A Public Defender’s Lonely Fight Against Family Separation

But the Trump administration had no such objections. Even before Trump took office, his chief immigration adviser Stephen Miller, the soon-to-be appointed U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and a handpicked group of immigration restrictionists and white nationalists were debating how to shut down asylum at the border, as recounted in the book “Border Wars” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear. In early March 2017, retired Gen. John Kelly, then-secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told CNN that he was considering separating families. “I would do almost anything to deter” Central Americans from “getting on this very dangerous network that brings them up through Mexico into the United States,” he explained. “We have tremendous experience in dealing with unaccompanied minors. … They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents.”