In this interview with AG Jeff Sessions, Hugh Hewitt practically begs Sessions over and over to find a way to stop separating kids from their parents at the border, But as Sessions explains, the law requires that children are held in different facilities from their parents and therefore they must be legally separated until the hearing.
Here’s the interview:
You should listen to the full interview, but here are the reasons Sessions gives for having to separate children:
But the law requires us to keep children in a different facility than we do for adults. And every time somebody, Hugh, gets prosecuted in America for a crime, American citizens, and they go to jail, they’re separated from their children. We don’t want to do this at all. If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them. We’ve got to get this message out. You’re not given immunity. You have to, you will be prosecuted if you bring, if you come illegally. And if you bring children, you’ll still be prosecuted.
But to be clear, in my opinion, I’ll agree with you this. I agree with you that I wish the system would allow for that. I wish we could afford to do that. And maybe we’ll head in that direction. I certainly think that would be preferable if we could do so. But the law says that parents who come unlawfully are subject to prosecution. And the law says we must carefully take care of any children that come, and they must be held not by the law enforcement branch, but held by our Health and Human Services branch to ensure they’re properly taken care of.
So there you go. According to Sessions, the law requires that the children of illegals who are being prosecuted cannot be held by law enforcement, but must be held by HHS.
Honestly I thought Sessions made clear in the beginning that the law requires them being separated, but Hewitt continued to press him on this throughout the interview as if it were up to Sessions to arbitrarily change the law.