Trump Campaign Head Says Parents Don’t Want Kids Separated At Border To Be Returned To Them

Over 500 of the children who have been separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border haven’t been able to reunite with their families, a topic that became a focus at the final presidential debate on Thursday. Now, President Donald Trump’s campaign is defending the situation, saying that many of the children have been abandoned and the parents no longer want them to return home.

Tim Murtaugh, the head of the campaign’s communications team, spoke with John Berman on CNN’s New Day.

“The fact is it’s not as simple as you make it sound or Joe Biden made it sound on the stage last night to locate the parents who are in other countries,” Murtaugh said. “And when they do locate them, it has been DHS’ experience that in many cases the parents do not want the children returned.”

He then added that the so-called “cages” that the children have been made to keep in were built by former President Barack Obama.

“The cages that were built — the cages under question were built under the Obama-Biden administration,” he added.

Berman pushed back, saying that while the infrastructure may have been constructed under the prior administration, the policy of separation was established under Trump.

Later in the interview, Murtaugh repeated his claim about the children who haven’t been reunited with their guardians.

“You have to locate the parents and when they are located in these other countries in many cases, John, the parents do not want the children sent back to them in their home countries,” he said.

He concluded that the U.S. can’t have an open border policy, asserting that Biden has dangerous immigration proposals because he refuses to enforce the laws when people arrive illegally. This, he said, is what is putting people’s lives at risk.

As CNN reported, about 545 kids are still separated from their families. Lawyers haven’t been able to find them, suspecting that they have been deported without their children, making tracking them difficult. The White House has argued that it has tried to help reunite families.

One expert who is working to reunite separated people said that she has come across some who are happy to learn that their kids are safe in the U.S., but didn’t say whether they wanted them to remain there.

Trump also slammed Biden during the debate for being a typical politician as he made a last-minute appeal to voters, as The Inquisitr previously reported.