Trump quadruples down on false claim that 'Democrat rules' are forcing his administration to separate immigrant families

Among President Trump's wide-ranging comments on Friday morning was a refusal to back down from one of his recently concocted false claims.

Trump falsely asserted that immigrant children and parents are being separated at the U.S. border due to laws imposed by Democrats. "I don't like the children being separated from the parents. I don't like it. I hate it. But that's a Democrat bill that we're enforcing," he said to reporters.

The president yet again pointed to unexplained "Democrat rules" and "horrible laws" of the Democratic Party, claiming that his political opponents are responsible for the policy that separates families who are found to be immigrating illegally. He has made this claim before, tweeting that the separations are "the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats," never explaining what legislation he refers to.

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PolitiFact reports that "there is no such law" that requires the Trump administration to separate families. Before the Trump administration began a zero-tolerance policy for undocumented immigration, immigrant families would be held in family detention centers to await a court date or deportation. Now that the Trump administration is prosecuting every adult immigrant without documentation, authorities are sending children to government shelters while their parents are detained.

Trump's claims have been denounced as "egregious, shameless lying," but that hasn't stopped homeland security and border enforcement officials from echoing the sentiment. As it happens, Trump's false assertions about "bad laws that the Democrats gave us" fell on the four-year anniversary of one of his old tweets about one of his favorite Democrats: "No president in history has lied to the American people more than President Obama," Trump wrote in 2014. "In fact, it is not even close!"