GET THEM

Jeff Sessions Told Federal Prosecutors ‘We Need to Take Away Children’ in 2018

A report found that Sessions, Rosenstein, and other top DOJ officials were “a driving force” behind the family separation policy.

Jeff Sessions told federal attorneys that he was not interested in their objections to separating immigrant children from their parents in detention during a 2018 call about the policy, The New York Times reports. The attorneys had told Sessions they were “deeply concerned” about the welfare of the children and about President Donald Trump’s policy of detaining and prosecuting all illegal immigrants, including children. According to a prosecutor’s notes from the call contained in a report on an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, the then-attorney-general’s remarks amounted to: “We need to take away children. If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.” The report found that Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, and other top DOJ officials were “a driving force” behind the family separation policy. Rosentstein, the deputy attorney general at the time, said a week later that children of all ages should be prosecuted.