Senator Marco Rubio criticized the Trump administration on Sunday for its new policy of separating migrant parents and children at the border, claiming this causes them “additional trauma.”
“We have a problem and it needs to be dealt with. The ideal scenario is that families be kept together and returned expeditiously back to their country of origin,” Rubio told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
He continued by expressing sympathies for people coming to the U.S., saying that it is “the most generous country in the world” which does not intend to put people through additional trauma when they come “into the United States.”
However, he also pointed out that border security needs to be tightened to discourage people from trafficking children to the country and added he was open to changing the current policy the administration is employing.
The policy was announced earlier this month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said U.S. law requires parents and children be separated at the border and that anyone accompanying an undocumented child into the country be prosecuted. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border,” Sessions said.
The policy has been severely criticized by human rights groups and even opposed by President Donald Trump himself, who disagreed with his administration’s move, but ultimately put the blame for the “horrible law” on Democrats.
“Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL!” Trump tweeted on Saturday. “DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.”
Democrats, on their part, have expressed willingness to end the policy of separating children and parents, noting it “violates human rights laws” and is “evil.”
Meanwhile, CNN wrote that last year the government couldn’t account for about 1,500 immigrant children it had placed in sponsor homes. The number was disclosed by a top official with the Department of Health and Human Services.
That is more than 19% of the children that were placed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the care of unaccompanied immigrant children. But Wagner said HHS is not responsible for the children.
“I understand that it has been HHS’s long-standing interpretation of the law that ORR is not legally responsible for children after they are released from ORR care,” Wagner said.
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