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[Sessions] All Americans
are rightly disturbed
by the large numbers

of illegal aliens entering
our country.

That's why our administration
has moved aggressively
to secure our borders more

by hiring a record number
of new border guards,

by deporting twice
as many criminal aliens
as ever before.

[George Bush] The United States
must secure its borders.

This is a basic responsibility
of a sovereign nation.

The border
should be open to trade
and lawful immigration,

and shut to illegal immigrants,
as well as criminals,

drug dealers, and terrorists.

[Obama]
Today, we have more agents
and technology deployed

to secure our southern border
than at any time
in our history.

Even as we are a nation
of immigrants,

we're also a nation of laws.

That's why over
the past six years,

deportations of criminals
are up 80%.

[Trump]
Are you ready?

[crowd cheering]

Are you ready?

We will build a great wall
along the southern border.

[crowd cheering]

[White]
I've spoken about
family separation in court

and before Congress.

I haven't spoken
about it publicly

because it's inconsistent
with my duties
as a public official.

I'm a career social worker.

I wanted the opportunity
to get involved...

in some of the worst problems

that face vulnerable
and underserved populations.

The federal government
remains an amazing place

for people who want
to make a difference.

Challenges that you face
in federal public service

are compounded
by the complexities
of American political life.

[Trump]
We're in the middle of a crisis
on our southern border.

The unprecedented surge
of illegal migrants

from Central America

is harming both Mexico
and the United States,

and I believe the steps
we will take,

starting right now,

will improve the safety
in both of our countries.

A nation without borders
is not a nation.

Beginning today,
the United States of America

gets back control
of its borders,

gets back its borders.

[Wolf]
Are you, the Department
of Homeland Security,

considering a new initiative

that would separate children
from their parents

if they try to enter
the United States illegally?

Yes, I am considering,
in order to deter more movement

along this terribly
dangerous network,

I am considering exactly that.

They will be well-cared for
as we deal with their parents.

[Wolf] But you understand
how that looks
to the average person.

It's more important
to me, Wolf,

to try to keep people
off of this awful network.

Children who enter
the United States
unaccompanied

overwhelmingly are coming
from the three
Northern Triangle countries

of Central America.

[White] Guatemala, Honduras,
and El Salvador.

They are typically motivated

by severe poverty, violence.

Many enter the United States
seeking asylum.

These are some
of the most vulnerable children
in our hemisphere.

[kids playing]

[White] And they enter
the United States
unaccompanied by a parent,

without the care and protection

that a child who entered
the United States
with their parent would have.

[Indistinct chatter]

Diego!

[Soboroff]
I never considered myself
a source-based reporter.

I didn't go to journalism
school.

I don't consider myself
a journalist

who is responsible
for breaking this
story in any way.

The first exposure I ever had

to what became family separation

was, I was
in a Colorado ballroom

covering the 2016 campaign.

[Soboroff] And the guy
that was up there speaking

on behalf of Donald Trump
was screaming.

And I just said,
"Who is this fucking guy?"

Turns out
it was Stephen Miller.

I'm gonna ask everyone
in the audience a question,

and I want you to answer
with as much loudness
and conviction as you can,

so all the special interests
and lobbyists in D.C.
can hear you.

Do you think
the United States of America

needs to secure its border?

[people screaming]

[Miller] When millions
of Americans lost their jobs
to illegal immigration,

did Washington rise
to their defense?

-[crowd] No!
-[Miller] That's because
the special interests in D.C.

who have controlled
our political process
for 40 years,

they don't care about you.

They don't care
about your family.

And they don't care
about your security.

It is a hard truth,
but it is a truth

that must be spoken
for all to hear.

[Soboroff] Stephen Miller
was for ending

what's known euphemistically
as catch-and-release,

which means allowing people,
once they come into the country,

go through the immigration
process at the border,

to be released into the interior
until their immigration hearing.

[Soboroff]
What I didn't know,
but what they knew all along,

is that their version
of stopping people

from coming into the country
was taking children away
from their parents

so that people wouldn't come.

They called it
the zero-tolerance policy.

[Sessions]
For those that continue to seek

improper and illegal entry
into this country,

be forewarned.

This is a new era.

This is the Trump era.

The lawlessness,
the abdication of duty
to enforce our laws,

and the catch-and-release
policies of the past are over.

[Sualog]
I was with the Office
of Refugee Resettlement

for a little over 16 years.

I managed grants
and facilities that cared
for unaccompanied children.

What kids tell us is

the gangs will come
to their schools

and try to force them to join.

[Sualog]
Their parents send them
up to the U.S.

Somehow, that journey
was less of a threat

than the gangs
that were trying
to recruit them.

Anyone in the federal government
that would come across

a unaccompanied child,

they are required by law

to refer that child to ORR
within 72 hours.

Our responsibility
is for child welfare.

Put them in one
of our licensed facilities.

They are provided
the basic needs.

Their clothing,
their food, their shelter.

One of our biggest jobs
is to find family members,

or what we would call a sponsor,
for the child.

We look at their background.

We make sure
that they have the means

to take care
of that individual child.

And then once we do that,
then we would release
the child to their care.

It's not good for children
to be institutionalized.

