Trump Just Called In to Fox News to Complain That He Can’t Separate Immigrant Families Anymore

“In our country you have to bring them to court, you have to have Perry Mason involved.”

Olivier Douliery/Picture Alliance/DPA/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The president had a few things to get off his chest Sunday morning, so naturally he called into Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to complain about the state of America’s immigration system. His main gripe? That his administration can no longer separate children from their family.

“We go out and we stop the separation,” Trump said. “The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families. It’s like Disneyland now. You know, before you’d get separated so people would say, ‘Let’s not go up.’ Now you don’t get separated and, you know, while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have—literally you have 10 times more families coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children.”

In the interview, Trump alluded that his problems stem from the laws that require processing and court dates for asylum seekers. He has repeated similar claims about how he thought family separation was effective, but he has denied in other interviews that new changes to immigration policy are an attempt to bring the unpopular policy back. “The problem is we have to register them, we have to bring them to court,” he told Fox. “Another country just says, ‘Sorry, you can’t come into our country,’ and they walk them out. In our country you have to bring them to court, you have to have Perry Mason involved. I mean, you know, it’s all legal.”

There has been an influx of Central American families and migrants seeking asylum in the United States, but as Mother Jones’ Noah Lanard has noted, the heavy focus on deterrence over alternatives to detention and expanding capacity in evaluating asylum claims has led to years of backlogs in cases. Trump has wanted instead to change asylum rules so it becomes near-impossible to request protection.

Trump’s most radical policies, like family separation, have sometimes been blocked by courts. 

Last June, US District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Trump administration to find and reunite the over 2,000 migrant families that had been separated, imposing a 30-day deadline. But the administration had quietly enacted the policy long before that, and the number of children possibly separated may have numbered in the thousands. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General issued a report that “thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the Court.” HHS in some cases lost track of the children. “The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” the report stated.

This week, Sabraw gave the government a six-month deadline to locate the children.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate