It had been going on for weeks – the Trump Administration’s policy of “zero tolerance” for anyone crossing the southern border illegally. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy in April 2018 and enacted it at the beginning of May. “If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you,” Sessions said, “It’s that simple.”

For weeks afterward, the prosecutions – and the separations of migrant families – remained under the radar as thousands of families who crossed the border illegally were torn apart, with the children placed in detention facilities, out of sight and out of mind of most Americans. The American public did not know how many children were separated from their parents. They did not know where the children were taken. And they didn’t know the conditions of the facilities where they were being held.

Soboroff and Ainsley, along with several other correspndents and large NBC News and MSNBC teams, helped bring national awareness to the Trump Administration’s policy and, ultimately, its reversal.

With Ainsley working from Washington and Soboroff reporting from the border, they were first to report that the policy had been under consideration since the beginning of the Trump administration; that separated children were being held in facilities unfit for long-term care; that the administration was eyeing tent cities to hold children; that the administration did not have a plan for reunifying separated families; and that parents were being coerced into signing away their asylum rights in order to reclaim their children.

Soboroff reported from “Casa Padre,” a former Wal-Mart housing 1,400 kids in Brownsville, TX, one of a hundred facilities across 17 states. This one housed boys age 10–17 and spurred the question “where were the younger ones?” And he reported from “Ursula,” in McAllen, TX, where 1,100 separated children were detained behind chain link fences.

NBC’s candid and unrestrained reporting played a leading role in exposing the administration’s dubious claims about the policy and provided unprecedented first-hand observation and interviews with asylum-seekers at the epicenter of the crisis. Along with correspondents Gadi Schwartz, Gabe Gutierrez, Mariana Atencio and Lester Holt, they used words, images and sounds from both sides of the border to paint a powerful picture of the traumatic impact on these kids and families. As a result, the policy and the practices came to quickly dominate the national conversation, spark broad outrage, and recast a “simple” border protection measure, as Sessions had put it, as “government-sanctioned child abuse,” according to the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Soboroff said in one of his reports: “There’s a big mess going on right now … The system is just getting stressed out because the Trump Administration decided to put this into place and the consequences really haven’t been worked out.” He added, “When you hear the Trump Administration say, ‘This has been done before; this is a Democrat policy; this is not unusual’ – that’s BS, frankly.”

On June 20, President Trump reversed the policy citing the coverage of children being kept in poor conditions as a reason. That coverage was brought to him and to the world by journalists.

The choice the Trump administration made to forcibly take children away from their parents was unprecedented and created a moral and logistical crisis that is still ongoing and will not be forgotten.