BORDER/CHILDREN/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday [6-20-18] and signed an executive order that ends the separation of families by indefinitely detaining parents and children together at the border. ‘We’re going to have strong, very strong borders but we are going to keep the families together,’ Mr. Trump said as he signed the order at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. ‘I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.’ The order said that officials will continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, but will seek to find or build facilities that can hold families — parents and children together — instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts. Mr. Trump’s executive order directed the government’s lawyers to ask for a modification of an existing 1997 consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, that currently prohibits the federal government from keeping children in immigration detention — even if they are with their parents — for more than 20 days.”
-Maggie Haberman and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Retreats on Separating Families, Signing Order to Detain Them Together,” The New York Times online, June 20, 2018