--- title: Donald Trump Returns to 'Catch and Release' Policy description: The Trump administration appears to be right back where it started: running a "catch-and-release" immigration system. canonical: https://time.com/5359151/donald-trump-immigration-catch-release-family-separation/ author: The Texas Tribune article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-08-07T05:01:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:42:10.158Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump Repeatedly Slammed 'Catch and Release' at the Border. Now He's Reinstated It og:description: With the family separation policy over, the Administration has returned to the previous approach. og:url: https://time.com/5359151/donald-trump-immigration-catch-release-family-separation/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltecf1121cf7a6ec63/6989372adb2987479c2605d3/texas-tribune-immigration-mcallen-texas-facebook.jpg?branch=production&width=1120&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1120 og:image:height: 630 og:image:alt: texas-tribune-immigration-mcallen-texas-facebook og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Repeatedly Slammed 'Catch and Release' at the Border. Now He's Reinstated It twitter:description: With the family separation policy over, the Administration has returned to the previous approach. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltecf1121cf7a6ec63/6989372adb2987479c2605d3/texas-tribune-immigration-mcallen-texas-facebook.jpg?branch=production&width=1120&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump Repeatedly Slammed 'Catch and Release' at the Border. Now He's Reinstated It > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Welcome to America [Watch (HLS stream): Welcome to America](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ZgNt7Wqd.m3u8) (23:11)  _Published 2018-07-24. A group of activists decide to take matters into their own hands after thousands of children are separated from their parents at the border._ by [David Yaffe-Bellany / The Texas Tribune](https://time.com/author/texas-tribune/) ## David Yaffe-Bellany / The Texas Tribune Aug 7, 2018 5:01 AM UTC  Central American asylum seekers wait at the bus station in McAllen, Texas, to be taken to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center on Aug. 2, 2018. Central American asylum seekers wait at the bus station in McAllen, Texas, to be taken to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center on Aug. 2, 2018. Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune by [David Yaffe-Bellany / The Texas Tribune](https://time.com/author/texas-tribune/) ## David Yaffe-Bellany / The Texas Tribune Aug 7, 2018 5:01 AM UTC MCALLEN, Texas — After fleeing Guatemala, 25-year-old Silvia Guidel crossed the Rio Grande last month on a raft with her three young daughters, walked in the South Texas heat for nearly an hour, and then turned her family in to U.S.Border Patrol agents to seek asylum in America. Had she arrived six weeks earlier, Guidel, who said she fled violence and extortion in her home country, could well have been separated from her children at an immigrant processing center overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But last Tuesday, Guidel sat in the Greyhound bus station in McAllen with her daughters — 7-year-old Seily and 4-year-old identical twins Nahsliy Dariana and Nahsliy Nicole — huddled beside her as she recounted her journey to the United States. Because she crossed the border a month after the Trump administration’s rollback of the zero-tolerance immigration policy, Guidel was on her way to Boston to meet up with an uncle, rather than sitting in detention pining for her daughters. “I heard they were separating families,” she said, “but then I didn’t hear that anymore.”  Silvia Guidel and her daughters Seily, 7, and twins Nahsliy Nicole and Nahsliy Dariana, 4, from Guatemala, make their way from the McAllen bus station to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center on July 31, 2018. Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune As the United States’ immigration policies continue to shift, the procedures that dictated the fates of asylum-seeking families as recently as a few weeks ago already seem like ancient history. A head-spinning sequence of events — chaotic procedural changes, followed by furious public outcry and abrupt policy reversals — appears to have put the Trump administration back where it started: running an immigration enforcement system in which migrant families who cross the border illegally are allowed to stay in the country while the government processes their asylum claims. “The administration has backed off,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The procedures that we’re seeing at the border are those that were previously conducted, prior to the announcement of zero tolerance.” Under the zero-tolerance policy, which the Trump administration announced in May, Border Patrol officers handed migrant parents who crossed the border illegally to the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecution. That process resulted in thousands of family separations, as immigrant children — whom the government cannot detain for longer