In an interview, Taylor said he regretted not previously denouncing Trump’s family separation policy. Taylor worked under former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was in charge of implementing the family separation policy as a tool to deter migration from Central America.
Officials have told NBC News that the Trump administration ignored warnings that it could be hard to reunite separated families. President Trump signed an executive order to reverse the policy, but privately he continued advocating for family separations, Taylor said.
“In private, he kept telling us. let’s do it again, but do it bigger and harder. And in his mind, the purpose was to rip kids away from their parents,” Taylor said of Trump. “Sickly, the president wanted to do it again, deliberately, to keep the kids away from the parents. That’s one of the reasons I left this administration.”
KJ