Rick Santorum said Sunday that immigrant parents who bring their children to the U.S. illegally are putting their children in danger by doing so.
Santorum made the comments on CNN’s “State of the Union,” after Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced earlier this month that adults seeking asylum would be prosecuted separately from their children when their families arrive at the U.S. border.
{mosads}“With all due respect, these parents are putting their children in peril by coming across the border,” Santorum said.
Democratic panelists Nina Turner and Patti Solis Doyle pushed back against the claim, saying the parents are “trying to escape peril.”
“You don’t know their situation,” the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania replied. “There may be all sorts of reasons people come here.”
Turner interjected, saying that’s “not the point” and that “children’s lives are at stake.”
“The parents are putting their children’s lives at stake here,” Santorum said, adding that “the moral obligation is to deter that type of activity.”
“And the children be damned?” Solis Doyle asked.
“At some point the parent has to take responsibility for their children,” Santorum responded.
Santorum later said that children are taken away from parents who are put in jail “all the time.”
“I guarantee you … that millions of kids whose parents have been put in jail have been ‘lost’ in the system and you know that to be true,” he said.
“It cannot be justified and this president is going the extra mile to push this narrative,” Turner replied.
President Trump has blamed Democrats for his administration’s policy, tweeting Saturday that they are responsible for taking action to “end the horrible law.”