You can make a shelter
look as homey as possible.

it's not their home.

We get the kids out as quickly
and as safely as we could.

[White]
Everyone who I worked with

at the Office
of Refugee Resettlement

were profoundly committed
to children.
In fact, I think you have to be,

because it's a really
exhausting job.

And regardless of which party
is in power,

it's a fairly thankless
and politically unpopular...

job to have also.

If you aren't motivated
by the children,

there's very little incentive
to do it because
it has few other rewards.

It's hard to explain to people
why they should care
about anyone or anything.

But the most important word

in the unaccompanied children
program is "children."

They're not a metaphor.

Each of them
is an actual child...

and a child in terrible danger.

[thunder]

If you have children,

you need only imagine
your own child

in a foreign country,
not speaking the language...

with no parent...

with no money...

not understanding
how that society works...

having been apprehended
by federal immigration
authorities.

Each of these children
is your child
in that situation.

I can never explain to someone
why they should care.

But I can tell you
that a lot of people do care,

and care profoundly.

Every day, there are children
who enter the United States

unaccompanied by a parent
or legal guardian.

And those children require
protection...

and care...

to find a family member
of theirs in the United States

who can take care of them.

Family separation, though,
was not about unaccompanied
children.

It was about accompanied
children. It was about children
with their families.

And the unaccompanied
children program,
which I worked in,

was essentially hijacked

for a purpose for which
it was never intended

nor authorized in law.

It was a program designed
to be a child protection program

for children who entered
the United States
without parents.

And it was instead
used as a tool to take children
from their parents.

[suspense music playing]

[knocking]

[knocking]

[knocking]

[knocking]

[knocking]

[interviewer] You should tell me
the story of how

you got involved
in all of this.

Define "all this."

[laughs]

[interviewer] How you first
went to work

for the Office of Refugee
Resettlement.

[Lloyd]
I thought that it was a unique
and exciting opportunity.

I like the process
of sitting down
with a complex problem

and trying to work
a way out of it.

You get to do a lot of that
in the government.

I expected
to be reviewing papers,

doing research, writing drafts,

getting them reviewed,
attending meetings,

sitting in the back
and saying as little
as possible.

[laughs]

But did you know you were
being considered
to be the head of ORR?

No.

Very quickly,
as the discussions progressed

about what
my responsibilities were,

it's like, all right,
well, it's time to get to work.

[interviewer] Were you reporting
to the White House?

[Lloyd] No.

You'd show up to a meeting,

and there happens to be
White House personnel there.

There wasn't a regular pipeline
into the White House.

[interviewer] But didn't you
contact Stephen Miller
at a certain point?

I just perceived him to be...

you know, one of the people
who was focused on immigration
in the White House.

Thought it would be a good idea
to reach out.

[White]
On February 14th of 2017,

I went to a meeting hosted

at the Office
of the Commissioner

of Customs
and Border Protection.

[interviewer] Valentine's Day.

[White] It was Valentine's Day.

And at that meeting,
Homeland Security officials

laid out policy initiatives
that were gonna be implemented.

When parents showed up
with children,

the parent would be separated
from the child,

the parent would be charged,

and the child would be sent
to the Office
of Refugee Resettlement

as an unaccompanied child.

And immediately...

I thought,
"I have to stop this."

But it was very clear
from the way
it was being presented,

that this was afait accompli.

This policy had already
been decided.

During the Obama administration,
the idea had come up in DHS,

and Secretary Johnson had said

that they would not
separate children
from their parents.

It was inhumane.

There had always been
some who wanted it.

So there was a lot
of excitement on the part
of DHS folks in the room.

It was very clear to me
that I was not gonna
win any arguments.

I did say these policies
would have the effect

of overwhelming Office
of Refugee
Resettlement capacity.

It would lead to a backup
into Border Patrol

because I know
that was something
that had persuasive value.

And the answer I got
in the room was,
"Only at first.

And then there'll be
a deterrent effect."

I took that back
to my superiors

at the Department of Health
and Human Services.

I spent a little bit of time
talking about how
it would be harmful to children.

But, frankly, I didn't spend
as much time on that

as I did on how it would be
harmful to the program...

because harm to children
was part of the point.

They believed
that it would terrify families
into not coming.

[interviewer] Terrify them?

Yes, that was clearly
its intent.

[White]
Separation from your parent

is a profoundly traumatizing
event.

So we were united,
the career workforce,

that we were gonna
do what we could
to prevent this policy.

But we also felt a creeping
sense of dread

that we would not be
able to prevent it.

Nonetheless,
only a month or so later,

Secretary Kelly came
out on television

and said there wouldn't be
family separation.

Only if the situation
requires it.

If the mother is sick,
or addicted to drugs,
or whatever.

-So if you thought the child...
-Not routinely.

...was endangered,
that's the only circumstance

to which you would separate?

Can't imagine doing
it otherwise.

Yet, when we had interagency
meetings,

they were still talking
about family separation.

And they weren't talking about
it as an "if," but a "when."

[female reporter]
Starting Monday,
there'll be a new chief here

at the White House.

The retired four-star
Marine General

who has been enforcing
the president's immigration
policies

as the current secretary
of Homeland Security,

will take over with a staff
that has been roiled
by infighting

and a turbulent start
to this new administration.

