Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday declared that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and other Democrats "want" a situation where refugee children were maimed and brutalized.

In an interview on Fox News, Cruz told host Chris Wallace that Reid and President Barack Obama were holding thousands of children "ransom" because they had been unwilling to "fix the problem" by deporting every undocumented immigrant child in the U.S.

"You keep talking about helping the kids," Wallace noted. "One question I have is, how do you help the kids -- I understand how it helps the United States not to allow them to come into this country -- how does it help the kids to just say, 'Hey, you've got to stay in Central America.'"

"You talk about the violence in Central America, the murder rate in some of these countries," Wallace added. "I'm not saying it's our responsibility to help the kids, but it doesn't help the kids."

Cruz asserted that drug dealers who were bringing children to the U.S. were forcing families to pay a ransom.

"Horrifically, they're cutting off body parts, and they're sending it back to the families," he remarked. "And they're forcing little boys and little girls, they're putting a gun to the back of their head, and they're saying cut off the finger, cut off the ear of another child. And if the child refuses, they're shooting and killing that kid."

The Texas Republican said that he had been told that some of the children had been "maimed" and tortured.

"It's not humane, it's not compassionate, and that's what Harry Reid and the Democrats want to do," Cruz insisted. "They don't want to fix the problem, they want to keep having children come in in a situation where they're brutalized."

"That doesn't' make any sense, and it's not consistent with rule of law."