Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) accused President Donald Trump’s administration of “intentionally” using cruelty to children as “a tool of immigration policy.”

Coons said, “My concern here is that we’ve got an administration that has intentionally used cruelty to children as a tool of immigration policy. I’ll remind you that their zero-tolerance policy that forcibly separated children from their parents at the border a year ago was a humanitarian disaster and faced a bipartisan outcry of both Republicans and Democrats. So they don’t have a lot of moral authority to stand on in arguing that they’d like Congress to give them an unlimited ability to detain children and their parents at the border. The bipartisan bill that just made it out of Congress to provide funding increases the number of immigration judges and increases support for more humane conditions at the border. That’s the right direction for us to go.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN