The attorney general, the reason this happened the attorney general issued a memorandum to the u.s. attorney, the ones that prosecute these cases. i was a army e special assistant in dallas many, many years ago. they were not prosecuted because the u.s. attorneys were focused on real criminals. they don t want to prosecute first time illegal entry cases if there is no other criminal aspect of the individual. and so to separate the children and then create this crisis situation, this all happened because the department of homeland security and the justice department did not actually do their work in advance as a policy matter and put in place how they were going to actually implement this. there was all about showing muscle. this was all about we re going to be tough and we re going to be so tough, toucher than anybody else has ever been. we re going to use this as a negotiating ploy, as a way to get congress to also be tough.