Mike Blake/Reuters
Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed that the U.S. will be separating parents from their children if they cross the border illegally in a Monday conference in Arizona. “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions said, according to NBC News. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.” In the pursuit of 100 percent prosecution of any and all who enter the border, children would be separated from their parents just as if a “US citizen convicted and jailed,” Trump administration officials said. The children, once their parents are convicted will be turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which refers them to relatives or to shelters. The Department of Homeland Security says 700 children have been separated from their parents since October 2017.