Border authorities temporarily suspend prosecutions of immigrant families

Children at the U.S./Mexico border
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, the top U.S. border enforcement official, said Monday that President Trump's order to stop separating undocumented children and parents at the Mexican border made it necessary to suspend prosecutions of families under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, for now, The Associated Press reported.

The news came after Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the controversial policy, and said that some children had been brought to the border by gang members. Sessions also said that drug cartels "take advantage of our generosity and ... use children to smuggle their drugs into our country as well." Protesters outside the school-safety conference in Reno, Nevada, where Sessions was speaking blocked a busy road and expressed outrage over the way the administration has treated immigrant families.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.