Dara Lind
13-16 minutes

On Saturday night, the Trump administration finally announced its plan for reuniting the 2,053 families who are still separated thanks to President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” prosecution policy: The administration will reunite children with their parents — in order to deport them both.

Over weeks of chaos and confusion, it became clear that the various departments and agencies involved in family separation — chiefly the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which handles immigration enforcement, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which takes separated kids reclassified as “unaccompanied alien children” into custody — were so badly coordinated that it was nearly impossible for parents and immigration attorneys to locate children.

The Trump administration is promising to fix that — but only in some circumstances.

Parents in immigration detention will be helped to get in touch with their children and speak to them regularly, and the Trump administration will make sure — from a “reunification and removal” facility in Port Isabel, Texas — that when a parent is ordered deported, her child will be sent back to their home country beside her.

For parents who are trying to fight to stay in the US (for example by pursuing asylum claims, as they are legally entitled to do), though, this isn’t much of a promise. It’s a horrible choice.