JD Vance’s False Comparison of Trump and Harris on Separating Children at the Border

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) defended former President Donald Trump’s immigration record during an appearance on NBC, pointing instead to the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked Vance whether families would be separated under a mass deportation program if Trump were re-elected. Vance said, “You start with the most violent criminals in our country,” and then claimed that Harris’ policies have resulted in thousands of migrant children living with sex traffickers and drug cartels instead of with their families.

“There was zero tolerance under the Trump administration, and that resulted in fewer family separations than under Kamala Harris’ border policy,” Vance said on August 25. “That’s what’s so striking about this. Actually enforcing our border is the most humane thing we can do, for children and certainly for American citizens.”

“Family separation” and “child separation” are not legal terms. They are generally used to refer to the Trump administration’s practice of having immigration officials systematically separate children from their parents at the U.S. border to deter illegal border crossings.

When we asked the Trump campaign for evidence to support Vance’s statements, they pointed us to data and information about children crossing the border alone during the Biden-Harris administration.

These examples are not equivalent. The Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy involved U.S. immigration officials separating children and parents who arrived at the border together. The children cited by the Trump campaign did not arrive with parents or other family members.

Children separated from their parents are “a completely different situation,” said Peter Margulies, a professor of immigration law at Roger Williams University School of Law. Unaccompanied children “have nothing to do with children who arrive with their parents. It’s apples and oranges.”

The Trump Administration’s Policy on Family Separation

Normally, a child and an adult arriving together at the U.S. border can be separated if:

• Border officials cannot establish the guardianship relationship.

• Officials believe the guardian may be threatening the child.

• The guard is being held for prosecution.

Immigration experts told us in 2019 that family separations were rare during the Obama administration and previous administrations, and not on the same scale as under the Trump administration.

The controversial family separations during Trump’s tenure occurred because of a policy implemented in April 2018 by Trump’s then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions said an “increased effort” was needed at the southwest border and ordered a “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute all adults who entered the United States illegally.

That meant the Trump administration was singling out all adult immigrants who entered the country illegally, even if they arrived with their children. When border officials singled out parents for prosecution, their children were taken from them and placed in the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Amid growing criticism of family separations in opinion polls and from some Republicans, Trump issued an executive order in June 2018 to detain families together when they arrive at the border if the parents face prosecution. The executive order said the administration’s policy would be to “preserve family unity.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Trump administration over its zero-tolerance policy. In December 2023, a federal judge banned the separation of families at the border as a deterrent as part of a settlement.

Lee Gelernt, chief counsel for the ACLU, told PolitiFact that more than 5,500 children were separated from their parents at the border during the Trump administration. President Joe Biden repealed the Trump-era policy and issued an executive order in February 2021 creating a task force to reunite separated children and their families. The ACLU told us in August that up to 1,000 children have not yet been reunited with their parents.

Unaccompanied children are not the same as children separated from their parents

To support Vance’s claim, the Trump campaign pointed us to monthly data on unaccompanied children encountered by border officials during the Biden administration, which totaled more than 6,000 in July.

The Trump campaign also pointed to an Aug. 19 report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General on unaccompanied minors released from federal custody. The report led Republican lawmakers and conservative news organizations to say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “lost” the children or that they were “missing.”

But the report makes no mention of children being “separated” from their families at the border.

The inspector general found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied children into the custody of Health and Human Services from fiscal years 2019 through 2023 (including about two years of the Trump administration). The inspector general’s report said that ICE reported that more than 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to appear for their immigration court hearings during that period and that children “who do not appear in court are considered to be at increased risk of trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

Immigration experts told us that the Trump and Vance campaign are equating unaccompanied minors with children separated from their parents at the border.

The inspector general’s report “is entirely about unaccompanied children, which by definition means they arrived at the border unaccompanied by a parent or other legal guardian,” said Theo Liebmann, a law professor at Hofstra University who has represented immigrants. “Therefore, there is no way that the report is talking about any ‘separation’ of children from their parents by border officials.”

Trump’s policy was unusual

Immigration experts say Trump’s policy is one of a kind.

“To our knowledge, zero tolerance is the only policy that has actually led to the separation of children from their parents,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute, an independent organization focused on immigration.

When parents in other countries send their children across the U.S. border alone, they are choosing to isolate themselves in their home country. This is different from separation of families by U.S. border enforcement.

“The first is a problem with US law in general, while the second is a problem created by the policies of the Trump administration, such as prosecuting adult border crossers and placing their children with other adults,” Margulies said.

Policymakers from both political parties argue that federal laws providing legal rights for unaccompanied children encourage parents to let their children travel to the U.S. alone.

Poverty, violence and climate change have led some children to leave their home countries in search of work in the US.

“But that is a separation of families ‘at the source’, not at the border,” Margulies said.

Our rule

Vance said: “During the Trump administration, there was a zero-tolerance policy, and that resulted in fewer family separations than under Kamala Harris’ border policy.”

The terms “family separation” and “child separation” are generally used to refer to the Trump administration’s practice of immigration officials separating children from their parents at the U.S. border to deter illegal border crossings.

Immigration experts said Trump’s policies were an outlier in decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, and resulted in 5,500 children being separated from their parents at the U.S. border, the ACLU said.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not point to a Biden-Harris policy that would allow border officials to separate children from their families. The campaign pointed us to data on children arriving in the U.S. alone.

But these examples are not equal. Unaccompanied children arrive at the border without a parent — a choice they or their families make before they travel alone to the U.S.

We rate this statement as False.

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