During an appearance on CNN this Sunday, former GOP Senator Rick Santorum caught some pushback when he seemingly dismissed recent media stories regarding the up to 1,500 migrant children who went missing after being resettled by U.S. immigration agencies — some of whom ended up in the hands of traffickers.

During a panel on CNN’s State of the Union, Santorum was asked about the disappearances and suggested that the children are not “missing” as reports claim.

The segment started out with former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle ripping the Trump administration for its enforcement of harsh immigration policies.

“It is unspeakably cruel,” Solis Doyle said.

“The parents are coming with their children because they are trying to escape some horror, they are coming to save their kids and their children are being torn away,” she continued. “Now we are finding that our government has lost these children? Where are the kids? As a mom I am — I just can’t think about a child, a 4 year old in a different country with strangers and now vulnerable to human trafficking and abuse — and there is nothing that these parents can do.”

But Santorum thinks the outrage is overblown.

“I think this is a process going on a long time,” Santorum said. “The children come into detention — there is a vetting process of who the children are assigned to. It is a much larger group of kids and they are assigned to sponsors in this country who go through a process to be able to qualify to be sponsors and the children are placed in them.”

“What happened — thousands more than the 1,500 you are talking about that they follow up with a lot of these — they follow up to find out where the children are and how they are doing,” he continued. “They found that 1,500 of them, somehow the sponsors and the kids fell off the radar. They haven’t checked in and they haven’t been able to find them. The reality is a lot of the sponsors in many cases have been checked out but they may have other reasons for not communicating or dropping off the system.”

“The idea that they are lost is hyperbole to create an issue where I don’t think there is one,” Santorum said, immediately prompting a rebuke from Solis Doyle.

“If you think 1,500 children being lost is not an issue then there is something definitely wrong.” she countered.

“There are logical explanations,” Santorum replied. “Again, we are talking about a government system. We will sit here forever and tell you how inadequate a lot of these government agencies are at doing a lot of things. We lose people all the time.”

Watch the exchange in the video below, via CNN:

Featured image via screen grab