By Chris Sommerfeldt
New York Daily News
Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a new class of immigration judges Monday that he believes it is “legitimate, moral and decent” for the government to rip children from their migrant parents if they have been caught entering the country illegally.
Sessions made the comments while discussing the Trump administration’s defunct “zero tolerance” policy at a swearing-in ceremony for newly minted judges in Falls Church, Va.
“It is perfectly legitimate, moral and decent for a nation to have a legal system of immigration and to enforce the system it lawfully adopts,” Sessions told the class.
He clarified, “this is the ‘zero tolerance’ policy you’ve heard about.”
“You don’t get to enter the country unlawfully,” he continued, “without having some consequences for that.”
Sessions has invoked morality to justify “zero tolerance” once before — that time quoting a Bible verse that was also used by defenders of slavery in the 1840s and 1850s.
Sessions’ Monday remarks come despite President Donald Trump signing an executive order in June that put an end to “zero tolerance.”
The practice, which was announced by Sessions in April, resulted in the forced separation of thousands of migrant families. Trump signed the executive order ending the separations amid international pushback after falsely blaming Democrats for weeks.
As of Thursday, 416 migrant kids remained separated from their parents because of the policy, according to the government’s own tally.
Trump’s executive order effectively ended “zero tolerance” but didn’t automatically reunite all the families who had already been shattered. The government has since been ordered by a federal judge to reunite all families affected by the policy. Those reunifications remain ongoing.
Contrary to previous administrations, Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy pledged to criminally prosecute all illegal entries into the country, resulting in adults being arrested by the U.S. Marshall Service while their children were taken into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Typically, the government has civilly prosecuted illegal entries under previous presidents, allowing detained families to remain together while awaiting deportation.
During Monday’s event, Sessions also cautioned the incoming judges against feeling sympathy for the immigrants who appear before their courts and accused immigration lawyers of trying to circumvent the law, comparing them to “water seeping through an earthen dam.”
“When we depart from the law and create nebulous legal standards out of a sense of sympathy for the personal circumstances of a respondent in our immigration courts, we do violence to the rule of law and constitutional fabric that bind this great nation,” Sessions said.
Immigration lawyers blasted Sessions’ comments as inhumane and prejudicial.
“Jeff, what’s improper is your influence on judges who are supposed to be deciding cases based on things like facts, evidence, and the rule of law,” Virginia-based lawyer Hassan Ahmad tweeted. “We are keenly aware of your cowardly attempts to change the law to fit your well-documented white nationalist views. You are an anachronism, a relic of a bygone era.”
