speaking with gabriel shipton, the half-brother of julian assange discussing his potential pardon in the final days of the biden administration beginning at 7:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. a reminder you can now listen to ayman as a podcast. just scan the qr code on your screen, and subscribe to msnbc premium on apple podcasts. until we meet again, i am ayman mohyeldin . as promised, "separated" begins right now. i

[clinton] 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 are also a nation of laws. that's why over the past six years, deportations of criminals

are up eighty percent. [trump] are you ready? are you ready? [crowd cheering] 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 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. 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]

[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? [crowd cheering] [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, and 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. what are folks 60 and older learning these days? new perspectives! ♪♪ how to fix things. ♪♪ fun recip... (high pitched sound) (high pitched sound) (high pitched sound)

[music playing] interviewee: my son is winston, and he is eight months old. my son has a brain tumor. my parents have donated for years, ever since i was a child. i remember my mom talking about st. jude. i just never thought that i would ever need them. narrator: today, you can give a gift like no other, a gift that can help st. jude children's research hospital save lives. interviewee 2: anybody who is supporting this organization, i'm not sure that they know the impact that they're having. narrator: when you call or go online with your credit or debit card right now, we'll send you this st. jude t-shirt you

can wear to show your support. interviewee 1: it means everything. thank you for the future of my son. interviewee 2: i couldn't be more thankful. interviewee 3: st. jude will always have a place in my heart. craig here pays too much for verizon wireless. so he sublet half his real estate office... (high pitched sound) [ bird squawks loudly ] to a pet shop. meg's moving company uses t-mobile. so she scaled down her fleet to save money.

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[sualog] i was with the office of refugee resettlement powering possibilities. 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. (♪♪) imagine checking your own heart with medical precision from anywhere.

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[interviewer] you should tell me the story of how you got involved in all of this. define "all this." [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] [interviewer] 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? [llyod] 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 a fait 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 will 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. [kelly] 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." customize and save with liberty mutual. customize and sa— (balloon doug pops & deflates) and then i wake up. is limu with you in all your dreams? oh, yeah. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. ♪

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learn more and try for free at [female reporter]re.us 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 in fighting 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. [kelly] 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 say, "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. it 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.

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. [gelernt] 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. [gelernt] 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.

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my son has a brain tumor. my parents have donated for years, ever since i was a child. i remember my mom talking about st. jude. i just never thought that i would ever need them. narrator: today, you can give a gift like no other, a gift that can help st. jude children's research hospital save lives. interviewee 2: anybody who is supporting this organization, i'm not sure that they know the impact that they're having. narrator: when you call or go online with your credit or debit card right now, we'll send you this st. jude t-shirt you can wear to show your support. interviewee 1: it means everything. thank you for the future of my son. interviewee 2: i couldn't be more thankful. interviewee 3: st. jude will always have a place in my heart.

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can you do defying gravity?! yeah, get my harness. buy one line of unlimited, get one free for a year with xfinity mobile. and see “wicked,” in theaters now. tjen 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? 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]

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[soboroff] the dateline 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 going to be a zero-tolerance policy. [sessions] so today, 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 aggresive 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 is no different.

[white] 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 processing of someone for 1325, misdemeanor entry, which was what the vast majority

of there 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. 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.

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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 going to 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. [reporter] 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. 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. [gelernt] 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.

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 excutive 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 are 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.

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and then she crashed into my brow. did i mention this is permanent. don't get your eyebrows done if your eyebrow girl doesn't drink everyday dose. everyday dose coffee, functional coffee for all day energy without the jitters or crash. it's okay. it's gonna be. it looks good, right? [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 and... [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?" "what's you're..." "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]

[reporter in english] a federal judge in california ruled overnight is that the trump administration must reunite separated immigrant families within 30 days. the order also sets a fourteen day deadline for children under five to be reunited with their parents. [gelernt] 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 were 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 did not know 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." 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 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 foverver. 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. asthma. does it have you missing out on what you love, with who you love? get back to better breathing with fasenra, an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma taken once every 8 weeks. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems.

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it's just nice to know that years after i'm gone this guy will be standing the test of ti... he's melting! oh jeez... nooo... oh gaa... only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ [sualog] my staff and i, we were living in our office building. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ 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 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. often times 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 particulary helpful in anything except to tell us which detention facility were they keeping the parents.

[sualog] we moved thousands of kids closer to the border based on the information that we got from homeland security. that was the mission. 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 seventeen. 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 the kids, we walked over to the main hhs building and the secretary came and 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] [gelernt] 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. so come get me, i don't give a shit, right? bottom line is... 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. y'all see this, patrick mahomes is saying goodbye! patrick! patrick! people was tripping. where are you going!? he was actually saying goodbye to his old phone. i'm switching to the amazing new iphone 16 at t-mobile! it's the first iphone built for apple intelligence. that's like peanut butter on jelly... on gold. get four iphone 16s on us, plus four lines for $25 bucks. and save on every plan versus the other big guys. what a deal. that's a lot if you ask me. ya'll giving away too fast t-mobile, slow down. an alternative to pills, voltaren is a clinically proven arthritis pain relief gel, which penetrates deep to

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i hope if he's elected and for a limited time, get an $800 holiday bonus. call today. 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. [interviewer] 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]

good evening to you, i richard lewis at