Wednesday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings With Maria,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said people crossing the desert with children to get into the United States was “essentially child abuse.”

Paul said, “I think we ought to look at a way to try to not separate the families, but we should also understand our first priority should be to keep everybody safe. I think, children in an area where people are being detained for illegally coming across the border there is always the possibility some people detained could either be smugglers of drugs, sexual traffickers so really in all systems incarceration throughout the United States we don’t put children with adults. I understand the emotions of this I think we should look for a solution. But I don’t think everybody should say oh we’re doing this or people doing this on purpose they want to separate kids. I think people truly are concerned about the safety of the children. And how you have children mixed with adults, some adults are not their parents, and some of the adults frankly aren’t good people.”

He continued, “I think the other thing is this fits into overall immigration question we have to ask. Do we want to tell everybody in Central America, load up a kid or two, cross the desert, which is really essentially child abuse — people die in the desert and try to come into the country. It’s not what we want. It is not what we can handle, and it is not the appropriate way. There are immigration stations, and centers where you can go knock on the door say I am applying for asylum. Frankly, we can’t have all of Central America come to the stations either. So it is a complicated bigger question than people make it out to be.”

He added, “Some of the answers people have talked about instead of people going crazy with attacks calling the president names maybe we should think about some solutions and work together on the solution. This would require Democrats not hurling insults and swearing at a president.”

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