Bossert: Executive order won't 'survive three weeks'

Politico

By KELSEY TAMBORRINO

June 25, 2018

Bossert: Executive order won't 'survive three weeks'

Donald Trump’s former homeland security adviser said Sunday that the president’s executive order halting family separations would “not survive three weeks” before it is overruled by a court.

“The problem with his executive order is, it’s in direct contradiction to the standing order and ruling from the judge in 2015,” Tom Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week.” “My guess, that stroke of a pen does not survive three weeks before this court overrules it.”

Trump last week signed an executive order pausing family separations, telling reporters at the time he “didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”

The order contravened a “zero tolerance” policy announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April that directed U.S. attorneys’ offices along the border to prosecute offenses “to the extent practicable,” prompting outcry after the policy resulted in the forcible separation of children from their parents.

“This week has been just gripping imagery and terrible optics for the administration,” Bossert said. “So part of this was avoidable.”

But Bossert said the order would likely run into a court decision from 2015, which said detaining children with their parents was inhumane.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ruled in 2015 that the guidelines that mandated children be incarcerated no more than 20 days extended to children with their parents.

Bossert said that if the judge “maintains the same decision-making theory” from 2015, there would be “no way, unless she completely changes her philosophy,” that Trump’s executive order stands up to the same scrutiny.

“This is why some of these liberal decisions, though borne out of compassion, legislative decisions from the bench, are absolutely short-sighted and intellectually inconsistent,” Bossert said. “I hope the judge realizes that, because she’s put us in a position where she put a green light to anybody from South and Central America to come here and bring a kid. And now, she said, release them once they get here.”

“So there’s an understandable confusion that came from that,” said Bossert, who resigned from the White House in April. “The president saw the same thing the rest of us saw, and wanted to try to fix it, from what I can tell, from the outside.”

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