Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson criticized the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy on Saturday, calling the practice “unsustainable.”
Johnson told CNN that the Trump administration was attempting to “send a shock to the system” by separating thousands of migrant families in order to drive down the number of overall immigrants attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally — a practice, he said, that cannot withstand the long term.
“This is obviously a deliberate effort, short-term, to try to send a shock to the system and drive the numbers down,” Johnson told CNN. “The system cannot sustain that longer-term.”
“That may or may not work,” he added, “but history shows us that, longer-term, the trends are going to revert back to where they were, 40,000-50,000 a month as long as we continue to ignore the underlying push factors in Central America.”
Jeh Johnson says the Trump immigration policy is "unsustainable": "This is obviously a deliberate effort short-term to try to send a shock to the system and drive the numbers down" https://t.co/ik3Yd7oxVu
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 16, 2018
Johnson went on to criticize the policy’s ethics, which have come under fire after the Department of Homeland Security reported that thousands of children have been separated from their parents and detained at border facilities. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [contentcards url=”http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/392638-obama-homeland-security-secretary-trump-immigration-policy” target=”_blank”]