[Duke] It was a total surprise.

I moved chairs.

There was a little bit
of the imposter syndrome,

looking to your left
and right and saying,

"Why am I here?"

You're part
of the president's cabinet.

It's much more political.

[interviewer]
Why did immigration
become so central?

[Duke] There was a feeling

from those that were involved
with the campaign

that this was the central issue
for the "base."

[interviewer]
It's the winning issue.

Yes.

[Duke]
I became aware
of family separation early.

There was a lot of policy
being discussed

of how to deter
and keep our borders secure.

[interviewer]
To deter people crossing.

[Duke] Yes, sir. Yeah.

It was always on a list
of potential actions

when I became acting secretary.

It was advocated for by some.

I especially want to thank
ICE Director Tom Homan,

who has done an incredible job
in just a short period of time.

[Trump]
Somebody said the other day
they saw him on television.

They said,
"He looks very nasty.
He looks very mean."

I said, "That's what
I'm looking for."

[interviewer]
They wanted you to sign
off on it, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you don't really
technically have to sign off
on it, but yes.

I did not think it was
the right thing for the country.

I thought there were
other levers we could pull.

And the consequences
of family separation
were so severe

that it was important
to try those others first.

It was challenging for me,
but it also
had to be challenging

in some ways
for the administration

to have this path they were on.

And all of a sudden, me,
a little-known bureaucrat,

sitting in the acting
secretary position
and having signature authority.

I'm sure I was perceived
as a disruptor of sorts.

[interviewer] It seems to me
from the very beginnings
of the Trump administration,

people were in favor
of doing this.

There was a pilot program
in El Paso.

It was in place and started
about the time I transitioned.

What I knew
about the El Paso pilot program

was that it was trying
to reduce catch-and-release.

[Duke]
I don't think, at the time,

I fully understood
the whole program.

[woman in Spanish] Be careful.

Diego! No! Diego!

Help! Help! Diego!

Diego!

[White in English]
It was not until August

that the Office
of Refugee Resettlement

began to see clear signs
that it was happening.

The case of the baby...

who, we were told,
had not been separated,

and yet the separated mother
showed up
with her consular official.

[interviewer]
How old is this child?

An infant, an infant.
A few months old.

This was, for me,
the sentinel event...

that let me know
that family separation,

which had been discussed
as a policy proposal,

and which I had been told
was not happening,
was, in fact, happening.

And it was, for me,
a real turning point.

[interviewer]
What were the policies, say,
during Bush or Obama,

versus what they became
under Trump?

[White]
Families that were apprehended
together

would remain together,
either in detention

or being released
in the United States,

pending their day
in immigration court.

Children would not be removed
from their parents

and referred
as unaccompanied children

to the Office of Refugee
Resettlement
without compelling cause.

And that cause, historically,
usually meant

there were serious
criminal warrants
against the parent,

or the parent
was medically unable
to care for the child,

or there were reasons to believe
the child was unsafe
with the parent.

But systematic separation
of children from parents,

that was new.

That was new.

[interviewer]
When did you become aware
of separations?

[Sualog]
Our field staff started
to notice

very young kids, tender age,
anyone below five.

That's kind of unusual, right?

Because most often,
when you have a kid that young,

they're traveling
with a parent.

Jim De La Cruz was
the supervisor
of all the federal field staff.

He had his team keep
a spreadsheet.

It was growing, growing,
growing, growing,
with the number of kids.

[White]
One of the issues I raised
to Scott Lloyd as a concern is,

we'd run out of beds
for babies.

We were seeing so many babies.

But the babies can't tell you
they were separated.

We were very concerned
that some children's separations
would be permanent...

because the parents
would be removed
from the United States

through deportation.

So the families had made
the journey together,

but now the children
would remain
in the United States

while the parents were returned
to home country.

[interviewer]
These are state-created
orphans.

[White]
These are families separated

by action
of the federal government

as a tool of immigration policy.

[interviewer] What would Dickens
have called them?

Unfortunates.

[White] But of course,
it's not misfortune.

These separations
were all effected
pursuant to direction.

Family separation
began sometime around July.

It happened for months
before there was any policy
to do it.

And it was going on
while my own leadership
maintained it wasn't.

It was not until November

that I was able to get
Scott Lloyd, the director
of ORR...

to help me get a phone call

with Kevin McAleenan,
who was acting commissioner,

Customs and Border Protection.

Tom Homan was then
the head of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement.

I said, "We're seeing
a very high
number of separations."

I was told, "No, you're not."
I said, "We are.

I can share the data with you
if it's helpful.

But for perspective,
we've seen a tenfold increase

in the number of children
that we think are separated."

[ominous music playing]

[White]
It was undeniable
that separation had begun,

but there was no policy
to do that separation.

Officially, it wasn't happening.

But it was happening.

[Soboroff] Nobody ever said,
"This is what zero-tolerance
means."

And in fact, this was families,

mostly from Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador,

coming and getting
to the borderline

and seeking out
a Border Patrol agent to say...

"Please help me.

I want to declare asylum."

What zero-tolerance did
was turn their helpers

into their worst nightmare.

