended by Border Patrol agents, meaning they crossed in between the ports of entry.
More than 53,000 of those migrants were members of a family, Mr. Hastings said, and most of those families were from Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador.
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