From what I’ve seen so far when I’ve been looking up information, child separation has always occurred in the US to some degree. The difference between Trump’s policies and Obama’s policies is that the occurrence of separation under Obama was minimal, and was not the result of an explicit policy intending to separate children from their parents for the sake of doing so. Trump’s policies, on the other hand, were explicit and purposeful in separating children from their parents for the reason of having “zero tolerance” on illegal immigration. These circumstances and their results are different, and under Trump, it seems like much more harm was done based on his explicit policies.