Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera said he believes his network was "too slow to recognize the hideous nature" of a border policy that separates children from the parents, adding "we dropped the ball."

Rivera also offered a personal apology.

"I believe that we were in many ways way too slow to recognize the emergency on that border, and I think that we particularly at 'Fox & Friends,' and I bear this burden myself, we were too slow to recognize the hideous nature of this policy that separated children from their parents," Rivera said Friday morning.

"Nobody really knew until they saw those images," replied co-host Steve Doocy.

Rivera also noted audio that has been broadcast of children crying for their parents.

"I think it was horrible and I think we dropped the ball and I apologize for it, we should have spoken out more fervently, sooner," he said.

"This is a real issue. Border security is a real issue. We need to secure our borders. But we don't do it by doing something so obscene, we don't endorse child abuse to enforce the border," he added.

"How do we do it?" co-host Ainsley Earnhardt asked.

"For right now there's an emergency, we need emergency housing on our side of the border to put parents and their children, undocumented families," Rivera said.

Rivera also criticized Democrats in the House and Senate for not backing a GOP bill that would end the separations, provide $25 billion for Trump's border wall, provide a pathway to citizenship for "Dreamers" who came to the country illegally as children and make changes to legal immigration programs.

"On that bill, the compromise bill, shame on the Democrats for not supporting it because it is everything that I need," Rivera said.

House Republicans have postponed a vote on the measure until next week.