In retrospect,
they did exactly

what Stephen Miller
was screaming about

in that Colorado ballroom
in early 2016.

[Lee] In the fall of 2017...

we began hearing
that there may be children

separated at the border
from various advocacy groups.

At the same time,
the Trump administration

was saying publicly that,
while they had considered
doing it,

they weren't presently doing it.

But the information
we were getting
on the ground

was that children
were being separated.

What we didn't know at the time
was the extent of it,

or how much they intended to do
going forward.

But by the holidays,
December 2017,

it was clear we had to start
putting together
a legal challenge.

[Lee]
I have been doing this work
for three decades.

This is the worst thing
I have ever seen
in the immigration context.

This was just blatant
gratuitous cruelty.

And one
of the strategic decisions
that I had to make

in the beginning of the case is,

do I call this child abuse?

Do I call it torture?

And a lot of people were saying,

"You need to use those words.
You need to label it that.

I decided that ultimately,
the country was too polarized,

and it could produce backlash.

It was better just
to tell the stories
of these children

and let the facts speak
for themselves.

[female reporter]
Kirstjen Nielsen was sworn
in Wednesday

as the new
Homeland Security Secretary.

A ceremonial swearing-in
was held at the White House

with President Trump
in attendance.

At the end of the ceremony,
as Secretary Nielsen
began speaking,

White House staff
directed the media
out of the room.

It's so lovely to see
so many colleagues and
friendly faces.

I just want to thank
the president

for the trust and faith
that he has placed in me.

[interviewer]
I wonder why you were replaced,
ultimately.

In DHS, there are about
200 political appointees,

but only 18 or 19 of them
are Senate-confirmed.

The real senior people.

As the president,
you want your person

that is ideologically aligned
with you.

I don't think I was that person.

I never thought it would be me.
I just wasn't sure who.

[Duke] I don't think
I'm the stereotype
of what he was looking for,

on a shallow level.

And then, on a less
shallow level,
the ideological level.

[interviewer]
What would be the shallow level?

[laughs]

I think I'm a blue-collar
kind of person.

[Sualog]
At the Office of Refugee
Resettlement,

we used to have weekly meetings
with the public affairs folks.

The whole discussion was around,
like, why do we need
to keep a list?

And I said,
"Well, we need to keep the list

because it's part of the work
that facilities do."

And he goes, "Well,
maybe we should
just stop keeping it."

-[interviewer]
This is Scott Lloyd.
-[Sualog] Yeah.

He wasn't like,
"Jallyn, you need to stop,"

or, "You tell your staff
to stop."

Scott Lloyd is not
that type of person, right?

So he's like,
"Maybe we should stop."

Trying to close the subject.
And I just made a comment,

I said, "I'll see
what I can do."

[interviewer] This whole story
about "lose the list,"
is this apocryphal?

Uh, I just had a meeting
where I asked,

"Why do we have it?"

It was explained to
me, and I said,

"Okay, well,
the list doesn't bother me.

The fact that it leaked
bothered me."

And now it's become
a news story.

So I just wanted
to understand it.

Here's the other problem.

And I don't have a really...

solid recollection of exactly
what happened.

I had a lot of meetings
that looked like this.

Honestly, I would like
to have the benefit

of just sitting in the room
with the people who were there

and say, "Well, what
do you remember?"

All I can do is speak
to my best recollection of it.

[Sualog] Later on, I did have
a discussion with Jim.

"The administration doesn't
want us to continue the list."

But I said, "You and your team
need to do what you need to do

to do your job.

Don't stop keeping the list."

They're not thrilled
about his list

because the administration
wanted numbers to match.

[interviewer] But this wasn't
about matching numbers,
this was about lowering numbers.

Yeah, well, yes,
because they wanted
us to sign on

to numbers that Homeland
Security
was putting out.

Couple hundred
is what they were admitting to,

and ours was closer
to a thousand.

We can't just drop
the ball on tracking

because then we won't know
what's going on with these kids.

-[officers yelling]
-[police sirens]

[men whining]

[police sirens]

[sad music playing]

[police talking on the radio]

[crowd cheering]

We believe that a strong nation
must have strong borders.

[people cheering]

[Soboroff]
TheDateline border
hour was ordered

because it was what
Trump was talking about.

After finishing the story...

Katie Waldman, probably
the junior-most press deputy
for Kirstjen Nielsen.

She later became Katie Miller.

Katie invites us to do
a sit-down with the secretary.

I later found out they believed
that I wasn't gonna ask

any news-of-the-day questions

about what's actually happening
down along the border,

that I was just gonna talk
to her about what I had seen.

And in fact,
that was partially true.

I did know, by that point,
that family separation

was something
that the government was doing.

Jeff Sessions
held a press conference

to announce there was gonna be
a zero-tolerance policy.

[Sessions]
So tonight, we're here to send
a message to the world,

that we are not going to let
the country be overwhelmed.

People are not going to caravan
or otherwise stampede
our border.

We need legality and integrity
in our immigration system.

I have put in place
a zero-tolerance policy

for illegal entry
on our southwest border.

If you cross the border
unlawfully,
then we will prosecute you.

It's that simple.

If you smuggle illegal aliens
across our border,

then we will prosecute you.

