Rep. Joe Kennedy said it's good news that hundreds of children were reunited with their parents after being separated at the border, but continued to call the policy "inhumane" and questioned how the practice was put in place by the Trump administration.
"I hope somebody, when they were going through this process, created some sort of identifier to match those folks," the Massachusetts Democrat told CNN's "New Day."
"I'm sure they didn't. This is one of the consequences of an absolutely inhumane, unjust, terrible policy that was put forth fairly secretly by an administration that wouldn't own their policy without even engaging Congress."
Kennedy said most of his Republican colleagues also do not like the policy, "but when you do it in the dead of night and don't even own it, my God, this is what happens."
A way will have to be found to reunite the separated children, as there remain thousands who are apart from their families.
"I have a 6-month-old and a 2-and-a-half-year-old," he said. "I can't imagine what it must be like for a parent or that child that have gone through what the kids have gone through. To be away from their parents and now lost and not told when they could possibly see their families again. Unconscionable."
Kennedy said he is especially disturbed that the American government carried out the practice in the name of enforcing a law.
"Administration officials were clear that the intent behind this policy was to be a deterrent," said Kennedy. "Understand what that means.
"It means for those that are fleeing violence, destruction, death, a risk of sexual trafficking and murder and to try to flee thousands of miles through jungles and territory controlled by cartels that the risk and pain associated with being separated from your child when you got to the United States, you would rather roll the dice in Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala," Kennedy said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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