say i m going to injure the kids to send a political mess. we ll support the decision. you cannot establish camps for families. that s what the administration wants to do. we re going from family separation to family incarceration. handcuffs for all. they re trying to box you in. politically. trump is saying if you care about the kids so much, leave us of the flores decision. you re forcing us to force them. we can t keep the kids as long as the parents. change that law. will you bite? not at all. there s no camp future going on here. there is a policy that worked very well. a program that worked well. family case management program. and inspector general of homeland security did it. found 100% not 99 or 98. 100% of the faeps showed up for hearings. the administration did something with the program. they trashed it. they had a program that kept
we don t like to see families separated. reporter: the president abruptly changing course, trying to contain an immigration crisis. he signed an executive order to detain parents and children together if they illegally cross the u.s. border. we re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we re going to keep the families together. i didn t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated. reporter: but for days the president and his administration maintain their hands were tied. they said an act of congress was needed to change a policy roundly criticized for its cruelness. you can t do it through an executive order. until these loopholes are closed by congress, it is not possible as a matter of law to detain and remove whole family units who arrive illegally in the united states. it s congress s job to change the law. reporter: but the white house caved to world wide public pressure. mr. president, don t you have kids! reporter: finally swayed by a near
decision, the flores settlement, which has been a 20 year long court battle, you can t implement this. that s why literally it s just about the press and trying to slow down the press. they ve just come full circle. what happened here was april 7th they announce the zero tolerance, they arrest the parent. when you arrest the parent, the question became what do you do with the child because you cannot by law, by the flores decision, put the child in a detention facility. for more than 20 days. on that specific point, governor, the executive order does say that the president orders the attorney general jeff sessions to promptly file a request with the u.s. district court for the central district of california to modify that. would that solve this issue of you could only detain the children for 20 days? wolf, if you could have modified the decision, you wouldn t have had the problem in
assess. the president earlier said he couldn t do what he did today. listen to this. what about an executive order? wait, wait. you can t do it through an executive order. he was asked on friday what about executive order. the president said, now, wait, wait, you can t do it through an executive order. but that s exactly what he did today. right. the president said it. his press secretary, the secretary for homeland security, everyone in his administration from the top on down has said this had to be solved by congress, they could not do something, they were simply following the law. that obviously was proven to be completely false today. wolf, it really was an extraordinary moment. i think in the short history so far, a year and a half, of the trump administration, i can t think of a time where president trump has really buckled to public pressure like this. there have been times, travel ban, the courts have done against him, or maybe congress has not gotten where he wanted on
cannot establish internment camps for families. they said we are going to go from family separation to family incarceration. they are trying to box you in political politically. trump is saying if you care about the kids so much, relieve us of the flores decision. you are forcing us to separate. change that law, that will make it better. will you bite? well, not at all. there is no internment camp future going on here in terms of our support. there is a policy that worked very well, a program that worked very well, family case management program, and the inspector general of homeland security did an audit of it. found 100 %, not 99, not 98, 100% of the families showed up for their hearings. the administration did something with that program. they trashed it. they had a program that kept families together. treated them with respect until they got the hearing. they trashed that. by doing that they set themselves up for this