On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Trump administration’s immigration policy which has resulted in children being separated from their parents and has drawn harsh criticism from both parties.
Some have even gone so far as to compare this practice to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and claim it constituted a human rights violation. Sessions responded to such analogies by saying the Nazis “were keeping the Jews from leaving.”
Sessions appeared on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” where he said such claims were an exaggeration.
“Well, it’s a real exaggeration. Of course in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” the attorney general said. “This is a serious matter. We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it. We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit and what they think is their family’s benefit is not a basis for a claim of asylum.”
A Department of Justice spokeswoman told The Hill that “the Nazi comparisons that others are making” were nothing more than a “desperate attempt” by those same people to hide the fact that “their policies led to the number of families illegally crossing the border jumping five-fold over the last four years.”
Sessions, who announced the so-called “zero tolerance” policy again said on Monday that the DOJ would persecute anyone who illegally crosses the border as a means to deter people from doing so. “Hopefully people will get the message … and not [come] across the border unlawfully,” he said.
Earlier that day, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the department was only enforcing the law, maintaining that only Congress can end the policy of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Nielsen also added that “Congress is asking those of us who enforce the law to turn our backs on the law.”
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