BREAKING -- "We need to take away children." A damning internal investigation concludes that top Justice Dept. officials were "a driving force" behind @realdonaldtrump's family separation policy. My new report, with @nytmike @ktbenner https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/family-separation-border-immigration-jeff-sessions-rod-rosenstein.html

Rod Rosenstein, the former Deputy Attorney General, told prosecutors that they should prosecute all migrant adults, without regard to the age of children they had with them, according to the draft report from the DOJ inspector general.

The IG concluded: “The department’s single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family unit adults and the resulting child separations."

The inspector general also found that senior DOJ officials “were aware that full implementation of the zero tolerance policy would result in ... children being separated from families.”