Separated: Inside an American Tragedy

by Jacob Soboroff

Today, Waldman and her then-boyfriend, Stephen Miller, the architect of the family separation policy and the senior advisor to President Trump, are married. After leaving DHS, Waldman worked briefly for Arizona senator Martha McSally, and she is now the press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence. Katy and I ran into Waldman a year later, at a Trump election rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, as we were shooting another episode of American Swamp. Vice President Pence was there to introduce the president on the same day articles of impeachment were introduced against Trump in the House of Representatives. We congratulated her on her engagement and new job, and asked how things were going. She was elated and told us she was going to meet up backstage with Miller for thirty minutes, the most time they would see each other all week. Before the rally started, I asked her about a report from the DHS inspector general that had come out just more than two weeks earlier, which confirmed that “DHS did not have the information technology system functionality needed to track separated migrant families during the execution of the Zero Tolerance Policy,” a surprise to no one. There was a shocking revelation in the report, however. CBP, which officially separated 2,814 during zero tolerance, then later admitted it separated 1,556 more before the policy officially started, told the Office of Management and Budget: “it [had planned to] separate more than 26,000 children between May and Septe...