Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday quipped about family separation while speaking to a conservative criminal justice organization in Los Angeles.
Sessions made the comment while criticizing the left for “hypocrisy” on border security.
“The rhetoric we hear from the other side on this issue – as on many others – has become radicalized,” Sessions said. “We hear views on television today that are on the lunatic fringe, frankly.”
“And what is perhaps more galling is the hypocrisy,” he added. “These same people live in gated communities, many of them, and are featured at events where you have to have an ID to even come in and hear them speak. They like a little security around themselves.”
“And if you try to scale the fence, believe me, they’d be even too happy to have you arrested and separated from your children,” he said, to laughter and applause.
{mosads}“They want borders in their lives, but not in yours,” he said.
The comment was included in Sessions’ prepared remarks to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, according to a Justice Department release.
Sessions has been the face of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy since announcing it in April. The policy, which calls for the criminal prosecution of all illegal border crossers, has resulted in more than 2,000 migrant children being separated from their parents.
President Trump signed an executive order last week to end family separations, but critics have said that the order does not provide a plan for the reunification of families.
Seventeen states and Washington, D.C. on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to force the Trump administration to reunite the families.