If you are smuggling a child,
then we will prosecute you,

and that child may be separated
from you, as required by law.

What I didn't know
is that in the days

before I sat down
with Kirstjen Nielsen,

Donald Trump absolutely
berated her

that she wasn't moving
fast enough on these aggressive
deterrence policies.

Nor that she signed
his decision memo
to make family separations

a Department of Homeland
Security policy.

[interviewer] So at that point,
the memo is signed.
Her name is on the memo.

[Soboroff] Yep.

She signed it
even though she got
a pair of contradictory memos.

Because attached to the--
What's known as the
decision memo...

was also a memo that warned her
it could violate
the Constitution.

[interviewer]
So where does this
meeting occur?

[Soboroff]
At the Ronald Reagan Building
in Washington, D.C.

It was very tense until,
in the second...

question in the interview,
the light panel fell down.

We had to stop the whole thing,
and we kind of had
some small talk,

which then put me at ease,
a little more at ease.

And we continued
the conversation.

While we were out there,
the Attorney General announced
this new policy.

Anybody who crosses
into the United States
illegally

is gonna be prosecuted,

and children will be separated
from their family members.

With so many people
coming into the United States

looking to seek asylum,
is that the right strategy?

So, to be... Let's be
clear about that.

We will enforce the law.
We're not exempting any class.

So if you're part of a family
and you break the law,

you will be incarcerated,
just as adults are every day

in this country,
in every community,

when they break the law
and they're separated
from their family.

It's no different.

[man in Spanish] Your name?

Gabriela.

Your age?

28 years old.

Where are you from?

Guatemala.

Your name?

Diego.

[White in English]
It was often talked
in the media,

well, this is what happens
any time anyone gets arrested.

But that's not true at all.

No one inside government
believed that.

That was solely for the press.

When an individual
is arrested for a crime,

yes, they may be taken away
from their child,

but they know where
the child is.

The child isn't taken away
because there was an arrest.

The processing
of someone for 1325,

misdemeanor entry,
which was what
the vast majority

of these were for,
is a matter of hours
to a couple of days.

So there was often scrambling
to get the child

out of CBP custody
and into ORR custody

in time to ensure they
weren't there
when the parent came back.

And we know this.

I think there are plenty
of documents to support it.

So there was often an attempt
to move them quickly.

The point was to separate,
and prosecution was the tool.

Separation was the purpose.

Prosecution was the mechanism.
Not the reverse,

as was widely said
by DOJ and DHS and the press.

No one who was there
could possibly remember
it otherwise.

[Soboroff]
After the interview,

I didn't think about
separations again

until I got the call
from Katie Waldman

to go down to the border
to see separations for myself,

as if it was something
I should be excited about.

[interviewer]
Was she proud of the policy?

Oh, definitely.

I said, "Can I go another time?
Is there gonna be another tour?"

And she said, "No, you
have to go now."

We landed in Brownsville.
We get off the plane.

It's hot and it's humid.

Stopped at Walgreens,
and I was nervous.

And when I'm nervous,
I drink yellow Gatorade.

I bought dry shampoo.

God knows why.

'Cause I'm a TV reporter
with curly hair,

and I just thought that's what
I was supposed to do.

And in the Walgreens,
I bought this...

because Katie Waldman
had told me no cameras.

[interviewer]
How many other reporters
are there?

[Soboroff]
Ten of us total.

And that started 24 hours
of live reports
from that location.

So, um, we've just been in there
for an hour and a half.

I've honestly never seen
anything like that.

Uh, there are about
1,500 kids in there,

and they're at capacity,
more or less.

There are supposed to be
four kids per bedroom.

There are five right now.

They had to get a variance
from the state of Texas

because there are so
many people in,
based on the fact

that children are now
being separated
from their parents.

It's not just unaccompanied kids
that are presenting
themselves here.

It's just shocking to see.

Can I read you some of my notes?

[interviewer] Absolutely.

So this is the first page
of the notes.

"As of Friday, June 8,
11,214 migrants in
the UAC program.

Average length of stay:
56 days."

Oh, totally forgot about this.

One of the people that worked
for Southwest Key
said to us when we went in,

"We're not used
to so many people here.

It's an awesome place.
It really is."

[interviewer]
A sentiment that you shared?

[Soboroff] What struck me
was that they loved
the place so much.

I didn't know
what we were gonna see.

At that point, I thought,
"Oh, maybe it is awesome."

The only thing I could
think about, really,

was that
this was incarceration.

I got home. I was home
for a couple days.

And it was at a kids'
birthday party

where I got another call
from Katie Waldman saying,

"We're gonna let you
into the epicenter
of separations."

And that place was
called Ursula...

the Central Processing Center
in McAllen, Texas.

I still remember
that I was wearing
a light-blue button-down shirt.

I had my notepad.

That was the time where I saw
what had been talked about

and rumored in the media:

kids locked up in cages,

sitting on these concrete
or linoleum floors.

They thought that showing
the world separations

through the eyes
of people like me,

they would scare
the shit out of people

that were attempting
to come from coming,

and scare Congress
into allowing them

to have more strict
immigration laws.

[interviewer]
So you're a tool.

Bigly, as Donald
Trump might say.

