# The Justice Department implements zero-tolerance prosecution of illegal entry, producing family separations Date: 2018 ## The fact On 6 April 2018 Attorney General [Jeff Sessions](/people/jeff-sessions) directed U.S. Attorney’s Offices along the southwest border to prosecute all illegal-entry offences referred by DHS (‘zero tolerance’). Because adults were taken into criminal custody, accompanying children were separated and placed in HHS shelters. A 20 June 2018 executive order later halted the separation practice while keeping prosecutions. This Fact is the April referral-and-prosecution policy that produced separations, not the June halt. ## Context Sessions issued the memo; [Trump](/people/mig-donald-trump) publicly backed the policy and later signed the halt. DHS/ICE/CBP referred adults. ORR/HHS held children. Courts and inspectors later found thousands of separations and tracking failures. The policy is a completed enforcement choice, not a statute of Congress. Donald Trump did not act alone on every file. Congress, courts, agencies, foreign counterparts, and later administrators share specific instruments. Office-holding is not automatic authorship of every downstream welfare series. Allegation is not a completed judgment. ## Evidence and sources The DOJ 6 April 2018 memo, DHS OIG and HHS OIG reports, and the 20 June EO are official. Independent reporting documented separations as they occurred. They do not supply a unique lifetime trauma coefficient as a welfare series, only the instrument and counts in inspector reports. ## Significance Minority-rights and migration-restrictiveness paths: using criminal prosecution of parents as a border deterrent with child separation is a documented rights harm. Confidence high on the policy and on inspector counts, medium on any later health-indicator coefficient. Criminal prosecution of parents with child separation is a completed minority-rights harm at the border. ## What is established and what is not Established: April 2018 zero-tolerance prosecutions produced family separations; inspectors later counted thousands. Not established: that every separated child appears in a global under-five mortality series. What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, a court that vacated the instrument, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions. The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit. The score must not treat the June halt as if April never happened, or treat smugglers as the authors of the memo. Sessions wrote the memo. DHS referred adults. HHS held children.. Co-authors and later implementers named in Context remain on the file. A later repeal, court stay, or successor order would be a different Fact with a different date. The contribution type is direct. Trump’s documented role is limited to the instrument named in the title. He did not write the independent newspaper; the newspaper did not enact the instrument. Driver `protection-of-minority-rights` is used because the mechanism in the FDI description is the one the evidence can actually support. Off-family indicator padding is refused. ## People - Donald Trump: https://factrail.ai/people/donald-trump ## Drivers - Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights - Anti-Immigration Sentiment: https://factrail.ai/drivers/anti-immigration-sentiment ## Sources - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children-idUSKBN1J92E9/ - https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1049751/download ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-fact-zero-tolerance-family-separation-2018