On New Day Saturday, CNN substitute anchor Martin Savidge let on that he was not as informed as his conservative guest on the issue of children being separated from parents who illegally cross the border when CNN contributor Ben Ferguson recalled that some deported illegals chose not to take their children with them.
A befuddled Savidge asked, "How do you know that, Ben? I mean, where does that even -- where does it come from?"
The segment came after a full report by correspondent Diane Gallagher in which she informed viewers of a federal judge putting pressure on the Trump administration to locate deported illegals and give them a chance to claim their children who are still in the U.S.
As she mockingly recounted, "The Trump administration telling the ACLU essentially, 'We broke it -- you fix it.' The CNN reporter did not recall for viewers that many of the hundreds of children whose parents were deported were already given the chance to collect their children but declined.
The piece then moved on to reports of immigrant children being sexually abused at detention centers.
Then, at about 8:30 a.m. Eastern came a debate on the issue between Ferguson and liberal CNN contributor Maria Cardona. At one point, Ferguson tried to explain how complicated it is to try to reunify children with deported parents:
You have the reality that immigration attorneys have talked about, that sometimes you don't get good accurate information -- sometimes you get misinformation. Sometimes the parents that are claiming to be the parents of children are actually not their parents.
Some of the parents do not want to be reunified and will waive reunification with their children, so we need to be clear, this is incredibly complex because you do have some parents and some people that were claiming to be parents out of the 500 kids that are still left who do not want to be reunited -- that's the unfortunate part.
Savidge then jumped in: "How do you know that, Ben? I mean, where does that even -- where does it come from?"
The right-leaning contributor elaborated:
I have talked to immigration attorneys who have talked about this. You can look through government documents that happened even before we had this last separation policy with this administration. You have seen where there have been kids unfortunately that have been brought across the border illegally sometimes with people claiming to be their parents who are not and sometimes with parents -- and when they leave -- they are deported -- unfortunately they waive reunification.
A couple of weeks ago, HHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also spoke of the issue on FNC's Special Report with Bret Baier.
