Jeh Johnson: There Is No Law that Requires the Trump Admin to Separate Children from Their Parents

RUSH EXCERPT:

JOHNSON: "Well, first, let’s be clear. There is no law that requires the Trump Administration to separate children from their parents. If there were such a law, I would know about it. I would have known about it when I was in office and I would have heard about it if I tried to enforce it. I have the greatest respect for the border patrol agents, customs officers and immigration enforcement officers who used to work for me, but I object highly to this current practice of separating children from their moms and dads at the border. And it is something that I feel obliged to speak out about. When I was in office, we removed, repatriated or deported a million people to enforce our immigration laws and secure or borders. We considered all sorts of things to lower the levels of illegal migration on our southern border. One thing we would not do is separate children from their parents at the border, something that I could not bring myself to do. I could not add our immigration enforcement personnel, our border personnel to do, nor could I float it as a determent pnd and this is very obviously a conscious and deliberate policy choice by this administration to try to deter people from entering our country. And it may have a short material effect, we’ll see when the June numbers come out, but the lesson learned from experience in office is policy changes like this may have a short term impact on illegal migration, but it always reverts to the normal trend so long as the underlying conditions in Central America and Honduras, Guatemala, el Salvador persist, the poverty and violence that has been noted."