Acosta Presses Lou Barletta: Do You Have Any Regrets for Supporting Pulling Children away from Their Parents?

RUSH EXCERPT:

ACOSTA: "It certainly is. Nick watt, thank you very much. Joining me now, Lou Baretta. He’s running against incumbent Bob Casey in Pennsylvania for the Senate. Last week Alex said he could use a government portal to find a child separated from their parents within seconds. So why can’t the administration meet these court-ordered deadlines to reunite families, and doesn’t it say to you that they just don’t have a plan to begin with to reunite these families?"
BARLETTA: "Thanks, Jim. I think it’s more important that we make sure, that the government makes sure that these kids are safe and they’re put in the right hands of their real parents if they are. Since January and the first five months of 2018, there’s been a 315%, 315% increase in fake families that have come to the border, and we know in the Obama Administration, there have been cases where children have been released to parents or guardians, and actually, they were either traffickers or drug cartel. So I think it’s more important to make sure these kids are put in safe hands and that the parents are who they say they are."
ACOSTA: "We don’t want to overstate this issue of fake families. As you said, the “Washington Post” data found that less than 1% of family units apprehended at the border turned out to be fraudulently posing as families. You don’t want to overstate that, right? It’s a tiny fraction of 1% that are showing up that aren’t perhaps authentic. Aren’t you overstating thing a little bit there?"
BARLETTA: "Well, according to the White House there’s been a 315% increase in the fake families that have come to the border. Jim, I don’t think we want to see one child get into the hands of a drug cartel or a trafficker, so I think you want to err on the side of safety. If we --"

ACOSTA: "99% of the cases are actual families. The “Washington Post” looked at the department of homeland security data. 99% of the families are real. I just to want ask you, should the administration should be separating kids from their parents if they don’t have a process in place to put them back together where they have to use DNA and so on. Does that make sense to you?"
BARLETTA: "I think it makes sense to make sure that we have 100% of the children, especially under the ages of five, are actually returned to their parents or true guardian. I don’t want to see 1%. Maybe it’s okay for some people, but I don’t want to see 1% go to the wrong people. Let’s stop illegal immigration. We wouldn’t even be talking about this if we had secured the border and had enforcement on the interior and we wouldn’t be dealing with this. Jim, do you know how many children and minors come to the border that are dehydrated, they’re starving, they’ve been sexually abused? There is nothing good about illegal immigration and it creates the problem that we have."