Trump Blames Obama For Family Separation Policy On Southern Border: ‘President Obama Built The Cages!’

In a wide ranging interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd that aired Sunday, Donald Trump blamed former President Barack Obama for the policy of family separation among migrants on the southern border.

Earlier this year Trump imposed a zero tolerance policy towards migrants coming across the border from Mexico causing increased separation of families and their children.

Trump told NBC “it’s been that way for along time.. President Obama built the cages,” continuing to say he “inherited separation from President Obama. I was the one that ended it.”

PolitiFact called out the president earlier in the week after an Interview aired Thursday on Telemundo with Trump claiming again that he inherited a separation policy from his predecessor and he has now “brought families together.”

.@realDonaldTrump once again claimed that @BarackObama had a family separation policy. "I didn’t have it," Trump said. "He had it." That's False. https://t.co/swHABwuvXO https://t.co/bEMvllgsgL

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) June 21, 2019

Although family separation happened on occasion among migrants under the Obama Administration, with Obama deporting more people in his first year in office than Trump, Trump’s zero tolerance stance made family separation a central part of procedure. As PolitiFact put it, the past administration did not have “a blanket policy [zero tolerance] to prosecute parents and separate them from their children.”

A court order ended  the family separations in December 2018 with 2,800 kids identified and reconnected with families. The U.S Department of Health And Human Services says the scope of children separations is not clear and there maybe thousands more children who were not accounted for.