in practice, it looks like the guidance that s being put out to field offices is don t refer people to the justice department for prosecution if they are caught crossing the border with their children. all right. thanks very much. all this is adding up to out rage from some lawmakers. i spoke with jeff merkley who toured a detention center in texas. are you clear to what s happening with family rey reunifications and a policy on the border? the president has not laid out a strategy for reuniting the more than 2300 kids separated from their parents and replacing one policy for future families. that is the family separation policy that offlicts kids which is handcuffs for all. don t just put the parents in jail. put them all in jail. is there any indication they
who has dealt with this issue under prosecute obama, what s your reaction to the policy as well as this executive order the president signed yesterday? anderson, thanks for having me on. experience shows, my own experience shows, that perceived changes in immigration enforcement policy do have a reaction. at best, they have a short term affect on illegal my graigratio. so long as the underlying conditions continue to exist, illegal migration will continue to exist. that s what the 2014 experience, my three years as secretary showed and so we looked at doing a number of different things. we embraced a number of different things. some of which i freely admit were controversial. the one thing we would not do is separate children from their parents when they got to the border. attorney general sessions say they never intended to separate kids. it s the opposite of what he
your point about contacting the parents is very different. it depends where the parent is and what detention center. we have one young person who has been there for several months. only spoke to parent once. they are traumatized. many of them have psychological issues. they have anxiety. they have depression. many of them are on psychotropic drugs and under the care of a psychiatrist. they don t know what s next. they don t know what s going on. are they seeking asylum? are they going to be sent back? much of this started in april, may as soon as the zero tolerance policy went into effect. this is either gross government incompetence unparalleled or it s the most disgusting political display we ve ever seen. it s one or the other. this was either the debacle.
child not getting any kind of affection is it s kind of stunning. it s sad. i don t know what or where or why this policy exists but i saw this in action happening the day i visited. just ahead, the message that wasn t a message until it was. new reporting on how the white house is handling the out cry over the first lady s sign on the back of her jacket. later, breaking news. evidence of the confusion and chaos surrounding the president s executive order. [music playing] (vo) from day one,
tonight s breaking news speaks to confusion within the administration about the president s executive order. he said yesterday the zero tolerance policy remains. government e-mails seem to indicate otherwise. amid the confusion president trump likes to blame his predecessors for the crisis today. earlier i spoke with jeh johnson who served as president obama s homeland security secretary during his second term. secretary johnson, as someone who has dealt with this issue under prosecute obama, what s your reaction to the policy as well as this executive order the president signed yesterday? anderson, thanks for having me on. experience shows, my own experience shows, that perceived changes in immigration enforcement policy do have a reaction. at best, they have a short-term effect on illegal migration. but so long as the underlying conditions in the countries from which the migrants are coming continue to exist, illegal migration s going to continue to exist. that s what the 2014 ex