-Jill, go ahead.
-[Brian] Come on, Sarah.
You're a parent.

Don't you have any empathy
for what these people
are going through?

-They have less than you do.
-Brian! Guys, settle down.

-[Brian] Seriously.
-I'm trying to be serious,

but I'm not gonna have you
yell out of turn.

-Jill, please call it.
-[Brian] They're telling us
it's a law,

and they have--
These people have nothing.

Hey, Brian, I know you want
to get some more TV time,

but that's not what
this is about.

It's not about that, it's about
you answering
the question, Sarah.

Honestly, answer the question.
It's a serious question.

These people have nothing,
they come to the border
with nothing,

and you throw children in cages.
You're a parent.

You're a parent
of young children.

Don't you have any empathy
for what they go through?

Jill, go ahead.

[Soboroff]
What I came to learn
after visiting these facilities

is that they were all warned.

This is exactly
what would happen
if you separated.

Creating permanent orphans
was the worst-case scenario.

[White]
If you believe that immigrants
are an existential threat...

to the American way of life,

and I do think that is how
some of these folks think...

then once you've exhausted
all the ordinary things
the law permits,

then all that's left
for those people

for whom anything is possible

is to do something extraordinary
in its cruelty.

And that's what happened here.

[reproter] Are you intending
for this to play out as
it is playing out?

Are you intending for parents
to be separated from
their children?

Are you intending to
send a message?

I find that offensive.

No, because why would I ever
create a policy
that purposely does that?

[reporter]
Perhaps as a deterrence.

-No.
-[reporter] AG Sessions says it
was a deterrent.

-The way that it works--
-[reporter]
He said it was a deterrent.

That's not the question
that you asked me.

It's a law passed
by the United States Congress.

Rather than fixing the law,

Congress is asking those of us

who enforce the law
to turn our backs on the law

and not enforce the law.
It's not an answer.

Deterrence was the point
of family separation.

That is a fact.

She signed the memo
that made it policy

to separate children
from their parents.

And that was a choice she made.

And we all made choices
at that time.

And there were plenty
of federal officials

who chose to oppose
family separation.

And there were others
who chose to support it.

She owns the consequences
of her decisions,

as do we all.

I do not regret
that I chose to oppose it.

One of the things that
pushed the public
to become outraged

was when there was
a leak of an audio

with toddlers crying
in the facility

and the guard making fun of them
and laughing about it.

[child crying]

[speaking in Spanish]

This is the first
time in my career

that I feel like it was a real
civil rights moment,

like we had in the '60s,

where people
were viscerally outraged
and took to the streets,

not just nationally,
but worldwide.

The Pope was speaking out,
conservative religious leaders.

No one wanted any part of it
because it was so cruel

that it went beyond
the normal ideological lines.

[crowd]
End this now!
End this now!

Free our children now!

[reporter]
Tonight, outrage is growing

over the Trump Administration's
zero-tolerance policy

separating migrant children
from their parents.

[female reporter]
The president
is not backing down.

The administration
seems dug in,
even with anger spilling over,

not just from opponents,
but from allies now.

[female reporter 2]
The border situation
continues to get worse,

and the calls for something
to be done get louder.

[female reporter 3]
He was digging into this fight,

insisting that only Congress
could resolve this crisis

at the border,
but today he reversed course,

signed an executive
order that's going to end
these family separations.

[Trump]
Thank you very much.

We're signing
an executive order.

I consider to be
a very important
executive order.

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.

So we're gonna have strong,
very strong borders,

but we're going to keep
the families together.

I didn't like the sight
or the feeling
of families being separated.

Okay.

You're gonna have a lot
of happy people.

[interviewer]
Where do you think the policy
ultimately was coming from?

I was later told
that its principal authors

were Stephen Miller,
the president's
senior adviser on immigration,

and Attorney General Sessions.

But I don't know that
from firsthand knowledge.

I was told that
by other federal
officials later.

[interviewer]
Presumably, in conversations
with Miller,

he must have said reasons
why they were doing this.

Uh...

I really don't know what...

Well, why him as opposed
to anybody else?

[interviewer]
Why him? Because he's well known

as having extremely draconian
immigration policies.

-That's why him.
-Okay, well--

[interviewer] And I knew
that you were talking to him,
that's why.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want
to over-characterize the extent

to which I was in contact
with White House personnel.

[White] He came back
from his meetings

with Stephen Miller
a little starry-eyed.

"So we've gotten
our marching orders."
He would use that phrase.

It was weird that he was meeting
with Stephen Miller.

Junior, non-Senate-confirmed
political appointees

do not typically have
unsupervised
meetings at the White House

with senior advisers
to the president.

That's odd.

I believe that's how
family separation

was rolled out in lots
of places.

Directly from the White House

to the relevant working
components.

That's certainly
how it happened

in the Office of Refugee
Resettlement.

If there had been a different
director of ORR,

someone who would passionately
have protected children...

he or she would have
been removed.

A political appointee
should not have that much power

over the lives of children.

But the reality is that,
by statute,

Scott Lloyd was
the legal guardian...

for every child
in the unaccompanied
children system.

And at some point,
he knew that separations
were occurring.

And he was not the person
who got fired trying
to stop them.

He was complicit in them.

