“President Obama had child separation. Take a look. The press knows it, you know it, we all know it. I didn’t have — I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation. … President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it, okay?”
— President Trump, in remarks at the Oval Office, April 9, 2019
This is a Four Pinocchio claim, yet Trump keeps repeating it when he’s pressed on family separations.
Repetition can’t change reality. There is simply no comparison between Trump’s family separation policy and the border enforcement actions of the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.
The Facts
The Obama administration rejected a plan for family separations, according to Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s top adviser for immigration. The Trump administration operated a pilot program for family separations in the El Paso area beginning in mid-2017.
View the complete April 10 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.