The Trump administration's border separation policy backfired and has provided "terrible optics," according to President Donald Trump's former Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert.
"This week has been just gripping imagery and terrible optics for the administration," Bossert told ABC's "This Week." "So, part of this was avoidable."
Bossert did call the zero-tolerance policy "an understandable and righteous decision," but the capacity and protocols just were not in place, he told ABC host George Stephanopoulos.
"Although it's an understandable and righteous decision to take to prosecute any illegal entrant into the country, almost from the outset, we didn't have the capacity to detain these parents and children, together or separately," Bossert said.
Amid criticism President Trump said he could not change the law, before attempting to do just that with an executive order, Bossert added the order this week might not stand up against a 2015 court ruling which says detaining illegal immigrants with their children had been considered "inhumane."
So, the president has been hamstrung in his attempts to keep his campaign promise to end "catch and release" immigration policies.
"So, really, the reality of the president's messaging this week that was spot on is that this country has no choice under current law as interpreted by a judge but to catch and release," Bossert told Stephanopoulos.
". . . This is why some of these liberal decisions, though borne out of compassion, legislative decisions from the bench, are absolutely short-sighted and intellectually inconsistent. I hope the judge realizes that, because she's put us in a position where she put a greenlight to anybody from South and Central America to come here and bring a kid. And now, she said, release them once they get here.
"So, we have either got catch and release or congressional action, or continued blame game. And I'm seeing lot of blame."
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