Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said Monday that he thinks reports of the frequency of families being separated at the border have been “greatly exaggerated.”
He then walked the statement back a bit, saying that “this is not my area of expertise.” He added that “maybe this is happening with a higher frequency than I’ve been aware of, and it is certainly, it’s just not the right thing to be doing.”
Toomey made the comments during an interview with conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.
He also advocated for the creation of family detention centers as a solution to the Trump administration’s practice.
Toomey added that the familial separations could become President Donald Trump’s Hurricane Katrina, or the equivalent of the humanitarian and political disaster that sank George W. Bush’s presidency.
“Yeah, yes. I suppose it could,” he said, affirming that this catastrophe could be Trump’s Katrina. “I mean, I think clearly, the country is focused on this. Clearly, it’s a horrendous situation if a small child is being taken away from the child’s actual mother. So I think we’ve got to solve this problem.”
