The Department of Justice is pushing back on a Washington Post story that alleged the Trump administration will no longer prosecute parents when they enter the United States illegally.
President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday ending family separations at the border. Currently, when parents are prosecuted for illegal border crossing, their children are sent to a separate detention facility to wait out the prosecutorial process.
However, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the Trump administration was no longer going to prosecute parents at all. Their sourcing relied on one senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official.
Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokesperson for the DOJ, accused WaPo of not reaching out to their department for comment and slammed their reporting as being completely inaccurate.
“The Washington Post never reached out to the Department. Their story is not accurate,” Isgur Flores wrote. “There has been no change to the Department’s zero tolerance policy to prosecute adults who cross our border illegally instead of claiming asylum at any port of entry at the border.”
The Washington Post never reached out to the Department. Their story is not accurate. There has been no change to the Department’s zero tolerance policy to prosecute adults who cross our border illegally instead of claiming asylum at any port of entry at the border.
— Sarah Isgur Flores (@SarahFloresDOJ) June 21, 2018
The article was updated with Isgur Flores’ comment and a note at the top reading, “This story has been updated to clarify how migrant parents will be processed going forward.”