He facilitated
those separations.

Scott Lloyd is the most prolific
child abuser

in modern American history.

No one else has had custody
of thousands of children

and done as much harm to them
as he has.

I believe that those kinds
of people will always exist.

If you want a yes-man,

you will be able
to appoint a yes-man.

If there are people
who wish to use cruelty

to achieve their deterrence
ends...

such people will be found,
and such means will
be ready at hand.

[man]
Secretary Nielsen, how dare you
spend your evening here

eating dinner
as you're complicit
in the separation

and deportation of the people
who come here

seeking asylum
in the United States.

We call on you to end
family separation.

[Duke] My experience was,
the White House
did control what you said.

I don't know if she was aligned
or told what to do.

It's hard to say,
where do I need to support,

no matter what,
'cause this is a president
elected

by the American people,

and where do I need to be Elaine

and not compromise?

But that is
a very personal decision.

For me, I think I was fortunate
because, one,

financially I didn't need
to stay in.

And, age-wise,
I wasn't ambitious anymore.

And I think ambition can really,

really destroy a person.

First thing you always get asked
at a cocktail party

in Washington, D.C., is,
"What's your job?"

Where if you're in,
maybe the breadbasket

or somewhere else, they'll say,
"What's your name?"

"How many children do you have?"

But it's very valued on title
and position and prestige.

It's hard
not to get caught up in that.

What will you compromise
for ambition?

[door opening]

[in Spanish] Hello.
I'm going to ask you
some questions.

I'll start with something easy.

What's your name?

Where are you traveling from?

Do you have a phone number?

Do you have family
in the United States?

Who are you traveling with?

Okay.

[reporter in English]
A federal judge in California
ruled overnight

that the Trump administration
must reunite

separated immigrant families
within 30 days.

The order also sets
a 14-day deadline

for children under five
to be reunited
with their parents.

[Lee] One of the great things
that this judge did

was keep a fairly even tone
at the hearings...

and allowed
the Trump administration

to feel like
they were being heard.

But when it came to the opinions
that he ultimately issued,

he called the policy "brutal,"
"shocks the conscience,"

"clearly unconstitutional."

He said, on top of that,
they didn't even keep records

of which children
went with which parents

and said it appears
that the United States
government

keeps better records
of where property is

than where little children are.

Which made it
a hundred percent clear

that the only thing
they thought was,

"How can we take
these little children away

so that word gets out
and people stop coming here?"

After leaving
the Office of Refugee
Resettlement,

where I had been
the senior career official

running the unaccompanied
children program,

I had a fairly minor
policy position
in HHS's disaster shop.

After I'd been there
not even three months,

the assistant secretary
called me into a meeting

of his entire
senior leadership,
and he announced

that I would be running
the reunification mission,

which I had not known
until he announced it.

I viewed that
as my second chance.

I had failed to protect
these children

from people
who wanted to hurt them.

And it wasn't for lack
of trying.

I'd tried everything
I could think of
to stop family separation.

I'd issued
all the warnings I could.

I'd used all the power
that I had.

It had not been enough.

But I had a chance
to put some of them
back with their parents,

so I wasn't gonna
fail them twice.

I met with him again
after that meeting,

and I went over
to the whiteboard
in his office, and I said,

"Dr. Kadlec, this is gonna be
incredibly difficult,

and it may be that no one
can succeed in it,

but if I'm going to succeed,
I will need seven things,

like Scott Lloyd
cannot interfere
with any of my decisions."

And they were a little
surprised by that.

And I said, "We will fail
if I have to run
any decisions by him."

I made a plan for how
we would do reunification.

[female reporter]
A federal judge says
the government needs

to quickly comply
with a court order

to reunite young immigrant
children with their parents.

Only 38 of 102 children
under the age of five

were unified by yesterday's
deadline.

[White]
Then the judge was angry...

and demanded that someone

who could actually explain
how this would be done

come and testify
in his courtroom.

So on one day's notice,
I flew out to testify.

And I thought to myself,

"If I can get the judge

to give an imprimatur
to my plan,

it won't be able
to be stopped by ICE."

So I went in this courtroom
and I testified,

and I think the judge
saw who I was.

I think he understood

that I would do anything
to reunify children.

And indeed,
I would have done anything
to reunify children.

And I put together
an entire team of people
who would do anything.

The judge
green-lighted my plan.

I felt emboldened.
But I also knew

that if we did not meet
the judge's timeline,

I had nothing to hold
the administration's
feet to the fire with.

Nothing.

And my greatest fear
was that some children

would be separated
from their parents forever.

There were efforts by ICE
to sabotage our success.

I think they thought
they could run out
the clock on the judge's order,

and then they'd be able
to deport all the families.

And they would be able
to preserve the deterrent effect

that they had been seeking.

So we did a little bit
of playing chicken with them.

We had to have an interagency
data team

work to try and identify
the children who'd
been separated

with what information
we could find.

We also manually read
the case files

of every one of the nearly
12,000 children
who were in ORR care.

We had the shelter programs

send us lists of
all the children

that they thought
had been separated.

For several weeks,
not a single child
got reunified.

[Sualog]
My staff and I, we were living
in our office building.

We didn't leave the office
till two, three, four o'clock
in the morning.

