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  • 2018-06-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Jeff Sessions Say 'If We Inflict Fear and Pain on Children, Adults Won’t Want to Come Here'? (en)
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  • In mid-June 2018, we received several e-mails asking whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, If we inflict fear and pain on children, adults won’t want to come here: The questions were not accompanied by any links, images, or other information about the origin of the quote. One Facebook post with a few thousand shares included the same wording attributed to Sessions, but again without any corroboration: News items about Sessions' comments on border policy often included a statement he made at a gathering for the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies in Arizona on 7 May 2018: In other articles, Sessions was quoted as saying on the same date: On 5 June 2018, CBS News covered an interview Sessions provided to radio host Hugh Hewitt. During the broadcast, Hewitt asked Sessions if it was absolutely necessary... to separate parents from children when they are detained or apprehended at the border. Several responses from Sessions were included in the article: CBS also reported that Sessions said while it is not the Trump administration's goal to separate children and families, he stated that 'it's legitimate to warn people' that coming to the United States illegally may result in split families. Sessions' 7 May 2018 remarks continued appearing in news items more than a month later. On 3 June 2018, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley visited a detention center in Brownsville, Texas and streamed it to Facebook: At roughly the 3:10 mark, Sen. Merkley said: The specific quote widely attributed to Sessions in June 2018 (if we inflict fear and pain on children, adults won’t want to come here) appeared to conflate Attorney General Sessions' repeated stance on family separation with Sen. Merkley's characterization of those policies in a widely-shared 3 June 2018 video. However, Sessions himself did not appear to say specifically that if we inflict fear and pain on children that adults won't want to come here. (en)
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