page_title: Donald Trump
section_title: Migrant detentions
hierarchical_section_title: Donald Trump / Presidency / Immigration / Migrant detentions
caption_attribution_description: English: Overcrowding of families observed by OIG on June 11, 2019, at Border Patrol’s Weslaco, TX, Station. Faces were digitally obscured by OIG.
context_page_description: Donald John Trump is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.
  Trump was born and raised in Queens, a borough of New York City. He attended Fordham University for two years and received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He became president of his father's real-estate business in 1971, renamed it The Trump Organization, and expanded its operations to building or renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. Trump later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing his name. He bought the Miss Universe brand of beauty pageants in 1996 and sold it in 2015. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies. He produced and hosted The Apprentice, a reality television series, from 2003 to 2015. As of April 2020, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $2.1 billion.
  Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.
context_section_description: The Trump administration has taken a harsher approach than previous administrations regarding migrant detentions, by allowing no exemptions for detention unlike the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. While the Obama administration already employed a high level of detentions and deportations for migrants, the Trump administration took it to a significantly higher level. In April 2018, Trump ordered an end to the "catch and release" policy which released illegal immigrants from detention pending a court hearing.
  Government inspectors from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General conducted spot-checks of migrant detention centers in June 2018, finding that U.S. Customs and Border Protection "in many instances" violated federal guidelines for detaining migrant children for too long before passing them to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Meanwhile, Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Kevin McAleenan said in March 2019 there was a "border security and a humanitarian crisis", with the system for handling migrants already at a "breaking point" due to an increase in migrants. The government inspectors released further reports in May 2019 and July 2019 of migrants being detained under conditions failing federal standards. They reported migrants enduring prolonged detention, "dangerous overcrowding", poor hygiene and food standards. In June 2019 and July 2019, lawyers, a certified doctor, and lawmakers visited the migrant detention facilities, reporting a lack of supervision, traumatized children, and many sick migrants respectively.
  The treatment of the detained migrants resulted in public indignation by July 2019. Also that month, Trump reacted to criticism of the migrant detentions by declaring that U.S. Border Patrol was doing a "great job", and if the migrants were unhappy about the conditions of the detention facilities, "just tell them not to come." Meanwhile, Vice President Pence visited an overcrowded facility, where he reacted by saying "this is tough stuff" and the system is "overwhelmed".
  In August 2019, the administration attempted to change the 1997 Flores Agreement that limits detention of migrant families to 20 days; the new policy allowing indefinite detention was blocked before it would go into effect.
caption: Overcrowded conditions for migrant families detained in Weslaco, Texas were reported by inspectors from the federal government in June 2019.[448]
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