Was kids in cages trump or oboma\
Executive summary
The short answer: both presidents are implicated, but in different ways — the chain‑link enclosures widely labeled “cages” were built and used during the Obama administration to hold unaccompanied migrant children during a 2014 surge [1] [2], while the Trump administration’s 2018 “zero tolerance” policy created a large, systematic program of separating children from parents that had no recent precedent and used many of the same facilities [3] [2].
1. The physical “cages”: an infrastructural fact that predates Trump
Photographs of chain‑link enclosures first circulated from a 2014 surge, and multiple fact‑checks and news reports confirm those fenced holding areas were built and used under President Obama to temporarily house unaccompanied children [1] [4] [2], a point even Trump and others referenced when debating responsibility for the imagery [5].
2. What Obama-era use meant in practice: unaccompanied children, not routine family separation
Reporting by Business Insider and mainstream fact‑checks explains that during 2014 the facilities held mostly unaccompanied minors while the government sought to place them with family or sponsors, and that the Obama administration did not carry out the kind of routine, criminal‑prosecution‑driven family separations that became a hallmark of the later “zero tolerance” policy [6] [2].
3. Trump’s “zero tolerance”: a policy that changed enforcement and created new separations
Analyses of the 2018 policy conclude it was unprecedented in scale and mechanism: Trump’s administration criminally prosecuted all border crossers in many instances, which resulted in thousands of children being separated from parents and held in the same or similar enclosures, provoking widespread condemnation and legal fights [3] [2].
4. How the debate became a political tug‑of‑war over images and blame
Fact‑checkers and news outlets document how images from 2014 were sometimes shared in 2018‑20 debates as evidence against Trump, prompting counterclaims that Obama “built the cages”; both sides have incentives to simplify a complex administrative history into sharp political blame, and fact‑checks stress that using the same facilities does not erase the novel policy choices that led to mass family separation under Trump [1] [4] [2].
5. Where reporting converges and where it’s limited
The sources converge on two core facts: the physical enclosures were used under Obama [1] [4] and Trump’s zero‑tolerance policy produced large‑scale family separations that were historically unprecedented in recent administrations [3] [2]. Available reporting in these sources does not provide full quantitative breakdowns in this dataset here, so precise comparative counts of children detained or separated under each administration cannot be asserted beyond what the cited pieces report [2] [6].
6. Bottom line for the charge “who put kids in cages?”
Saying “Obama put kids in cages” is factually accurate only in the narrow sense that chain‑link holding areas were built and used during the Obama administration to house unaccompanied minors [1] [2]; saying “Trump put kids in cages” captures the reality that his administration’s zero‑tolerance policy caused widespread, systematic family separations and used those facilities extensively, a policy shift with no close precedent [3] [2]. Politically motivated messaging has flattened these distinctions: infrastructure continuity and policy discontinuity are both true and both relevant to responsibility.