From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, the Trump administration has signed an executive order ending the separation of parents and children.

So is everything just going back to the way it was?

It's Thursday, June 21st.

If I might, I just wanted to make a brief statement on immigration and what's happening.

And I'll say it very honestly and I'll say it very straight.

From the very beginning of this controversy over separating parents and children at the border, President Trump has placed the blame on Democrats.

Immigration is the fault and all of the problems that we're having because we cannot get them to sign legislation.

We cannot get them even to the negotiating table.

And I say it's very strongly the Democrats fault. They're obstructionist and they are obstructing.

And why is that? I mean, the notion that Democrats would be responsible for practice that seems like pretty much a Democratic nightmare when it comes to immigration policy doesn't at all seem intuitive.

Is there a case to be made here? What's the basis on which the president is saying that the Democrats caused this?

There really isn't a case to be made here and it's pretty disingenuous on its face because the law the president was invoking in order to force these separations is the most basic one on the books.

It's that you can't enter the country without permission. Everybody agrees on that. And that law doesn't exist because of the Democrats.

Caitlin Dickerson covers immigration for the times.

But it is true that a lot of Republicans and the president believe that larger issues with the immigration system are the fault of the Democrats.

He believes he came into office with an immigration system that was totally in disrepair.

People requesting asylum in droves, even though the vast number who do aren't eligible for it, a massive undocumented population that wasn't getting any smaller, the courts are backlogged attention centers are full borders are overwhelmed.

So you could make the argument. And I think the president sort of is in a very general way that he came into a system that was totally broken that that was the Democrats fault.

And so he had to do something really extreme and that extreme move becomes the zero tolerance policy in which everybody who crosses the border is prosecuted.

And that means everybody who comes with kids is separated from them.

So the president is saying that Democrats caused this by allowing the immigration system to get so bad in the first place.

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