Watch Rick Santorum get busted for lying about kids ripped from families
He tried to deny some of the cruel mistreatment even took place.
GOP surrogate Rick Santorum was called out on CNN Friday morning when he categorically misstated what is happening to families targeted by Trump this year, confirming that Trump advocates don’t know why families were ripped apart at the border, but they’re willing to lie about it.
Pressing the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota asked, “Do you know of a process whereby these parents will ever see their children again?”
Santorum said, “Some parents will and some parents won’t.” He then suggested the parents “aren’t blameless” and were to blame for Trump’s family separations.
When Camerota noted that even families seeking legal asylum here were torn apart, Santorum lied again: “Asylum seekers are not separated.”
But of course they are. Indeed, it’s been a central fact driving the entire scandal.
And when Camerota quoted a Los Angeles Times article, which cited “records and interviews” confirming asylum seekers have been brutally targeted by Trump’s ‘zero-tolerance’ crusade, Santorum lamely conceded, “I don’t know what happened.”
Alisyn Camerota on separated immigrant families: "Do you know of a process whereby these parents will ever see their children again?"
Former Republican Senator @RickSantorum: "Some parents will and some parents won't."https://t.co/CrMOj7rvhx pic.twitter.com/lvX13WcTgR— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) July 3, 2018
Meanwhile, Trump’s family scandal continues unabated as the administration, and specifically the Department of Health and Human Services, appear to have no plan to reunite families.
“With a July 10 deadline looming, staffers at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the division within HHS that oversees the care of unaccompanied children, have received no instructions on how to proceed,” Politico reports.
Facing a humanitarian crisis, HHS employees have been given “no instructions on how to proceed.”
The July 10 deadline above is in reference to the fact that a federal judge last week ruled that children under the age of five who were taken from their parents must be returned to them by next Tuesday. And that children over the age of five must be returned two weeks after that.
“We are a country of laws, and of compassion,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw wrote. “We have plainly stated our intent to treat refugees with an ordered process, and benevolence, by codifying principles of asylum.”
Instead of complying, the administration seems more interested in holding the separated children as hostages to order pressure parents to voluntarily drop their asylum cases and agree to leave the country.
Yet even parents who agree to accept deportation aren’t guaranteed to see their kids again. Meaning, parents might sign papers agreeing to be deported because they expect that they’ll see their children at the airport — only to be sent home without their kids and with no idea where they are.
No wonder Trump defenders like Santorum are forced to lie on his behalf.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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