than 20 days under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Agreement — were transferred to shelters while their parents went to detention centers. But in late June, after President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending family separations, Border Patrol Commissioner Kevin McAleenan announced that agents had temporarily stopped referring adult migrants with children for prosecution. A Border Patrol spokesman confirmed last week that a “temporary suspension” remains in effect as the agency works with the Justice Department to “maintain family unity while enforcing prosecution efforts.” The administration’s retreat from zero tolerance was on full display at McAllen’s bus station last Tuesday as a long line of recently released immigrant parents arrived with tracking devices strapped to their ankles. Among them was Carla Molina, 27, who said she paid smugglers $7,000 to help her and her 6-year-old daughter travel to the border from Honduras. Molina said she and her daughter were headed to San Antonio, where they plan to stay with friends. “I always trust in God,” she said. “With God, anything is possible.” Like Molina and Guidel, parents who earlier in the summer would have been separated from their children and prosecuted by the government are instead starting new lives in the United States, reuniting with friends and relatives all over the country. Trump has called this system of “catch and release” — a term borrowed from the world of recreational fishing that some immigrant advocates consider dehumanizing — a “deadly” and “disgraceful” loophole in immigration law. And in South Texas, the government’s return to the approach has frustrated immigration hardliners who argue that the practice encourages more illegal immigration. “I’m saddened to learn, if true, that we’re headed back to a catch-and-release setup,” said Sergio Sanchez, the former chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party and the host of a radio show called The Wall. “Yet again, the slow-churning wheels of our government can’t seem to speed up and properly secure the border.” In his executive order, Trump declared that migrant families should be detained together over the course of their immigration proceedings. But that plan has run into a variety of legal and logistical obstacles. “Under current law and legal rulings,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing in June, “it is not possible for the U.S. government to detain families together during the pendency of their immigration proceedings.”  Central American asylum seekers walk to the nearby Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center after being dropped off at the McAllen bus station on Aug. 2, 2018. Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune In testimony to Congress last week, Matthew Albence, executive associate director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the Flores Agreement “imposes judicially-mandated catch and release” for immigrant parents who cross illegally with their children. An ICE spokesman said the agency does not keep track of how many such asylum-seekers are released into the United States each month. In June, the number of apprehensions at the border dropped significantly, a decrease that the Trump administration hailed as evidence that the zero-tolerance policy has deterred migrants from trying to enter the country illegally. The July numbers are scheduled to come out later this week. But thousands continue to make the long trek north, despite the shifting currents of American immigration policy. Some parents interviewed after crossing the border last month seemed only vaguely aware of the zero-tolerance policy, while others said they’d heard the U.S. government was separating families and decided to come anyway. On a sandy road not far from the river last week, 42-year-old Honduran immigrant Doris Romero dropped her belongings — a tube of lotion, a hairbrush, a deodorant dispenser — into a plastic bag and handed them to a Border Patrol officer. Romero traveled to the border with her 14-year-old son, Jose, and her 6-year-old nephew, Ronald, after following news coverage of the zero-tolerance policy at home in Honduras. Fighting back tears, Romero, who plans to travel to Houston after making her asylum claim, said she was relieved when the Trump administration stopped separating families. But even if immigration officials had continued to enforce the policy, Romero said, she would still have come to the United States to escape her home country, where she said her two adult stepsons were killed by drug traffickers. “Honduras is misery,” she said. “There’s no work. There’s no medicine. Every day, it gets worse, and we all have to leave.” _Jay Root and Juan Luis García Hernández contributed to this report._ **Editor’s note:** _The Texas Tribune and TIME have partnered to closely track the family separation crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border._ ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Along the Southern border hundred of children remains separated from their parents. That's the situation for Yelly Marcel Gonzales Garcia living that kind of nightmare. After 43 days in the custody of U. S. immigration authority. Yeni Gonzalez was released on bail. The bail was paid by some families, mothers who are in New York city. She's making her way to New York to find her kids. It has been very difficult, very hard for me. I felt that my heart broke into a thousand pieces. They snatched my children from my arms. