WASHINGTON – In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House emergency room, where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide on the plight of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.
Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, chaired the meeting and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as opposition from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
It was almost a month ago that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy, announcing that any immigrant crossing the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with young children . But until now, U.S. border agents had not begun separating parents from their children to put the plan into action, and Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s attack on undocumented immigrants, feared the delay.
Those invited included Sessions, Nielsen, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and newly installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
Nielsen told those at the meeting that there were simply not enough resources at DHS, nor at the other agencies involved, to divorce parents, to prosecute them for crossing the border and for them on time. to return to their children, according to the two officials present. Without a quick process, the children would enter the custody of Health and Human Services, which were already working at almost capacity.
Two officials involved in planning zero tolerance said the Department of Justice recognized on multiple occasions that U.S. attorneys could not prosecute all parents quickly, so sending children to HHS was the most likely outcome.
As Nielsen had said several times against other officials in the weeks following the meeting, according to two former officials, the process could become messy and children could be lost in an already hidden system.
Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate by-product, but as a tool to curb more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have divorced even more children. Miller, with the support of Sessions, advocated for the separation of all immigrant families, even those going through civil lawsuits, former officials said.
While “zero tolerance” eventually separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents, what Miller suggested would have divorced an additional 25,000, including those who presented themselves legally in a port of entry seeking asylum, according to Customs and Border Protection data. May and June 2018.
That plan never came to fruition, in large part because DHS officials claimed it would halt the immigration process. But after Sessions announced that all families entering illegally would be prosecuted, the onus fell on DHS to act.
At the meeting, Miller accused anyone who was against tolerance against zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.
“If we do not enforce this, it will be the end of our country as we know it,” Miller said, according to the two officials. It was not uncommon for Miller to make claims like this, but this time he was adamant that the policy progressed, despite arguments over resources and logistics.
No one at the meeting made the case that separating families would be inhuman or immoral, officials said. Any moral argument regarding immigration “fell on deaf ears” in the White House, one of the officials said.
“Miller was tired of hearing about logistical issues,” said one of the officials. “It was just, ‘Let’s move forward and staff will figure this out.'”
Frustrated, Miller Nielsen accused of standing still and then demanded a show of hands. Who was in favor of progress, he asked?
A sea of hands went up. Nielsen keeps track of the rents. It was clear she was delayed, according to officials.
In the days immediately following the meeting, Nielsen had a conversation with then-CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan in her office in the Ronald Reagan building, and then signed a memo instructed by DHS staff to prosecute all migrants who are illegally cross, including parents arriving with their children.
Nielsen did so despite her stated reservations in the Situation Room and was warned in a legal memo by DHS General Counsel Mitnick – who was also sent to her then Chief of Staff Chad Wolf, who is now DHS’s acting secretary the decision would result in divorce of families. From the practice, Mitnick wrote, “a court could conclude that the divorces were divorced from the INA, Legislative Procedure Legislation, as the complaint for the Fifth Amendment for delayed proceedings.”
Less than two months later, Trump signed an executive order stopping family divorces and a federal judge in California ordered family associations to be violated based on the rights of divorced families.
At the time, there was no plan to track down the divorced children or create a system to unite thousands of divorced families, according to the two former officials.
According to a list of invitations received by NBC News, those expected to attend the meeting included: Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, Pompeo, Azar, Under Secretary of Defense John Rood, then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell, then White House attorney Don McGahn, and Marc Short, then director of legislative affairs and now chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence.
Asked about the show-of-hands vote, Judd Deere, a White House spokeswoman, said, “This is absolutely not true and has not happened.”
In response to a request for comment on the meeting and the presentation of hands, HHS spokesman Michael Caputo said, “This has never happened.”
The State Department and DHS refer NBC News to the White House. Sessions, Nielsen, Kelly and Bolton did not respond to a request for comment. McGahn and Rood could not be reached for comment.
Before Trump ended “zero tolerance” with executive order on June 20, 2018, more than 2,800 children were separated from their parents. When the Trump administration was ordered by a federal judge to begin reuniting the families it had divorced, it became clear that there was no method for both parents and children to follow when they moved through the system. As a result, it took several months to reunite, and in hundreds of cases, parents without their children were deported from the US.
On May 4, Gary Tomasulo, then the senior director of border and transport security at the National Security Council, sent an e-mail to the deputies and lower-level staff, tasked with implementing immigration policy, telling them that their bosses had agreed to the new prosecution and divorce policy “zero tolerance” and they were planning to develop it to support it.
At the time, some of the subordinates to the cabinet secretaries responsible for carrying out “zero tolerance” had raised moral objections, according to a source familiar with the talks.
In the email, received by NBC News, Tomasulo told deputies and other subordinates that her boss’ acknowledged that there are no easy solutions, but remained committed to doing everything possible to develop innovative solutions that the use full resources, capabilities and authorities of the United States Government. “
He went on to say, “I ask that if you are unable to attend these meetings, the message of dedication and resolution expressed by our principals will be communicated and internalized by those who represent your departments and agencies.”
