The Trump officials who took children from their parents should be prosecuted | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

The border policy violated international law - and prosecuting those responsible may be the best way to prevent it from happening again

In the Trump administration's four years of undermining America's image of decency, perhaps no policy did so as effectively, or as viciously, as his family separation policy - which separated 5,000 children, some as young as four months old, from their mothers and fathers.

The theory behind the policy was that inflicting excruciating pain on thousands of parents and children separated at the border would deter migration to the US. It was another example of the Trump administration's calculated cruelty.

Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy