“Separated,” which MSNBC broadcasts Saturday night, documents the now-disgraced government policy of the first Trump administration of separating illegal immigrant children at the border from their parents.

When the courts ordered it stopped, “5,500 children were separated,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union. “With as many as between 1,300 and 1,400 without confirmed reunifications.”

So says NBC News political and national correspondent Jacob Soboroff, 41, who covered the story as it happened. His New York Times best-seller “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” inspired Errol Morris’ documentary.

“I consider myself an unlikely eyewitness ultimately to, I think what we all will agree, what became one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” Soboroff said in a joint Zoom interview with Morris.

“That’s according to the Republican-appointed judge! Having covered this, seeing the family separations with my own eyes, I still had a lot of questions about how the US government could do something so deliberately cruel, so haphazardly implemented – and that’s a generous description of what they did.

“One thing I want to say about it is: It’s shameful. It’s awful. It’s intentionally cruel.  It was torture, according to Physicians for Human Rights. It was government-sanctioned child abuse, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“But I also dare say that this is a very hopeful story in a way. At least to me.

“To see what Errol has done in the way that only Errol Morris can, to highlight and spotlight characters who I won’t say single handedly, but with other people in career civil service, in civil society, immigration lawyers, people way down the chain, were frontline defenders of the rights of these families who were being separated.

“They were the ones who stopped the policy and created, literally a global outrage, the likes of which I have never seen in my lifetime.”

We see then-President Donald Trump, whose “zero tolerance” immigration policy was responsible, claim to be shocked and disturbed. Trump reversed the practice of separating families in 2018.

“When I watch this movie after the election I do feel some measure of hope. Errol and I toured the world with it before the election and the film feels different today. Both like a very ominous warning of what is to come in mass deportation because what they’re threatening is just family separation by another name, on an exponential scale,” said Soboroff.

“But also, it gives a roadmap to people who stopped this once already. And who could very well do it again.”

“Separated” premieres on MSNBC Dec. 7 and on VOD Dec. 17