GOP Sen. Marco Rubio signaled on Sunday that he would be open to changing a Trump administration policy that separates children of illegal immigrants from their parents when they cross into the United States.
“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,” the Florida lawmaker said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“We sympathize with people that are coming here,” he continued. “America is the most generous country in the world and ideally you wouldn’t put people through additional trauma once they came into the United States.”
While Rubio said he would work to change the policy, ultimately the US needs to secure its border and end illegal crossings.
“Well I would be open to changing that law but the better law to change is to secure our border and to send a clear message that you cannot continue to enter the United States illegally,” he said.
In a tweet on Saturday, Trump called his administration’s decision to separate children from their parents “horrible” and blamed Democrats for it.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the change in policy earlier this month during a trip to the border.
“If you cross the border unlawfully … we will prosecute you,” he said. “If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law. If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally.”
Trump’s twitter posting came as outrage has mounted after a top official with Health and Human Services said the government has lost track of nearly 1,500 immigrant children during a three-month period at the end of 2017.
Steven Wagner, the acting assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, told a Senate hearing last month that the Office of Refugee Resettlement can’t account for the whereabouts of 1,475 children placed in the homes of sponsors after being removed from their parents.
The ORR is a program in Wagner’s agency.
During the 2017 fiscal year, the Department of Homeland Security referred more than 40,000 children to the ORR.
