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Title : What's real, and what's not, about the U.S. border crisis
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What's real, and what's not, about the U.S. border crisis

Thousands of children split from their families at the U.S. southern border are being held in government-run facilities under a policy, which was reversed on Wednesday, of the Trump administration. Here's a look at how the situation developed, what's real and what's not.

How did we get here?

Tens of thousands of parents and children, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, have been caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in recent years with stories of fleeing drug cartels, extreme poverty and gang violence. The U.S. can't send them back over the border unless they are Mexican citizens, and instead must refer their case to an immigration judge.

In 2008, President George W. Bush focused on the problem of minors crossing the border without their parents and signed a law unanimously passed by Congress that called for such "unaccompanied minors" to be released into the "least restrictive setting."

By 2014, President Barack Obama was facing an influx of both children travelling alone and families as a result of violence in Central America. At one point, his administration tried housing the families in special detention centres. But after a federal judge in California ruled the arrangement violated a long-standing agreement barring kids from jail-like settings, even with their parents, the government began releasing families into the U.S. pending notification of their next court date.

Fast forward to President Donald Trump, who campaigned on building a border wall, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who derided these longtime U.S. immigration practices as "catch and release." Trump and Sessions insisted that people exploit the system, even travelling with children to ensure they aren't jailed and slipping away before their court dates.

NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff describes conditions for minors inside Casa Padre detention centre in Texas:

Reporter talks with CBC's Natasha Fatah about situation of children living separated from their families 5:20

Did the U.S. policy change or not?

Yes. While Trump's immigration policy didn't call for families to be separated, as pointed out by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the policy made separations inevitable.

Following Trump's election, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly — now Trump's White House chief of staff — floated the idea of separating families as a way to discourage illegal border crossings. But much of the administration's focus went into a travel ban aimed at Muslim-majority nations.

By this April, Sessions announced a plan: The U.S. would have "zero tolerance" for illegal crossings. If a person doesn't arrive at an appropriate port of entry to claim asylum, the crossing is deemed illegal and prosecuted even if the person does not have a criminal history. With the adult detained and facing prosecution, any minors accompanying them are taken away.

Nielsen muddied the debate by insisting that children would only be separated in narrow circumstances, including if the adult has broken the law. That falsely leaves the impression that only children travelling with gang members or other violent criminals would be separated. But under U.S. law, the act of crossing the border without proper documentation is itself a crime and would trigger a separation.

The result is that in the six weeks following Sessions' announcement, nearly 2,000 minors were separated from adults at the border.

A border patrol agent uses binoculars while searching for illegal immigrants along the U.S. border with Mexico in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on June 14. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

What do Democrats have to do with it? 

Not much, except that they seem to be relishing in the bad optics this creates for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump repeatedly said Democrats were to blame and cited a "horrible law" that separates families. But no law mandates that parents must be separated from their children at the border, and it's not a policy Democrats have pushed or can change alone as the minority in Congress.

(That 2008 law signed by Bush dealt only with unaccompanied minors, not families.)

Perhaps a bigger obstacle is that Republicans, currently in control of Congress, have been deeply divided on immigration.

Moderate Republicans have been trying to negotiate a plan that would reduce family separations and also open a door to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and who stayed illegally.

Many hardline conservatives, however, are leery of any legislation that would protect from deportation immigrants who arrived illegally, calling it "amnesty" and complicating the Republican Party's ability to pass both the House and reach the needed 60 votes in the Senate.

Some Democrats have speculated that Trump is using the humanitarian crisis as leverage to negotiate a tougher immigration bill, an assertion the White House has rejected.

But White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Monday that any crisis belongs to Democrats because they are the ones who rejected Trump's initial immigration plan.

"It's a dangerous situation for this country and it's all on the backs of the Democrats," he told Fox News.

Images from inside U.S. detention centres housing children of illegal immigrants who've been separated from their parents:

Government criticized for separating children from parents and placing minors in cage-like conditions 2:03

What's this about the Bible? 

Last week, Sessions cited the Bible in defending the policy.

"I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order," he said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Sessions' use of the Bible saying "it is biblical to enforce the law."

But longtime Trump ally, the Rev. Franklin Graham, had already rejected the zero-tolerance policy as "disgraceful," while former first lady Laura Bush called the practice "cruel" and "immoral."

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, told CNN June 15 there's no defence for separating families. He called the U.S. actions "unjust" and "unAmerican."

Trump says the U.S. can't allow the migrant influx in Europe to happen at home. 0:20

"If they want to take a baby from the arms of his mother and separate the two, that's wrong," Dolan said. "I don't care where you're at, what time and condition, that just goes against — you don't have to read the Bible for that."

Melania Trump issued her own statement saying that she "hates" to see families separated at the border and hopes "both sides of the aisle" can reform the nation's immigration laws.

But the White House and supporters of the administration's policy showed no signs of backing down until Trump's sudden reversal on Wednesday.

Trump on Tuesday was still blaming the Democrats for letting illegal aliens "infest" the country.

Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!

—@realDonaldTrump

Also on Tuesday, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski dismissed a story shared by Democratic National Committee adviser Zac Petkanas of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who had reportedly been forcibly separated from her mother.

"Wah wah," he said during the appearance on Fox News.

Earlier on Wednesday, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement invoked the Sept. 11 attacks to defend the policy.

Acting ICE director Thomas Homan told the Fox News show Fox & Friends: "I see a lot of tweets from New York congressmen. How soon they forget what happened in New York at the hands of people in the country illegally." 

The Sept. 11 hijackers had entered the country legally (two of them had overstayed their visas).

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