New York, NY—A leaked draft report revealed that then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein overruled internal pushback from Republican-appointed U.S. Attorneys against the administration's zero-tolerance prosecution policy used to enact family separation. Senior Department of Justice officials instructed prosecutors along the border to separate children from their parents, no matter their age.
In response to the report, Murad Awawdeh and Rovika Rajkishun, Interim Co-Executive Directors of the New York Immigration Coalition, released the following statement.
“The Trump administration’s callous disregard for human life and the law is clear in this report. The findings reinforce what we already knew—ripping children away from their parents was always the point and never a by-product of the White House’s ‘aggressive immigration enforcement’ policy. To appease a President obsessed with his poll numbers and winking towards white nationalists, DOJ officials brutalized and caged thousands of children, tore families apart, and allowed the preventable deaths and trauma of children in their care. This report shows the complicity of the entire Trump administration in making cruelty the point of America’s immigration policy.”