Donald Trump signs executive order to end family separations

President says ‘we’re going to keep families together’ after facing huge backlash for his ‘zero tolerance’ stance

Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to “keep families together” amid extraordinary public condemnation over his practice of separating children from their parents at the southern border.

“I consider it to be a very important executive order,” Trump said during the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence and the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. “It’s about keeping families together while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border, and border security will be equal if not greater than previously.”

He added: “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”

However, the text of the executive order makes clear that a hardline approach to immigration enforcement will continue.

The order instructs government officials to continue its “zero-tolerance” enforcement policy of criminal prosecution for every immigrant who crosses the border illegally, but says that officials will seek to “maintain family unity” by detaining parents and children together instead of separating them while their legal cases wind through a severely backlogged immigration court system.

The language leaves room for exceptions, however, noting that “alien families” would be detained together “where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources”.

The president’s action also directs the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to go to court to ask for a modification to a 1997 court settlement, known as Flores, which currently prohibits the detention of migrant children for more than 20 days.

A successful legal battle could see parents held with their children in detention until proceedings have been completed.

If the court denies the request, the order will almost certainly face legal challenges from immigration activists who represent families that are detained in the facilities.

“They are substituting jailing children with their families for separating children from their parents and that is not any sort of solution to family separation,” said Kate Voigt, an associate director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The zero tolerance policy remains in effect and that is the root of the family separation crisis created by the Trump administration.”

The signing of the order marked a sudden reversal for Trump, who only hours earlier had insisted that the law demanded children be separated from their parents. He claimed that only Congress could resolve that.

On Monday, Nielsen told reporters: “Congress and the courts created this problem, and Congress alone can fix it. Until then, we will enforce every law we have on the books to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States.”

But as television news channels continued to show distressing images of children in detention and a chorus of Republicans called on the president to act, Trump abruptly changed course.

More than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the border since the beginning of May.

For days, Trump has attempted to deflect responsibility for the policy by inaccurately laying blame on Democrats and demanding Congress act. But top administration officials, including Sessions, and White House chief of staff, John Kelly, have said this policy is necessary to deter migrants from attempting to enter the country illegally.

“The dilemma is that if you’re weak, as some people would like you to be, if you’re really, really pathetically weak, the country’s going to be overrun with millions of people,” Trump said. “And if you’re strong, then you don’t have any heart. That’s a tough dilemma. Perhaps I’d rather be strong but that’s a tough dilemma.”

At a mass plea hearing in a federal magistrates court in McAllen, Texas, at about the time of Trump’s announcement, 74 migrants, mostly from Central America, sat in a packed-out courtroom.

Each was charged with illegal entry misdemeanor, the vast majority never having committed a crime in the US. Before Judge J Scott Hacker, lawyers informed the court that 24 of the defendants were parents who had been separated from their children by US authorities after being apprehended near the border.

As most of the men and women were sentenced to time served, Óscar Rox-Flores, a Guatemalan migrant apprehended with his daughter two days ago, spoke before the judge.

“In my case I am here with my daughter,” he said. “I want to be deported with her so we can both go home together.”

Judge Hacker was able to offer no assurances. “I don’t have an answer that question,” he said. “Hopefully there are procedures in place.”

The Trump administration faced withering criticism over photographs, video and recordings of young children crying for their parents as they wait in metal cages at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing centers. More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents under the “zero-tolerance” enforcement policy, a practice critics have called cruel and inhumane.

The crackdown subjected all migrants who crossed the border illegally to criminal prosecution. When parents were taken to detention, children were reclassified as “unaccompanied minors” and sent to government-run facilities.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were deeply shaken by the public backlash, producing near-unanimous agreement that the practice must end. But Congress remains sharply divided on a path forward and, as of Wednesday, had no plan to stop family separations appeared to have enough support to pass.

The House speaker, Paul Ryan, said the lower chamber would vote on Thursday on a sweeping immigration bill that the authors say would end family separations by keeping children with their parents in detention.

“We don’t think families should be separated, period,” Ryan said at a press conference. “We’ve seen the videos. We’ve heard the audio.”

Leaders were trying to rally support for a “compromise” measure that was negotiated by moderate and conservative Republicans. It would provide $25bn for Trump’s border wall and offer a pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. But uncertainty remained about the bill’s chances of passage.

In the Senate, Republicans are taking a different approach. They are trying to craft a narrowly tailored bill that would only address family separations.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said an executive order was the “fastest” way to address the situation at the border but argued that legislation was still necessary to codify the change.

“It would be ideal if we could back that up by passing a law that does it so there wouldn’t be a court uncertainty,” Rubio said, noting that the president’s action takes away some urgency to pass legislation.

Several senators said the order would probably violate longstanding court settlements that place constraints on the treatment of children in federal custody. Those decisions prevented Barack Obama from holding families together in detention facilities at the height of the migrant crisis two years ago.

With five months before the midterm elections, Republicans were facing a spiraling political crisis. Public opinion polls show that a wide majority of Americans oppose the separations.It emerged overnight that Trump administration officials was sending babies and young children to at least three “tender age” shelters in southern Texas.