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The Trump administration misspelled “separation” in an executive order on family separation

As initially published, the order addressed family “seperation.”

Li Zhou
Li Zhou is a former politics reporter at Vox, where she covers Congress and elections. Previously, she was a tech policy reporter at Politico and an editorial fellow at the Atlantic.

The Trump administration released its highly anticipated executive order on family separation Wednesday afternoon. And in the grand tradition of many Trump White House documents, something wasn’t quite right.

See if you can spot it:

White House

That’s right: The order meant to address family separation misspelled “separation.”

While the misspelling was quickly fixed, the latest example of the Trump administration’s ongoing struggles in that domain (see: the Department of Education Snapchat) left the impression that the executive order had been prepared hastily.

The White House’s executive order addresses the administration’s controversial “zero tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults entering the United States illegally. As part of this policy, adults were held in federal jail while awaiting trial and their children were put in federal custody, forcing family separations.

The executive order aims to hold families together in immigrant detention as their cases are being processed. Parents will still be prosecuted, but they will be able to remain with their children in custody of the Department of Homeland Security.

“It is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources,” the order reads. “It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.”

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