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] I actually heard about Yeni through a text message, someone who is close with one of the organizers said hey someone is going to be released from detention tomorrow night, can you help coordinate transportation to Albuquerque And can you be there, Eloy, to support? And so I said, yeah for sure, I'm in. It really started as soon as I heard Jenny's lawyer talking about the fact that he knew she was in Eloy in Arizona. She knew that her kids were at Cuyahoga in New York. And he said she could actually go through her whole immigration proceedings in New York. If she could just get to New York from Arizona. And I thought certainly within my own community of friends and family and acquaintances that it would be possible to do that for one person. And so why not try? When we got in the car it was just quiet for a little bit. And And she would kinda ask questions and say things and she definitely appreciated the beauty of the desert and then some of the flatlands. She was like, isn't that pretty? So that was a lot of conversation, but for the most part it was quiet. Watching her from the rearview mirror just looking out in the distance and Such a focused look. And I don't know if she was imagining what she had been through. If she was thinking of what she's about to go through, but I just know it was focused and it was strong. [ FOREIGN ] [ LAUGH ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] Yes, yes. Jameli? I'm here. The man showed us a photo of when we were all together, and I just wanted to cry. What? [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] Deyuin keeps crying too. He cries, and cries, and cries. And this morning, I was putting on my socks, and he hit me in the head. And he needed to put on his socks and shoes too. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] I just want to hug them and kiss them. It's just so hard. I just want them by my side already and to never be separated from them again. [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ INAUDIBLE ] I think it's just all getting to me- [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Her story, everyone else's that were not here. I don't know why, but just seeing how beautiful [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Yesterday how she said she hadn't been outside. [ SOUND ] I guess it finally got to me. [ SOUND ] [ FOREIGN ] > [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] When I had dropped off in Albuquerque it was very weird, it was someone that I didn't even know for 24 hours, and it was just a feeling of. A feeling of hope, a feeling of helplessness, a feeling of worry. We don't know what's gonna happen. But just a feeling of I wanted her to be OK. [ FOREIGN ] [ LAUGH ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] What is driving through the night? What is driving five hours Through the line. What is that compare to what Jenny must have experienced? Bringing three kids from Guatemala through Mexico through the Arizona desert. I mean, there's just ridiculous to think that five hours. Driving in the night is, how is that? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] An inconvenience, or a struggle of any kind. You know what this feels like to me? This feels like a modern day underground railroad Road is what it feels like to me. Even though Yenni is travelling legally to New York city, the fact that she doesn't have enough documentation that would allow her to travel by plane or by bus So this system of drivers and hosts along the way, people opening up their Houses as refuge, it just, [ MUSIC ] It seems like a perfect parallel to the underground railroad, like trying to move a vulnerable body to a safer place. [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] How do you say, how do you say We are sorry for our President, and our laws. And sorry. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So, how do you say, [ LAUGH ], I am also an immigrant? [ FOREIGN ] That's one of the general baseline rules. Like you don't mess with kids, right? Like, you don't mess with babies, you don't make them pawns. And I that that was something that for I think many, many people who maybe don't normally consider themselves activists or they don't consider themselves to be political necessarily. It touched something in them and it made them want to act. I think she knew people were gonna drive her across the country. I don't think she was expecting as much care and as much attention. Definitely not as much attention. But it was touching for her. Many of us didn't know each other before this week, and it was just incredible. How many people just acted, they showed up, and they said, I'm here to do this, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And they did, and there was Nobody had this sort of, guide that ship. Everybody was going with it together. [ MUSIC ] From the beginning