Trump defends family detention as best option for migrant children

President Trump said Wednesday he has children in mind with his administration’s new policy Wednesday to hold illegal immigrant families in detention, parents and children together, while they await their deportation hearings.

Mr. Trump said the goal is to change future illegal immigrants’ thinking. If they are detained, they can be deported, and once folks back in Central America see deportations they’ll stop surging north.

“They won’t come. And many people will be saved,” the president said.

His top aides announced earlier in the day that they are writing new regulations to replace the Flores Settlement, a court-imposed agreement governing how illegal immigrant children nabbed at the border are treated.

Under a 2015 update to Flores imposed by an Obama-appointed federal judge, the government cannot detain parents who cross the border with children for longer than 20 days. That’s too short to complete their immigration cases, and it means they get released into communities, where most of them are ignoring their court cases or their deportation orders.