We have a database system.
I can go in,
I can look at any case.

When you have a two-year-old,

their assessment form
in the system doesn't have
that much information.

"What's your mom's name?" "Mom."

Like every mom, their
name is Mom.

Oftentimes, when we get a child
into our care and we find out,

oh, this kid is related
to this other kid in our care,

like, we don't get
that information from DHS.

No, we find that out
from the kid.

We make those connections
ourselves once the kids
come into ORR.

I don't recall
Homeland Security

being particularly helpful
in anything

except to tell us which
detention facility
were they keeping the parents.

[Diego in Spanish] Hello?

Hi, Diego. How are you?

Good.

How are you feeling?

Good.

Why did you let them
take me, Mom?

I couldn't do anything.

But I'm coming for you soon.

That's a lie.

I love you so much.

Bye, Mom.

[Sualog in English]
We moved thousands of kids
closer to the border

based on the information
that we got from Homeland
Security.

That was the mission.

[Duke] We worked so hard
because we knew
how important that mission was.

[White] We had 14 days
to reunify all of the children
under five.

Thirty days,
all the children, five to 17

who still had parents
in ICE custody.

The last few days
of the process

is when we did almost all
the reunifications.

We did more than 1,400 of them
in a single day.

[Sualog]
Can I just tell you
this funny story?

It's not funny.
It's sad, actually.

The day that the deadline was,

when we met the mission
and reunified all the kids...

we walked over
to the main HHS building,

and the secretary came.

We congratulated everyone
and gave ourselves
a round of applause.

Everybody was so proud.

We went from there
immediately back
to the conference room

because our job wasn't done yet.

It wasn't done yet.

I'm not confident
that we caught every
single case.

When we won this injunction
in June of 2018,

the judge said, "I want you
to immediately give the ACLU

a list of all the families
that were separated."

We expected to get a list
of 700 children

because that's what
had been reported and leaked.

The government gave us a list

of roughly 2,800 children.

But what happened
five months later
was equally shocking,

that there was
an internal investigative report
by HHS

saying that there were children
who had been separated

earlier in the administration,

and that list was 1,500
more children.

Again, many just toddlers.

[people cheering]

[Lee] We now know
this was right from the get-go.

Someone must have been
planning this for months.

[reporter]
Tom, you've been doing this
for over 20 years.

What does the future hold?

The future?

I'll tell you the same thing
I told President Trump.

He comes back, I come back,
we fix this shit.

And I'm sick
and tired of hearing
about the family separation.

You know, I'm still being
sued over that.

Come get me,
I don't give a shit, right?

Bottom line is...

[people cheering]

they chose to separate
themselves.

[Soboroff]
The fear that I developed

covering all this was,

after Trump was out of office,
would people still care

about the harm
that the immigration system
does to people

who come here
looking for a better life?

And the answer is no,
I think that people went back

to wanting to know less.

While Joe Biden
is not deliberately
separating children

from their parents
at the border...

some of the very policies
that Donald Trump put
into place

are ones that the Biden
administration kept

because the numbers
don't look good politically.

People were really
fired up because people

really didn't like
Donald Trump.

People were really fired up
because what they saw
was cruel.

But now that he's gone,

I don't see the same outrage.
I don't see people
in the streets

protesting that the families
aren't getting financial
restitution

from the U.S. government.

I don't see people
in the streets reminding
Joe Biden that he said

it was criminal
and there'd be a thorough
investigation

of the people responsible
for it.

They want to know less.

I hope if he's elected

and does family separation
again,

the outrage is the same.

I hope that the American public
has not become desensitized
to it.

Five years later,
we are still trying to reunite
up to a thousand children.

It's not over.
These children are not all
back with their parents,

and they're suffering.

But he must believe
that we're past the point

of the public getting
outraged again

because he has said,
"I'll do it again."

[female reporter]
Another immigration policy
you had

was the zero-tolerance
immigration policy

that separated families
at the border.

If you are reelected,
are you ruling out
instituting that?

Well, when you have that policy,
people don't come.

If the family hears
that they're going
to be separated,

they love their family,
they don't come.

So, I know it sounds harsh.

We have to save
our country, all right?

[White]
Part of what made
family separation possible

was a decades-long trajectory

toward greater cruelty
to immigration.

But fundamentally,
more than anything else,
what made it possible

was that an administration
wanted to do it...

and there were no laws
to stop them.

And that, unfortunately,
has not changed since.

There will always be people
who hate immigrants.

There will always be people
motivated to use cruelty

as a tool of immigration policy.

But there have to be laws
to constrain them.

So the other architect
of family separation

is the United States Congress...

which has failed,

despite numerous displays
of moral histrionics

that I remember very well
from my nine times

testifying before Congress,

has not passed that law.

So if in a future administration

there are political appointees
who want to do it,

there is really nothing
to stop them.

Nothing?

There is nothing to stop them.

It worries me constantly.

Because I've seen
it happen once,

and it's the worst thing
I've ever seen.

I can only imagine
the harm that it has done

to thousands of children
and parents.

So, yes, it troubles
me profoundly
that it could happen again

because the steps to prevent it
ever happening again

have not been taken.

[instrumental music playing]