I Was Only Following Orders.

U.S. Border Patrol officials privately worried they could face jail time for their roles in President Trump’s since-scrapped policy to separate migrant children from their parents, according to emails released Thursday amid renewed scrutiny over the family-shattering practice.

The emails were included in a House Judiciary Committee report summarizing its 21-month probe into the Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy, which required Border Patrol agents to split up thousands of mostly Central American families who illegally crossed into the U.S. from Mexico in 2017 and 2018.

In one email dated June 4, 2018, a Border Patrol supervisor in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley wrote to a subordinate that a local federal judge had been “very upset” in a court hearing and ordered the agency to “keep constant track of the children once they are separated from their parents and when and where they are reunified.”

“This is going to be a huge headache, I might be spending some time in the slammer,” the supervisor wrote followed by a sad-face emoji.

The subordinate, a Border Patrol enforcement agent, responded: “I ain’t going to jail!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The names of the Border Patrol officials were blacked out in the committee report.