Trump and his cronies have conflated two separate issues, likely to cause confusion.
Undocumented Immigration, whether by crossing the border without authorization, or overstaying a VISA is a misdemeanor offence which was dealt with as a civil offence (like Jaywalking, or a traffic violation). You were typically issued a citation to appear before the Immigration Court and had to present yourself for check in at regular intervals or face immediate deportation. That is how presidents from Nixon to Trump were dealing with the situation. President Obama deferred action on children brought by parents, and focused on undocumented immigrants who committed serious criminal offenses while pending immigration proceedings.
There was a large surge of unaccompanied minors presenting themselves at the border between 2013 and 2014. The policy on unaccompanied minors was to process them, attempt to find family members inside the US or in their countries of origin and have them either sent back to their family or sent to stay with appropriate family in the US pending decision about their immigration status. Those minors for whom family could not be found, were placed into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services who would then attempt to find placement in appropriate child welfare facilities.
That policy persisted and persists to this day.
Recently, as of April, the Trump administration with their "Zero Tolerance" policy changed from charging immigrants civilly and issuing the citation with agreement to be monitored and reporting in, to criminal processing which means immediate detention. As a result of this policy change, parents were placed in to correctional facilities, not civil detention facilities which means that families could not be housed together pending preliminary decisions of their status. Children cannot be placed in correctional facilities with adults, therefore the "separating families" situation. Without a doubt, this was an intentional act by the Trump administration who were aware of the implications and actually counted on them to signal a "deterrent" to families trying to come into the country. What they did not count on was the backlash they received.
The issue of the "lost children" unfortunately is an issue that involves both the Obama Administration and the Trump Administration. The "lost" children are lost because DHS and HHS lost contact with minors who they had placed either in custody of relatives, or in facilities (perhaps they aged out, or got lost in the bureaucracy). It is likely a bureaucratic error (albeit, not a good thing) but was blown up because of Trump's other numerous outrages.
Bottom line is that the intentional separation of families is ALL on Trump, was his decision, and is a new thing as of April 2018. It is not Clinton's fault, or GW Bush, or a "Democrat law'. It is an intentional policy enforcement shift that Trump and his racist administration planned and executed.
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