21 JUN 2018: On Wednesday, American Airlines and United Airlines asked the Trump administration not to put migrant children who have been separated from their parents on their flights. As world leaders, religious groups, global citizens and members of both US political parties implored Donald Trump to cease the separation of migrant children from their families, the US president said that he had no authority to do so.  Finally, late Wednesday, Trump broke with his own misleading claims and signed an end the practice of separating families at the border.

It was an abrupt decision for a Trump. Even though internal discussions about confronting the child detentions had been ongoing for a week, his decision to sign an executive order still caught some of his closest aides off-guard. The swift turn of events is leading to new questions about the advisers who encouraged Trump to hold the line, even as his staunchest protectors urged him to change course.

How precisely the executive order Trump signed on Wednesday will remedy the current situation isn’t yet known. It’s likely to be tied up in a court battle, and the Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged hours after Trump signed the order in the Oval Office that the thousands of children being held now won’t be reunited with their parents right away.

Earlier the CEOs of both American and United  had said that the administration’s recent immigration policy of separating migrant families conflicted with their values.

“We have no desire to be associated with separating families, or worse, to profit from it,’ American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said in a statement.

United issued a statement in which CEO Oscar Munoz said the company’s purpose is to connect people. “This policy and its impact on thousands of children is in deep conflict with that mission and we want no part of it,” he said.

Since the White House announced a “zero-tolerance” policy toward undocumented migrants in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border, leading to a spike in the number of young children under government care.

Both Parker and Munoz said they do not know whether any migrant children have been on their flights. In recent days several flight attendants have gone on social media to report seeing groups of children on their flights that they believed to be children separated from their migrant families.

Many airlines have contracts to provide travel services to the US government. Parker said, however, that the government doesn’t provide information about the passengers or their reason for travel.

Meanwhile, the document Trump signed won’t reunite the more than 2,300 children currently separated from their parents, whose plight Trump admitted privately this week was deeply damaging to him politically.  Politically?  Not personally?  Not because seperating small children from their families was just wrong? it was just wrong.

Well … whatever it takes to stop it.