Under the pretext of not separating families, Prime Minister Pierre Laval ordered that Jewish children under 16 be included in deportation convoys, thus surpassing the requirements of the Nazis. Bousquet obliged and expanded the deportation to parents and their children under 2 years. In the event, children were separated from their parents and deported in different groups. Nonetheless, some scholarly sources insist that the Vichy government was unaware of the purpose of the deportation, and believed that the Jews were being taken to provide a labour force in the east.