Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Thursday any Republican who supports the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border has “lost all claim to ever use religious language again.”

“The Republican Party likes to cloak itself in their language of religion. We should call out hypocrisy when we see it,” the Indiana Democrat said.

“For a party that associates itself with Christianity to say that it is OK to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages has lost all claim to ever use religious language again,” the South Bend mayor said.

Mr. Buttigieg, who has been vocal about his Episcopalian faith, added that criminalizing border crossings is “the basis of family separation.”

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