The Trump administration, however, implemented its "zero tolerance" policy in April 2018, which ordered that adults crossing the border illegally be criminally prosecuted for the misdemeanor. Since most of the migrants crossing the border arrived as part of families, the mass prosecutions resulted in thousands of adults being separated from the children traveling with them.
Under immense public backlash, Trump issued an executive order in June 2018 halting the family separations, and a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite all those it had separated.
It is still unknown how many families the Trump administration ultimately separated, and how many must still be reunited.
Though the federal government estimated that some 2,700 children were separated, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services told reporters in January that there were likely thousands more separations than previously known.
But Trump told Telemundo he "hated the separation policy," and that "zero tolerance" merely meant he was "going to be tough on the border."
"I'm the one that changed the plan. I inherited separation, and I changed the plan, and I brought people together," Trump inaccurately said. "I put them together. Just remember that. I put them together."
- Read more:
- The Trump administration will detain hundreds of migrant children at a military base that was once used as a Japanese internment camp
- Bernie Sanders calls immigration surge at the border a 'serious problem' but says there are more pressing issues at hand
- A Texas teacher was fired after tweeting at Trump to 'remove the illegals' from Fort Worth
- A Border Patrol video shows 1,036 migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in what officials are calling 'the largest group ever encountered'
