Midway through “Separated,” celebrated documentarian Errol Morris’ new film about the Trump Administration’s policy of splitting up parents and children attempting to enter the U.S. via the southern border, ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt makes a key point when he talks about his legal challenge to the policy. The strategy, Gelernt tells Morris, was to stay away from inflammatory words like abuse and torture, however accurate they may have been.
“This is the worst thing I have ever seen in the immigration field,” says Gelernt. “It was better to just tell the stories of those children and let the facts speak for themselves.”