“The idea of zero tolerance under the stated policy is that we don’t care why you’re afraid. We don’t care if it’s religion, political, gangs, anything. For all asylum seekers, you are going to be put in jail, in a detention center, and you’re going to have your children taken away from you. That’s the policy.” Texas Monthly: What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated?

+ AP: Hundreds of children wait in Border Patrol facility in Texas. “Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside.”

+ Laura Bush: “I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”

+ “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.” GQ: Stephen Miller wants credit for breaking up families at the border. (The border we should be focused on is the one between ourselves and our own worst impulses.)

+ DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: “We will not apologize for the job we do or for the job law enforcement does for doing the job that the American people expect us to do. Illegal actions have and must have consequences. No more free passes, no more get-out-of-jail-free cards.” (Let that be a lesson to some eight year-old kid running from drug violence and alone in a cage in a strange country. No more free passes, niño!)

+ President Trump is one of the few in his administration who doesn’t want to take the credit for his own policy. He blames the Democrats and insists: “The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility … not on my watch.” The raising of this false fear points to another problem with our border fixation and policies. Every minute we spend on a border threat that doesn’t exist is a minute we don’t spend on threats that actually do.

+ Buzzfeed: Everything you need to know about Trump’s immigration changes but were too afraid to ask.