“A senior administration official said it seems Trump is convinced that family separation has been the most effective policy at deterring large numbers of asylum seekers,” NBC’s Julia Ainsley and Geoff Bennett report. There’s an obvious recent spike in the number of “family units” arriving at the border — groups that include members of an immediate family. During the period that the family separation policy was explicitly in effect last year — from April to June, shaded on the chart below — the number of family units apprehended at the border remained fairly constant. What’s more, there were far fewer family units apprehended in those same months of 2017 when there was no explicit policy of separation. (Philip Bump/The Washington Post)Even among those who approved of Trump’s job performance overall in that CNN poll, nearly 3 in 10 opposed the family separation policy.

Source: Washington Post April 08, 2019 17:37 UTC