NEW: DOJ IG releases report on the zero tolerance policy --…

Notes from US Attorneys across the country on a call that Jeff Sessions held in May 2018.

“we need to take away children; if care about kids, don’t bring them in; won’t give amnesty to kids; to people with kids” (strikethrough in original)."

"We concluded that the Department’s single-minded
focus on increasing immigration prosecutions came at the
expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact of family unit prosecutions and child separations."

Link to the report. It is INSANE how much more thorough the DOJ IG is as opposed to the DHS IG. The reports don't even compare.

https://t.co/1AvpFa6z6N

Report confirms the reporting of @shearm @ktbenner @nytmike from last year:

https://t.co/d2r249I8ee

DOJ official in TX emailed concerns about the pilot program:

"We have now heard of us taking breast feeding defendant moms away from their infants, I did not believe this until I looked @ the duty log & saw the fact we had accepted prosecution on moms with one and two year olds"

"The next issue is that these parents are asking for the whereabouts of their children and they can’t get a
response, the courts are turning to us for help with providing contact information to defense counsel."

Rod Rosenstein told the OIG "that he did not think he saw the draft of the policy before it was issued on April 6 and that zero tolerance was 'just [an issue] that the AG
and his staff were intimately involved in.'"

Crazy. Prosecutors didn't know the policy would include families.

"USAOs did not understand the zero tolerance
policy to apply to family units & US Attorneys expressed surprise when they learned in early May 2018 that DHS would begin referring family unit adults for prosecution"

DOJ didn't communicate with HHS, the government agency that took custody of children who had been separated;

"we did not find evidence that DOJ leadership had discussions about the zero tolerance policy or family separations with HHS prior to the announcement."

"In a follow up interview conducted after Rosenstein reviewed a draft of this report, Rosenstein noted: “The government was not prepared to deal with [family separations]. And [the change to DHS’s policy on family unit referrals] should not have been
implemented.…"

One of the weird moments in this whole saga was the fact that Sessions announced it at a presser w/o DHS Sec. Nielsen.

"according to Hamilton, DHS unexpectedly withdrew Nielsen from participating in the event “to protect Secretary Nielsen from bearing the wrath of the policy.”

"We were therefore out there on our own, and somehow we ended up announcing their decision for them…. It was kind of weird, but Sessions didn’t care, because he thought it was the right thing to do.”

What a mess.

Wow.

One thing to read about the breakdown throughout government, especially w/in DOJ, on this policy & it is another to see how it actually impacted families.

The beginning episodes of 'Immigration Nation' document the family separation policy & they are necessary viewing for all.

NEW: DOJ IG releases report on the zero tolerance policy -- aka the family separation policy -- finding that the Attorney General was the driving force behind it, failed to prepare for it, and that Jeff Sessions knew it would lead to children being separated from their fams.

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