the idea was never solely To just do this for one person. It was if this works, which would be a miracle, can it be replicated? You want to tell us who to call? Yeah, sorry. [ LAUGH ] Okay, so our official name now is immigrant Families Together. Let's maybe turn for a minute to our plan for Monday. I just wanna re- emphasize every single person in this room right now and every single person on this call right now has Jenny's best interest at heart. We wanna stage maybe six spots along the route once they come into New York. Where we have hundreds of people waiting with welcome signs along these spots on the route. So it's really critical that we have massive turnout at each of these spots so that it becomes something that is impactful. i said on Facebook yesterday that I've gone to bed every night this week totally awed by all of you and what you bring to the table. And A former social worker, I've been involved in social justice since I was a child. And I've never seen anything like this. Julie wants a picture. Can I send her a picture? [ LAUGH ] Right here? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] [ LAUGH ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] I am friends will Julie, who started the campaign in New York. And so she had told me that they needed a driver from Pittsburgh to New York on the last stretch, or the second to last stretch. And so we immediately jumped at the chance. I think we've both been so Desperate to contribute in some sort of positive way to this catastrophic situation. All right. [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I grew up in a tiny village in Mexico and some of my family members migrated to the North or [ FOREIGN ], illegally without papers. This was like in the 90s so things were a little bit different at that time. And I was lucky that I was able to do it. Legally, to have the opportunity, so I just feel like there's a lot for me to pay off, to pay back. [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] When I got home there was a call and we were talking about everything that was gonna happen in New York. And I was just picturing her. Everyone very well intended. Mentioned everyone trying to make this work. But I felt like who's gonna be there for her? So he kinda said, all right, well let me get out there. [ FOREIGN ] I called her, and I said hey, turns out I'm going to be in New York to be there for you. And she kind of got quiet and said, [ FOREIGN ], that's good because I was missing you. [ LAUGH ] So, today, Yanni Gonzalez is arriving after a cross country road trip And so all of us have gathered here just with our signs and our solidarity to welcome her to New York City. We wanna let her know that there are people in this country who love that she's here, who welcome her here, and are working hard to make sure that she and her children will stay together and not be separated again. We are trying to show her support, mostly to To make her feel comfortable that this is America's for everyone we want our Want For example I am a Muslim and I'm a sham in the meantime my networks are like wired another way says black Hispanic so we want to get the live in the neighborhood like civilized. [ APPLAUSE ] Yeni, Yeni, Yeni, Yeni. [ UNKNOWN ] [ SOUND ] [ FOREIGN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ FOREIGN ] This is just grown. And I think that shows what can happen when people Stop wishing they could do something and stop just putting on Facebook, you know, this is wrong. And start figuring out, okay how can I help? Because that's what did this. It wasn't one person who drove across the country. It wasn't one person who gave the whole $ 7500 to take her out. I'm pretty sure each donation has been a small donation. Okay. Love you. [ FOREIGN ] [ SOUND ] [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ] I wanna send a message to all the mothers that are still detained And Eloi? [ FOREIGN ] And I want to send a message to all the mothers that are fighting, that with the help of people like Julie, they're going to come out of this. We've said before and we'll say it again, we are going to do this, if we have to, one by one to do what the government is not going to do. [ MUSIC ] I don't know if I've ever bought into the narrative [ SOUND ] That America is a place for everyone. [ FOREIGN ] The home for tired [ UNKNOWN ] masses yearning to be free, I actually don't think we've done so great at that in many ways. [ MUSIC ] I don't think that we can look away from that, even as we are Admiring just like how generously people showed up for this. [ MUSIC ] Jenny shouldn't have to have gone and her children shouldn't have to have gone through what they went through to a welcoming country. It wasn't a welcome, and it doesn't have to be that way. I hope we get better on that welcoming because we've got a lot of work to do. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5359151/donald-trump-immigration-catch-release-family-separation/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5359151/donald-trump-immigration-catch-release-family-separation/"},"headline":"President Trump Repeatedly Slammed 'Catch and Release' at the Border. 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